Love and Work by Reynolds Price
"Love and Work" by Reynolds Price explores the complex interplay between personal relationships and professional obligations through the character of Thomas Eborn, a writer and professor. While Eborn shares autobiographical elements with Price, he remains a distinct fictional creation, allowing readers to engage with themes that resonate beyond direct authorial experience. The narrative delves into Eborn's struggle with duty, revealing how his intense commitment to work often leads to emotional detachment from his family, particularly during pivotal moments such as his mother's death. The act of clearing out his deceased mother's house becomes a catalyst for Eborn’s self-discovery, prompting him to confront the constraints he has placed on his relationships as he navigates the remnants of his past.
Price's portrayal of Eborn’s attempts to compartmentalize his life highlights a broader commentary on the ways individuals may inadvertently isolate themselves under the guise of professional dedication. The novel illustrates how the physical and emotional landscapes of one’s life can shape personal connections and hinder genuine relationships. Ultimately, "Love and Work" serves as a reflection on the sacrifices made in the name of work and the longing for deeper human connections, making it a poignant exploration of the balance between love and labor.
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Love and Work by Reynolds Price
Excerpted from an article in Magill’s Survey of American Literature, Revised Edition
First published: 1968
Type of work: Novel
The Work
Thomas Eborn, Love and Work’s protagonist, is a writer and a professor. Although he is largely an autobiographical reflection of Price, one would be mistaken to presume that he is completely so. He is partially a fiction, so one cannot reach conclusions about Price’s life and personality on the basis of what he tells about this character who is, admittedly, quite like him.
Many writers try to understand their own problems and personalities through writing about situations that have eaten away at them for years. Love and Work is obviously an example of a work by an author who is wrestling with his own past. The past, in Price’s case, became much clearer to him after hypnosis in 1984 (a decade and a half after the appearance of this novel) released from his unconscious mind many details about his past.
Much that Price could not present clearly in Love and Work, because he did not yet have enough information to understand it, he was able to present in clearer perspective in his autobiography, Clear Pictures: First Loves, First Guides, published twenty-three years after Love and Work, when he had come to grips with a past that was lost to him until his hypnosis.
Thomas Eborn is a dutiful son, but his sense of duty sometimes precludes warmth and love. He believes that work frees a person. He becomes so devoted to work that he allows it to intrude upon his life, which becomes increasingly mechanistic and impersonal. In the final hours before his mother’s unexpected death, she, perhaps having a premonition of what lies ahead, tries to reach out to Eborn, but he is busy with his work and will not talk with her on the telephone. It is interesting to compare this account with Price’s account of his last telephone call from his own mother as he recounts it in Clear Pictures.
Much of Love and Work takes place after Eborn’s mother has died. He is clearing out her house, disposing of the past. He comes upon papers that enable him to reconstruct his parents’ relationship with each other and with society. In the course of this activity, Eborn realizes that his mother’s death, which frees him of a pressing responsibility, really does not free him at all, because he imposes his own type of personal bondage upon himself.
Eborn maintains his own house, and its inner sanctum, his study, is surrounded by an invisible moat that makes it inviolable to everyone. He has tried to put all of his human relationships into pigeonholes, to file them away, to prevent them from intruding upon his work. In so doing, he has also kept himself from having any genuine human relationships, even within the closeness of his immediate family.
In this book, Price’s sense of place is strong; place, however, becomes the constraint that stands in the way of one’s having personal relationships.
Bibliography
Drake, Robert, ed. The Writer and His Tradition. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1969.
Humphries, Jefferson, ed. Conversations with Reynolds Price. Jackson: University of Mississippi Press, 1991.
Kaufman, Wallace. “A Conversation with Reynolds Price.” Shenandoah 17 (Spring, 1966): 3-25.
Price, Reynolds. Learning a Trade: A Craftman’s Notebooks, 1955-1997. Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1998.
Rooke, Constance. Reynolds Price. Boston: Twayne, 1983.
Schiff, James A., ed. Critical Essays on Reynolds Price. New York: G. K. Hall, 1998.
Schiff, James A., ed. Understanding Reynolds Price. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 1996.
Shuman, R. Baird. “Reynolds Price.” In Encyclopedia of American Literature, edited by Steven R. Serafin. New York: Continuum, 1999.
Woiwode, Larry. “Pursuits of the Flesh, Adventures of the Spirit.” The Washington Post Book World, April 26, 1981, p. 5.
Wright, Stuart, and James L. West III. Reynolds Price: A Bibliography, 1949-1984. Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 1986.