The Time of Man

 Listen here.

t’s unknowen.

“It’s pretty stuff, clover a-growen. And in myself I know I’m lovely. It’s unknowen how beautiful I am.” — Ellen Chesser in Elizabeth Madox Roberts’ The Time of Man.
     But how beautiful is she if in the next paragraph Joe Turner driving by with Emphira Bodine doesn’t turn his head to look?

From my sister, Moira: I see you are reading The Time of Man. I read it . . . when? I’m not sure, but it was in a group reading Virginia Woolf and Willa Cather and Sarah Orne Jewitt. And how did Woolf get in there? Either we weren’t paying a lot of attention to what we were doing — though we were serious about it. Or, more likely because there wasn’t then a group of women readers of four or more that there wasn’t one in it but insisted on reading Virginia Woolf as if she was the Bible and anyone else was a sermon typescript or a poorly printed in red-and-black tract
     But as I remember, I liked the Roberts novel as much or more than anything else we read: there was an honesty about it that Woolf lacked because for her it was more important to be fine than to be honest and that Cather aspired to but managed only by dint of hard work, and the hard work showed.
     At least, that's the way I remember it. But I’m remembering only my feelings. The critics likely prove me wrong though for me that is
                                                                              still unknowen. There are clouds of unknowen.