Author Corrects Her Own Best-Seller : Literature: Carolyn Chute's depiction of rural poverty earned her accolades as a new Faulkner 10 years ago. But she kept finding flaws in her work and persuaded publisher to alter it.

By ELIZABETH EDWARDSEN

April 30, 1995 12 AM PT

ASSOCIATED PRESS

PARSONSFIELD, Me. — Ten years ago, the critics raved about a startling new novel, “The Beans of Egypt, Maine,” calling writer Carolyn Chute a new Faulkner and gushing over her depiction of rural poverty.

Readers agreed, buying up hundreds of thousands of copies of the book, which chronicled the lives, loves and hates of the Bean family. “The Beans of Egypt, Maine” became a best seller, and Chute became a literary folk hero.

But one person was really unhappy with the book--Chute herself.

“I’d be doing a reading, and I’d have a pen out, making changes,” Chute recalled recently as she sat in a kitchen rocking chair cuddling one of her six little terriers. “People would laugh, but I was serious. I’d say, ‘Oh, God, that’s awful.’ ”

For years, she kept a hardcover copy of “Beans,” filling its margins with scrawled notes and slashing out paragraphs. Hardly a page survived intact.

But Chute is content with her first book these days. Her publisher, Harcourt Brace, agreed to publish a rewrite. So, 10 years after the initial publication of “The Beans of Egypt, Maine,” Chute says she’s finished with it. The “finished” edition recently was released in paperback, along with her other two books, “LeTourneau’s Used Auto Parts” and “Merry Men.”

Despite its myriad changes, Chute’s rewrite is subtle. Neither the plot nor the structure are different. What has changed are words here and there. Descriptions of characters are refined. The names of a few characters--including the Bean patriarch, Pa--are changed.

“I call him Pa,” Chute said, pointing to her husband, Michael. “But who calls anybody ‘Pa’ these days? It’s not realistic.”

Pa’s name in the rewritten version is Pip.

Chute doubts that readers would notice the differences. “But there is such a difference to me,” she said.

Just as important, she said, is a postscript she’s added to the book that explains how she believes it was misunderstood the first time around.

Particularly upsetting to Chute was that many readers saw incest between the Beans’ neighbor, Earlene, and her father. The book opens with father and daughter napping together.

“I often wonder if so many reviewers hadn’t misinterpreted Beans as a book on incest, would anybody have bothered to pick up the book at all?” her postscript says. She thinks people would have thought differently of her characters if they’d been rich.

Although her book may have changed, literary success doesn’t appear to have changed Chute much over the past decade. Chute, 47, still ties back her hair with bandannas and wears work boots with her long cotton skirts. Her book money allowed the Chutes to build a shingled house in the woods in Michael’s hometown. And although the Chutes are no longer living off welfare, money is still tight. A recent uninsured heart operation has left Chute deep in debt.

Chute leaves her now-tranquil home for either a teaching stint or a stay at an artists’ colony every fall to escape the sounds of nearby raccoon hunters. She raises money by teaching the occasional college course.

She’s spending part of April at the American University in Washington, D.C., working with writing students. She left Michael behind in Maine, where he cares for about 50 graveyards and delivers Meals on Wheels to the elderly.

Chute is at work on a new book. Like her first three, it’s based in the fictional Egypt, Me., a small town where logging trucks rumble down the roadways and lifelong residents sometimes clash with their yuppie neighbors.

“It’s a story about a guy who has this idea about how he wants to make a better world. But people are just worshiping him. They are more interested in him than they are in his actual philosophy,” said Chute of her work in progress.

She could be describing her own experience. She is frustrated that many people seem more interested in her life--her outhouse, her experience as a teen-age mother, her stint on welfare--than they are in her books. She’s irritated that some people think “Beans” is an autobiographical work rather than fiction.

Chute isn’t the first writer to rewrite a book, but it is unusual. She admits that she’s probably broken an unwritten rule in doing so.

“I’ve been breaking rules all my life,” she said. “I was born, got up and started breaking rules.”

Chute said she doesn’t expect readers of the original book to buy the rewritten one.

“I don’t want people to think it is a scam, because I didn’t mean it that way. It’s not a way to sell more books. I just wanted there to be a copy out there that I could feel OK about,” she said.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Just the Right Words . . .

From the original “The Beans of Egypt, Maine”:

She comes to the door wearing men’s long underwear. The greenish light tumbles along the dimpled cloth, the white, unshaky legs, bare feet. In the dark, her deep eyes are like no eyes. Just eye pits. Her black hair, in a bun, strains against a strip of kerchief tightly wound.

“You run away again?” Her voice is reedy like a tall-legged, tall-necked bird.

He pushes in around her, stands by the supper table in the greenish half-dark. He breathes like he’s been running.

“I got a job,” he says. He looks around suspiciously. In the greenish light her smile is dark and slow-coming, like the unlatching of her back door.

“What kinda work?” she asks. Her arms drop away, long tinkertoy arms, flashing white.

“Drivin’ for Libby’s.” He gets out a dark rag and wipes his face.

“Logs?”

“Eyup. Got my second class now, ya know.”

From the rewritten “The Beans of Egypt, Maine”:

“She comes to the door wearing men’s long underwear. The greenish light tumbles along the dimpled cloth, the white, unshaky legs, bare feet. In the dark, her deep eyes are like no eyes. Just eye pits. Her black hair, in a bun, strains against a strip of kerchief tightly wound.

“You run away again?” Her wonderfully reedy voice.

He pushes in around her, stands by the supper table in the greenish half-dark. He breathes like he’s been running.

“I got a job,” he says. He looks around suspiciously. In the greenish light her smile is dark and slow-coming, like the unlatching of her back door.

“What kinda work?” she asks. Her arms drop away, long, flashing white.

“Drivin’ for Libby’s.” He gets out a dark rag and wipes his face.

“Logs?”

“Eyup. got my second-class this spring.”

Source: Associated Press