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Alan Kent Haruf (, rhymes with sheriff; February 24, 1943 – November 30, 2014) was an American writer born and raised in Colorado. He wrote six novels and several short stories set on the High Plains, mostly in the fictional town of Holt.
After completing his undergraduate degree in English at Nebraska Wesleyan, Haruf enrolled in the Peace Corps and performed work in lieu of military service before receiving a master's degree from the University of Iowa. He initially struggled to establish a career as a writer; in addition to stints as a janitor, construction worker and farmhand, Haruf spent years teaching English at a high school in Wisconsin and at universities in Nebraska and Illinois. His writing was first published in 1984 when he was 41. Although Haruf's first two novels received critical praise, commercial success eluded him until the publication of Plainsong in 1999, which became a bestseller. He followed it up with Eventide (2005), a direct sequel to Plainsong, and Benediction (2013).
Throughout Haruf's career, critics praised his spare and elegant prose, authentic portrayals of rural life, and attention to the beauty found in ordinary things, although he was occasionally criticized for redundancy. In early 2014, Haruf was diagnosed with an incurable lung disease. He wrote his final book, Our Souls At Night, while ill and died that November. The book was published posthumously and adapted into a film of the same name. A Colorado magazine, 5280, wrote that Haruf is "widely considered Colorado's finest novelist", and the Dublin Review of Books called his work "both uniquely American and profoundly universal".
Initially, Haruf studied biology at Nebraska Wesleyan University, but he changed his plans after reading Ernest Hemingway and William Faulkner's work. He graduated in 1965 with a Bachelor of Arts in English. He spent two years in the Peace Corps teaching English in Turkey while writing short stories, which he later described as "a good experience for me but of little value to the Turks". Virginia 'Ginger' Koon and Haruf were married in 1967, after his return to the United States. He briefly attended an English graduate program at the University of Kansas, but withdrew during his second semester. Haruf was drafted into the military amidst the ongoing Vietnam War, but as a conscientious objector, served instead at the Craig Hospital in Denver and an orphanage in Montana. He and Koon had three children, all daughters.
Unable to establish a career as a writer, Haruf taught high school English in Madison, Wisconsin, where he lived with his family for four years. He sought to attend the well-known Iowa Writers' Workshop program at the University of Iowa, but was rejected. Undeterred, Haruf moved his family to Iowa City and began working as a janitor while submitting more stories to the program—he was eventually accepted. He graduated from the program with a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1973. Haruf studied with and learned from many other writers at Iowa, including Vance Bourjaily, John Irving, Seymour Krim, and Dan Wakefield. For his thesis, Haruf produced a novel, which Harper & Row expressed interest in publishing. However, they balked at the finished work, which was also rejected by other publishers. Years later, Haruf told an interviewer that the novel had not deserved publication.
After graduating from Iowa, he took odd jobs on a chicken farm, with a railroad company, and as a construction worker to earn a living. Haruf was eventually hired for a position as an assistant professor at his alma mater, Nebraska Wesleyan, in 1976, and wrote during the summers. He did not succeed in selling his writing until 1984, at age 41, when a short story was accepted at Puerto del Sol. The same year, he connected with agent Peter Matson through Irving. Matson sold Haruf's first published novel, The Tie That Binds, to Holt Rinehart & Winston, and it came out in the fall of 1984. The novel brought Haruf some recognition but did not sell well. His second novel, Where You Once Belonged, was published in 1990 by Summit Books. It also received critical praise but produced even poorer sales, leading him to "despair" at his finances. In 1991, Haruf began teaching at Southern Illinois University Carbondale and was able to devote more time to writing. Haruf and Koon separated in the late 1980s and divorced in 1992. He reconnected with a high school friend, Cathy Dempsey ( née Shattuck) at their 30th class reunion in 1991. Haruf and Dempsey married in 1995 and initially lived in Murphysboro, Illinois..]] Haruf's third novel, Plainsong, published in 1999 by Alfred A. Knopf, at last brought him commercial success, along with further critical attention. It was first noticed and promoted by independent bookstores, before being praised by Kirkus Reviews and Publishers Weekly. A limited marketing campaign from Knopf followed, but the company (and Haruf's editor Gary Fisketjon) attributed most of Plainsong's success to word of mouth. Plainsong peaked at #10 on the New York Times Paperback Bestseller list. The novel had sold nearly a million copies by 2004 and was described by the Wall Street Journal as a "runaway bestseller". Haruf was thereafter able to write full time. He did not much enjoy the attention he received, telling a journalist that "I can fumble my way through interviews—but I'd much rather leave myself out of it... I prefer to be anonymous." One correspondent, describing Haruf at a book luncheon, noted that "he wears the mantle of success as though it were an itchy sweater". Haruf and Cathy soon moved to a cabin in Salida, Colorado. Plainsong was adapted into a movie by Hallmark Channel in 2004 starring America Ferrera; although the film received mostly positive reviews and high ratings,Attributed to multiple references: Haruf did not care for it. He called it "pablum" and opined that his letter to the director saying "everything they should not do" had been comprehensively ignored.
