The Winter Room Chapter Summary & Analysis | Tuning and Spring

Tuning and Spring Summary

The author opens the novel with a short foreword entitled "Tuning." "If books could show more, could own more, this book would have smells," he writes, "and sounds as well." He describes the smells and sounds of a farm that are missing from the written page and tells the reader that supplying these things is a task charged to the reader's imagination.

The first full chapter of the novel is called "Spring." A young boy named Eldon lives on a farm in northern Minnesota. It is springtime, supposedly a time of renewal and awakening, but as Eldon explains, on a farm it is a time when everything starts to smell bad. The manure pile is a specific example. In the winter it freezes and does not smell. In the spring, it thaws.

The farm also gets muddy, and one of Eldon's chores is to help the calves that get stuck...
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