John Muir

John Muir was kind of a hippie botanist, and also a racist which was pretty much standard fare in the late 1800s. He walked from Kentucky to Florida. His writing was somewhat Victorian in it's overt flowery form. But he was somewhat different than his contemporaries as he was a botanist first, and a writer second. Actually he had enough other hobbies that writing was somewhere trailing long behind.

"Of death among our own species, to say nothing of the thousand styles and modes of murder, our best memories, even among happy deaths, yield groans and tears, mingled with morbid exultation; burian companies, black in cloth and countenance, and, last of all, a black box burial in an oll-omened place, haunted by imaginary glooms and ghosts of every degree. thus death becomes fearful, and the most notable and incredible thing heard around a death-bed is , "I fear not to die."

nada y pues nada

Repetition is a difficult tool to use. It's well-explored in poetry and in song, but in prose it's difficult to apply. Here's a fine instance.

Here's a passage from the short story A Clean Well-Lighted Place.

"Some lived in it and never felt it but he knew it was nada, y pues nada y nada y pues nada. Our nada who art in nada, nada be thy name thy kingdom nada thy will be nada in nada, nada as it is in nada. Give us this nada our daily nada and nada us our nada as we nada our nadas and nada us not into nada but deliver us from nada; pues nada. Hail nothing full of nothing, nothing it with thee. "

Interchanging the Spanish and English tells you thing about the character as does the use of the lords prayer and it's mildly sacrilegious modification. Without revealing anything about the story, you know things about the character.

The Johnstown Flood

It's been continuously in print since 1968. Mine is an original hardback. Author David McCullough has a mixed catalog. But something about the tragedy of Johnstown brought out his better qualities. His movement between cold hard facts, and first hand accounts mixes seamlessly with his smooth but dark prose.

"The cold was nearly as cruel as it had been the night before. Pitch-blackness closed down over the mountainsides that crowded so close; but across the velley floor bonfires blazed, torches moved among the dark ruins, and the rivers and big pools of dead water were lighted by the fire that raged on at the stone bridge."

It’s all on Google books of course

Wayne Ude

Wayne wrote the book Becoming Coyote in 1981. In the middle of a cultural punk movement in music and literature he delved into American Indian culture. In the book he literally and figuratively takes the title into the text.

"For years I'd walked suspiciously around the idea, sniffing at it, kicking my leg up occasionally and pissing on it so I'd be able to find it again, then wandering away for a while knowing that the piss smell would help me identify it when I came back. Now I was ready to accept the idea, to piss on it not just so I could find it again, but to mark it as mine, within my boundaries."

He totally contorts, reshapes and abuses the metaphor in every way possible. It's really a very strong passage in a totally underrated book.

Max White

It was printed in 1946, after his well-received novel "Tiger -Tiger." The Book "In the Blazing Light" was about the life of the artist Goya. While unauthorized biographies of today exist to tarnish, or propagandize, at the time this book of drunken debauchery and violence was somewhat unique. Time Magazine wrote a telling review here. The title is taken from a quote on the title page:

"This was the conduct of a man who feared nothing, not even death. He, whose eyes were getting dimmer, lived constantly in the blazing light of his own genius."

Blazing light is not an entirely unique term. But using it zoomorphicly is odd. Even more oddly he may have stolen it from Sir William Jones in an article written about British Lawyers in 1830. It's in the public domain and can be downloaded here.

"His studies were so various, yet so deep; his knowledge so universal, yet so profound, and his abilities so extraordinary, yet so unlimited, that nothing that the human mind had compassed, however deep and metaphysical its researches had been, whether employed in developing the hidden principles of matter, or of disclosing the secret laws of nature, or of searching into the deep and mysterious truths of philosophy; nothing, however infinite and vast; nothing, however subtle and obscure, but he threw upon it the blazing light of his own genius, or grasped it in the powerful embrace of his gigantic intellect."

The New York Public Library

Mort Rosenblum

Mort Rosenblum published his book "Olives - Live of a noble fruit" in 1996. It's largely autobiographical, injects all too much politics and really just strings together a long essay on olives with numerous quotations, bland poetry and a few decent recipes. But the portions in first person, as real as they appear to be the dialog seem to be exaggerated. They're just too consistently good to be true to life. For example, he visits a series of olive groves, and olive oil makers. This exchange with Juanito appears in Chapter 5.

"Never measure," he said. "you must never measure. Splash. Pinch. Use your eyes, your instinct. Never spare the oil." What did he think about butter people? "Tontos." he replied. "Fools."
When we got up to leave, finally, I asked Juanito, "Are you sure you never cook anything in butter?"
"Feh," he spat. "Poison."

Favorite books

I limited myself to books I've read more than once. I think that proves their mettle. Each description is followed by the number of times I've read it.