His fourth novel, Eventide, was published in 2005, followed by Benediction in 2013. In early 2014, Haruf was diagnosed with incurable interstitial lung disease. Inspired by his relationship with Cathy, he wrote the first draft of his last novel, Our Souls At Night, in around 45 days. The couple revised it together and he sent it to his editor in September. He continued working on the novel until just days before his death, assisted by Cathy. On November 30, 2014, Haruf died of his lung condition at his home in Salida at the age of 71. Our Souls At Night was published posthumously by Knopf. His papers and drafts are held by the Huntington Library in San Marino, California.
Haruf was influenced by Faulkner, Hemingway and John Steinbeck. Haruf collected Faulkner memorabilia and considered Faulkner's story "The Bear" his favorite work. A lifelong habit of eavesdropping on friends and strangers alike was another source of inspiration for Haruf. He told an interviewer in 2014 that he wanted to achieve "what Chekhov did, to show the beauty and the significance of ordinary people and ordinary moments."
Before starting to write each day, Haruf would read a passage from another author that he admired. Beginning with Plainsong, he would then obscure his eyes with a stocking cap and blindly produce a stream-of-consciousness first draft. Subsequent drafts would add punctuation and other flourishes. Haruf wrote using a manual typewriter. While living in Salida, in the last phase of his life, Haruf worked in an adapted tool shed on his property.
Fellow author Ursula K. Le Guin described Haruf as "a stunningly original writer" in her 2019 book, Words Are My Matter; she noted that "he writes about girls and women with tenderness and without idealization, as individuals." Further afield, the Dublin Review of Books called Haruf "one of America's finest writers... both uniquely American and profoundly universal." In an essay published in Granta shortly before his death, Haruf wrote that "over the years I have tried not to write too small, and I want to believe I have tried not to live too small, either."
Haruf's second novel, Where You Once Belonged, was published in 1990. It tells the story of Jack Burdette, a former athlete and manager of Holt's grain elevator, as narrated by the editor of the fictional Holt Mercury newspaper. Writing for the Library Journal, Joseph Lewandowski described it as a "brief, unhappy novel" which was nevertheless effective. Richard Eder of the Los Angeles Times praised Haruf's prose as "spare and straightforward", yet resulting in "extraordinary poetry", concluding that the novel was "stirring and remarkable". Newsday
Haruf's penultimate novel, Benediction, was published in 2014. The book focuses on the final months of Holt's hardware store owner, "Dad" Lewis, who has incurable cancer. Noting its post-9/11 setting, Paul Elie of the New York Times held that Haruf used the book to dispel the idea that Holt was "outside the stream of current affairs", and felt the novel was "affecting but transitional... genuine but incomplete". The Denver Post's reviewer, Tucker Shaw, wrote that "Haruf has an extraordinary grasp of quiet" in his review, which summarized the book as "a masterful look at end of life". Kirkus Reviews criticized Benediction, arguing that although Lewis' story had "dignity and gravitas", other plotlines were "contrived" and redundant. Brad Hooper of Booklist described it as a "a story elegant in its simple telling and remarkable in its authentic capture of universal human emotions."
Our Souls at Night, Haruf's final novel, was published posthumously in 2015. The book centers on the relationship between Addie and Louis, two elderly and widowed neighbors who begin spending nights together to fight loneliness. Joan Silber of the New York Times described it as exemplifying Haruf's "great subject, the struggle of decency against small-mindedness", noting his "dogged insistence that simple elements carry depth". Ann Hulbert, writing for The Atlantic, reported that Our Souls At Night "delivers a retort to critics who yawned that Haruf was stuck in his homespun ways", adding that he, "triumphantly, succeeds in having the last word". The New Yorker described the novel as a "delicate, sneakily devastating evocation of place and character." The Washington Post's Ron Charles praised Our Souls At Night, writing that it is "such a tender, carefully polished work that it seems like a blessing we had no right to expect." In translation by Fabio Cremonesi, Haruf's works, starting with Our Souls At Night, became bestsellers in Italy beginning in 2017. The novel was adapted in 2017 into a film by the same name, directed by Ritesh Batra and starring Robert Redford and Jane Fonda.
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