Posts Tagged ‘descriptors—the West’
Photo of the Week
This Week’s Quote
"Elsewhere the sky is the roof of the world; but here the earth was the floor of the sky."
Willa Cather in
Death Comes for the Archbishop, 1927On My Western Bookshelf
The Glass Castle
by Jeannette WallsCategories
architectual photography Arizona California Colorado Environment Four Corners Idaho Landscapes Literary Criticism Literary Nature Writing Los Angeles Childhood Memoir 1930s-1940s Minimalist Photography Montana National Park Photography Natural History Nevada New Mexico Oregon Parks & Monuments People Photographic Criticism small town photography Social Commentary Uncategorized Utah Washington Western Photography Western Travel Writing West Texas WyomingTags
350.org abstract photography Albuquerque Ancestral Puebloan Ruins Ancestral Puebloans bandon golf course Bandon Natural Area Proposal Bandon OR Basin and Range Bill McKibben Blacklock Point OR Book Commentary Book Review cactus flower photos Cape Blanco lighthouse Central Oregon Coast Christmas traditions Christmas Tree Traditions Citizen Action climate Climate Change climate change politics climate issues Coastal Storms Copenhagen Climate Meeting Curry County Commissioners Curry County Oregon environment Floras Lake Natural Area Folsom Archeological Site Folsom NM global climate change Green Valley AZ Hi-Lo Country Ivan Doig Lincoln City OR Los Angeles Childhood 1940s Mesa Verde NP nature New Mexico autumn Ophir Beach OR oregon coastline Oregon Coast Photography Oregon Winter Storm petroglyphs Photo Essay Politics port orford Port Orford Community Garden Port Orford Community Garden photos Port Orford Heads State Park Port Orford Library Port Orford OR Port Orford OR Community Garden Port Orford OR weather Salinas Pueblo Missions National Monument Sandia Crest SOLV Spring Beach Clean Up Sonoran Desert sonoran desert landscape Sonoran desert spring Southern California Christmas Southern California Memoir southwestern autumn photography sustainability travel Tucson AZ Tumacacori National Historic Site US 101 Coastal Oregon Wave Photography weather western birds wildlife Willa Cather Wind in the WillowsBlogroll
Archives
- All Content and Photos Are Copyrighted. All Rights Reserved.
Book Review: All the Wild That Remains
Posted in Environment, Landscapes, Literary Criticism, Parks & Monuments, People, tagged All the Wild that Remains review, Book Commentary, Book Review, David Gessner, descriptors—the West, Edward Abbey, environment, Wallace Stegner on June 18, 2015| Leave a Comment »
All the Wild That Remains: Edward Abbey, Wallace Stegner, and the American West by David Gessner. WW. Norton and Co. New York. 2015. 354 pp.
To look at the rise in twentieth century environmentalism in the West, David Gessner chooses two formidable voices: Wallace Stegner, novelist who penned the Pulitzer- winning Angle of Repose, essayist and coiner of that most memorable of descriptorsof the West, the “geography of hope”; and Edward Abbey, the merry prankster author of numerous novels including most famously the Monkey Wrench Gang and the formative memoir Desert Solitaire.
As Gessner ranges across the West in search of iconic locations these two authors have lived in and written about, he uses excerpts from their writings as well as extensive interviews with experts as well as people who knew one or the other as friends and colleagues. It’s a huge journey, starting at Edward Abbey’s childhood Pennsylvania, then dipping down for a visit to Wendell Berry in Kentucky who knew them both, then on to Saskatchewan where Wallace Stegner spent many of his most important childhood years. Then Gessner takes the reader deeply “Out West”, visiting ecological high spots which were critical to each writer’s world view, from Arches and Glen Canyon to Stanford and the University of New Mexico.
There is certainly a lot of meat to digest in this book. Gessner obviously did his homework and he brings the two characters into sharp relief, both personally and in how they inspired future Western environmentalists. Some may have chosen Abbey’s model of “monkey wrenching”, working outside the box by physically trying to stop odious development (think sugar in gas tanks). Others may be drawn to Stegner’s moderated voice, a call to work within the system by describing in heartfelt but restrained writings about what our country stood to lose by that development.
While Gessner presents the two in a “compare and contrast” mode (Stegner the “sticker”, Abbey the firebrand). It seems to me a slightly wacky stretch that emphasizes their personal temperaments and styles rather than what overarching truths they tell that sets them apart as two of the greatest voices for preservation of western wilds. Of course they are—it’s just that they make such strange bedfellows. The book seems to unnecessarily overreach to point out their differences—I take away “button-downed” Stegner vs. “wildman” Edward Abbey, neither especially enviable characters. I’d rather revere them both for their common passion for the West and their lifelong devotion to its preservation.
Read Full Post »