"Oranges" by john McPhee You might think it's dull. It's about early Florida Orange growers, but that slice of culture was totally unknown to me and very endearing. 2

"Where Strange Roads go Down" by Mary Del Villar about 2 beatniks walking across rural Mexico. 2

"Where Rivers Ran Backward" by William E. Merrit was also great. Another Vietnam biopic, I liked his continual interspersing of rock lyrics to lock the story to the era. 3

"The Devil and Sonny Liston" by Nick Tosches which many would find crude and borderline offensive. It's the biography of the baddest man who ever lived, who happened to be a famous boxer. 5

Stephen King: "The Dark Tower" say what you will. He wrote it at the height of his drug-induced mania. It's brilliant. I think it stands alone as the rest of the series is strictly downhill. 3

Jim goad wrote a book called "the Redneck Manifesto" that was patently profane and indecent and borderline obscene. Alternately it was some of the most original and thought provoking literature I've ever read. 2

Russell Hoban writes books that are hard to follow, difficult to read and often totally unsatisfying to finish. But his use of language is a weapon. He invents new words, sometimes whole new languages. Each book of his I've read is it's own struggle to finish and comprehend. "Riddley walker" is about post apocalyptic future written in a devolved English language replete with new words, new grammar and new spellings. His book "Klienzeit" is even harder to follow and a long narrative that I think supposes existentialism is wrong and metaphysics are right and nothing
is real. Or it's just absurd. I don't think I understand it. 2

"The Crossing" Cormac McCarthy, He is unstoppable in all his gothic western glory. 2

Hunter S. Thompson..It's hard to limit myself to one book... I own most of them, but "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign trail of 72'" is a tad better than the classic "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas." 2 (each)

Simon Winchester

I like to read non-fiction. It's an easy read, you educate yourself and there's no tension in stopping mid-sentence at bedtime. John McPhee, Mark Kurlansy, and Simon Winchester all figure prominently in the personal library.

Simon Winchester's most recent work "A Crack in the Edge of the World" ruined it. He has a new and unnatural urge to dip deeply into the thesaurus. (The origami book jackets remain a fixture.) Below is a complete list of the world I had to stop and look up. many were technical terms a geologist would know, some were typos but most wee just him being difficult. (I've excluded those technical terms he included in the appendix.)


umbos
terminator line
ailanthus
orogeny
febrile
annus mirabilis
skein
kittieakes
fulmars
post hoc ergo propter hoc
auguries
gasconading
lickspittle
panjandrum
hobbledehoy
sauve qui peut
lumpenproletariat
quotidian
archdruidical
ultramafics
minié
cordilleran
allotropes
coesite
sishtovite
niggle
E pur si muove
mountain cwn (might be a typo)
sunder
long chalk (British idiom)
plashes (typo)
friable
serried
soda lakes
bathyscapes
nosegay
inapposite
tisanes
saturnalia
skerries
quayside
louche
melodeons
sartorial
laager
magisterial
penuriousness
cuboids
brocade
capo di tutti capi
sylph-waisted
Liebfraumilch
phaetons
hansoms
cupola
chance medley (British idiom)
porte cochere
whiffletree
pilaster
phylloxera
asperities
nullahs
rills
caryatids
galangal
pour memorie
xenolalia
jeremiad
maunderings
périphériques
quotidian
hectopascals

And of course the quote:
"The locals are seemingly obsessed with constant stories of death (as fishermen drowning in sudden storms, birds perishing in their hundreds of thousands, beaches made exclusively from the crushed bones of fish skeletons, various species of flora and fauna dyning out as the level of salinity, which is already close to that of the pacific ocean keeps on climbing in the hot and pitiless sunshine)."

Library Discards

Often the marking of a good book, and a tired one. I was surprised upon looking how few of my books were marked ex libris. Then I noticed how many were missing one of the the end papers. Libraries discard resellers cut off the marked pages to create the appearance of a less used book. What a shame. I'd prefer to know where it's been.

Darker Blues

I'm quoting a quote, but they re-use the passage masterfully in a meaningful place. The book is a collection of biographical essays about the musicians of the northern Mississippi. And in context the place matters as much as the people.

"On the fields, in the forests, in the streets and yards and homes and businesses, and barns, the water left a rising muck. It filled the air with stench, and in the sun it lay baking, and cracking like broken pottery, dung-colored and unvarying to the horizon..."

-Originally from Rising Tide, by John Barry.

By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept

Elizabeth Smart wrote the most overtly dramatic book I've ever read, and most of it for all of it's bloated melodrama was also a work of evocative poetic-prose. The book is epic. Most of it is senseless out of context. But the book was autobiographical, and like real life, had a sequel: The assumption of the Rogues and Rascals. They're often sold bound together as they pertain to the same characters and plot lines of the authors life.

"Once upon a time there was a woman who was just like all women. And she married a man who was just like all men. And they had children who were just like all children. And it rained all day."

You can smell the dissatisfaction. After By Grand Central Station I Sat Down and Wept, it's as if she learned craft to companion the intensity of her expression. Much of the book is still burdened with extreme melodrama, but the prose is still in it's own league. I'll quopte a tad more:

"Sometimes with slow understanding they make imperceptible movement towards each other, perectly balanced on their twig; their eyes outward, their snouts upwards, their tails curled permanently like teacup handles."

