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In the realm of literary production, Holy Cross graduates
continue to do more than their part, producing important
and noteworthy works for the shelves of libraries and bookstores.
By Donald N.S. Unger  Robert
Gatewood’s coming of age novel, The
Sound of the Trees, chronicles the birth of the New
West
Holy Cross alum Robert Gatewood ’95 and poet and Holy
Cross Professor of English Robert Cording, speak of each
other in remarkably parallel and somewhat oxymoronic terms—cordial,
affectionate, respectful, but still almost gently perplexed.
“Bob had a sleepy intensity about him,” Cording
recalls. “He looked at first as if he didn’t care
or wasn’t taking school all that seriously. And then
a paper or a test came in, and I realized just how smart
he was and, more importantly, how engaged he was with the
material we’d been doing.”
“Even if I didn’t understand specifically what
Professor Cording was talking about at any given time,” Gatewood
says, “the passion with which he spoke, with which he
taught, was never absent. And that is probably the greatest
gift he and Holy Cross could have given me.”
The two stayed in contact after Gatewood left the Hill;
Cording is one of the people listed in the acknowledgments
for The Sound of the Trees. While the book is a novel,
one of its strengths is the rich texture of the language
throughout; yet, Gatewood says half in jest, half in earnest—“I
shamefully admit I’m writing solely fiction these days.”
But it isn’t just fiction, and he doesn’t
have anything to be ashamed about.
Remembering his time at Holy Cross, he adds, “Back
then I was studying poetry, and that backbone of language
and the economy of language were crucial for me—most
of all the passion behind it. I can say without hesitation
that studying with Robert Cording was the single most important
experience for me in terms of my choosing the writing life,
understanding it, loving it beyond almost all things.”
In addition to good preparation, the success of his current
book can be ascribed in part to the writer’s maxim, “Fail
first.” Gatewood wrote a first novel that he didn’t
publish, but which he found useful.
“I wrote that first manuscript immediately after graduating
Holy Cross,” he says. “At the time I thought maybe
it was all right, but in truth it was a mess. The storyline
was vague and digressive. Stylistically it ran the spectrum.
But I did learn a lot from writing it, especially in terms
of developing plot and character consistency. I think it
was just a necessary failure in order to find the way to
what I really wanted to write about, and how I wanted to
go about getting there.”
While Gatewood grew up in Buffalo, N.Y.—his father
also attended Holy Cross, graduating in the same class as
Patrick Creevy—he believes his early experiences out
west had a strong influence on his writing: “When I
was growing up we spent a lot of time in Colorado, and I
think it was there that my fascination with the Western country
really began to affect me. And invigorate me. Upon graduation
I immediately went out to Colorado, eventually moving down
out of the Rockies into Santa Fe and then Taos, the Sangre
de Cristo range.”
He did ranch work. He tended bar. He worked as a roofer.
But, as he puts it, “There was actually little ‘research’ done
for the [published] book, in the traditional sense. I did
spend a lot of the time driving around—predominantly
in New Mexico and Colorado—just watching the country
pass by—but watching with purpose, and keeping with
me always a notebook and a pencil or two. As far as the genealogies
are concerned, much of that was learned working on the ranch.”
The Sound of the Trees tells the story of Trude Mason,
18 years old and fleeing Southwestern New Mexico on horseback
in the 1930s. He and his mother are in flight from his alcoholic
and violent father. But as with other Western novels, both
land and time figure as prominently as character in the development
of the story.
In addition to some parallel themes of family violence,
Gatewood’s book shares with Creevy’s a deep reverence
for poetry and for mythos.
Another particular strength of the book is the degree to
which Gatewood is content to lay out a rich, complicated,
and in many ways, vexed political and cultural landscape
for his readers and then let them wrestle with the complexity
of it on their own. Conflicts don’t resolve neatly or
quickly; some things don’t resolve at all. There is
a bittersweet, melancholic, true feeling to the story
that is deeply satisfying. The people that Gatewood creates
are as variegated as the flora and fauna he describes, but
he doesn’t make a big deal out of who’s Black,
who’s White, who’s Latino or who’s Native
American.
“I never wanted the issue of race to be a major component
of the novel,” he says. “I especially didn’t
want to preach about it. I feel it should just be presented
to the reader without authorial commentary, without judgement.
Leave it to the reader. I know when I’m reading, I like
the author to leave much of the sorting out to me. I think
it’s one of the main things that makes reading an individual
experience.”
Currently, Gatewood has his own version of the North/South
commute, living in the Taos area, but also making periodic
trips up north.
As he puts it, “I do get back to Buffalo quite a bit:
Get my hockey and chicken wing fix, which anyone from the
area would know to be life necessities.”
Donald N.S. Unger is a writer of fiction and nonfiction
and a political commentator for NPR affiliate radio WFCR.
He lives in Worcester.
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