And they're interminably loquacious. They converse, joke or soliloquise about everything that moves or fails to move: the wireless, their unborn child, the tin roof, the nature of human reason.
The plot is intermittent, inconclusive, possibly incomplete. House of Earth is a paean rather than a narrative. Building their home becomes an emblem of Tike and Ella striving to build assurance and dignity; the birth of their child is a symbol of new life in the land.
Individual details are memorable: tumbleweeds bouncing over parched flats; a farmer dismembered by his tractor; Tike crowing and dancing as he feeds the chooks; Ella's shoes made from old lorry tyres.
It's a talkin' book in several ways. There are lengthy polemics against capitalism, the Ku Klux Klan, bankers and politicians, avarice in general. Balanced against this is Guthrie's characteristic empathy for the bruised and battling: "Why can't we own enough land to exist on, to work on, to live on like human beings ... Why has it just got to be dog-eat-dog?"
The pervasive Okie patois is hard work - sometimes entertaining, but more often irritating. Lyrical bits suggest D.H. Lawrence with a sugar overdose. In among them are utterly terrific lines which read like the best of Woody's songs. "(W)here the wind sports, high, wide and handsome, and the houses lay apart"; "Get a hold of a piece of earth for yourself. Get it like this."
More than a curiosity, less than a literary achievement. A tribute to those people in those days, and a singular work from a singular man.