Smokestack Lightning

The book Smokestack Lightning is about barbecue and the gnarled fingers of elderly black men smoking cow heads and brisket in hand-dug smoke pits in the yards behind abandoned gas stations in the South. More than that of course... It is not a cookbook it's as much about the American Dream as Fear & Loathing was. The concepts are surprisingly vast in a biopic that's more often a comic foil in the middle of a morning tv show. Lolis Eric Elie makes it all artful, tangible and powerful. It courts the real for the greater sense of palpation.

"Truth being what it is-vast and yet surprisingly deceptive-what you will retain will be the tale's edited version, it's essence. And as you choose to remember then, both tale and teller, Charlie mac will become more than a historian of a small village in Georgia. He will become the griot of this whole thing-its Homer if you will."
-Lolis Eric Elie

There's a great interview with the author here. I also hear his book cornbread nation is excellent but I've not read it yet. Lolis Eric Elie is a columnist and food writer for the New Orleans Times-Picayune.

Personification

The book Kleinzeit, by Russell Hoban is not very readable, and is far inferior to his more faous book Ridley Walker. But it has more personification than I've seen any any other text. Buildings are live, colors, god and death are both living breathing and seemingly mortal characters... yet he describes them so aptly in their "human" trappings.

last paragraph chapter 8:
"Hospital said nothing, had no quips and cranks and wanton wiles. Hispital huge, bigger than any sky, grey-faced, stony faced in the rough clothes of the prison, the madhouse, Tom o'Bedlam. hospital waiting, treading its bedlam round in thick boots. Hospital mute, gigantic, with thick empty hands."

Oswald de Andrade

I cut out the paragraph and stuck it in my pocket. I found it today, years later in a book. I remembered I read it on a plane and assumed it was an in-flight magazine. I was wrong. It was Wired. The article was by Julian Dibbell, but she's quoting the modernist Brazilian poet Oswald de Andrade.


"In 1556, not long after the Portuguese first set foot in Brazil, the Bishop Pero Fernandes Sardinha was shipwrecked on its shores and set about introducing the gospel of Christ to the native "heathens." The locals, impressed with the glorious civilization the bishop represented and eager to absorb it in its totality, promptly ate him. Thus was born Brazilian culture."
-Oswald de Andrade


Full text Here.

James Parker, Boston Phoenix

James Parker is writer for the Boston Phoenix and is clearly wasting his skills on a weekly periodical instead of somthing more timeless like a book. The strong language, and the broad vocabulary, both say Nick Tosches but the brute masculinity and the heavy use of punctuation says Fulkner. Truly a surprise find last week.

"In ethnographic terms, the bouncer is the big daddy of the liminal realm, the place of thresholds, through which participants in the rite are conducted—moved along, if you like—as they pass from one state to another. Jittery clubbers at the door, agitating for entry; the gyre of and out-of-control pit, slewing toward carnage; a drugged or boozed patron sprouting invisible tusks of hostility; the bouncer is there, filling the space negotiating the transition."
-Bouncer Lit

Love the combination of words: Ethnographic, Liminal and Big Daddy in the same sentence. Gyre, slewing and "tusks of hostility" all need a good dictionary and together manufacture a dense and powerful image. Somone give the man a book deal please.

His articles here: http://thephoenix.com/Author.aspx?name=JAMES%20PARKER

Letter from Iceland

I've always liked that Mark Kurlansky like to frequenty quote the fine language of those great writers that preceeded him.

"The towns peter out into flat rusty-brown lava fields, scattered shacks surrounded by wire fencing, stockfish drying on washing-lines and a few white hens."

From Letters from Iceland by W.H. Auden & Louis MacNeice, 1967
more recently quoted by Kurlansy in the book "Cod."

Mark Kurlansky

In writing non-fiction the writer is limited. If you are too vivid and lively you risk the presentation of fiction. A good non-fiction writer skirts it and engages in artful language only sparingly and perferably late in the book after trust is earned.

This is part of his description of the former Fulton Street market in Manhattan circa 1860 or so.

"The gas lighting was dim and the air often misty from the river and this gave an eerie smudgy haziness to the busy market where deer and squirrels and opossums and wild turkeys were hanging from beams."

-From The Big Oyster

Henry Miller

Not a novel pick, it is and he are classics after all. From Black Spring:

"In fact, neither of them was ashamed of showing hsi tears, something which seems to have gone out of the world now."

Hollis Gillespie

It's not the main character, because it is herself. It's not the content, she gets cute, and sappy a littel too often. The pace is conversational like that really funny friend you had in college. But peppered throughout are single sentences that are unforgetable. One that presses you to read on. from Bleachy haired honky bitch.

"Nothing like stumbling over a dead puppy to dick up your day, so thank god that didn't happen, but it almost did."

"I dislike being bled on."

"My friend is fucking her boss, which I think is a really bad buisness move."

"the eye-catching result was that they both sported big shiny red baboon asses."