It’s the birthday of Paul Harding (b. 1967), whose debut novel Tinkers ended up winning the Pulitzer in 2010 after lots of early rejection by publishers and editors who felt the novel was too “quiet,” and who has been far too gracious to say “neener-neener” to any of these publishers and editors since his great success.

Harding grew up in Wenham, Massachusetts, and learned clock repair from his grandfather in Maine. This grandfather’s father had had epilepsy and had abandoned his family rather than risk ending up in an asylum, which was the great-grandmother’s plan. (I sympathize. I know I get all skittish when my husband starts asking if I wouldn’t “like a nice rest” and wants me to “sign some papers” reserving a room at a “special spa” he found for me.) This family background was the inspiration for Harding’s novel, which is about a dying clock repairer who remembers his father, an old-time tinker, while on his death bed.

Harding studied at the University of Massachusetts and took six years to graduate with his degree in English. After college, the band for which he was a drummer, Cold Water Flat, toured Europe, made two albums, and broke up, so he took a writing course with Marilynne Robinson at Skidmore College. (All hail the great Marilynne Robinson.) He then entered the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, where Robinson also teaches, graduated with a novel that didn’t work, and taught writing at Harvard and at night school. During this time he finished Tinkers, which ultimately sold to a small press, Bellevue Literary Press. (Bellevue, Bellevue…that rings a bell.) Shortly after his Pulitzer was announced, Harding won a Guggenheim. He has since written another novel, Enon (2013), that involves characters from his first novel, but it is Tinkers that sounds like a truly rewarding read and we should probably all go out and buy it. From an indie bookseller. https://blpress.org/books/tinkers/

Harding lives with his wife and two sons in Massachusetts.

Have a  gracious and sunny Wednesday and stay scrupulously honest to the data.