New West Book Review
Billy the Kid Rides Again in John Vernon’s “Lucky Billy”
Lucky Billy
By John Vernon
Houghton Mifflin, 294 pages, $24
Who was Billy the Kid? An outlaw with many names—Henry McCarty, Henry Antrim, and William H. Bonney, among others—he was dead before his 22nd birthday, and rumored to have killed 21 men. Billy the Kid was something of a literary invention—little known during his own lifetime, his killer and former friend Sheriff Patrick Garrett published the biography The Authentic Life of Billy, the Kid the year after Billy's death, and from then on the tale sparked the imagination of countless writers, musicians, and filmmakers.
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Part 1: Colorado, Idaho, Montana and New Mexico
Best Western Books of 2008
It's time for my second annual Best Western Book list, and as I did last year, I'm going to focus on books set in this region (with a few exceptions for excellent books written by writers from this region but set elsewhere), naming my favorites from each state. I managed to read 53 books this year, and these are the books from our region that most impressed me. Please add your favorites in the comments section. Today I’ll discuss Colorado, Idaho, and Montana, and New Mexico and tomorrow it’s on to Oregon, Utah, Wyoming, and other Western states.
Colorado
The biggest book story this year in Colorado, and heck, just about the whole country, is the phenomenal run of David Wroblewski's The Story of Edgar Sawtelle (Ecco, 562 pages, $25.95). Wroblewski, who lives in Westminster, Colo. discussed how he made the transition from software engineer to novelist in my interview with him this summer. Buoyed by extremely positive word of mouth among independent booksellers, book buyers, and other book industry people, as well as glowing blurbs from Richard Russo and Stephen King, Sawtelle hit the New York Times bestseller list on June 29 and has remained there since, getting an additional boost from Oprah, who selected it for her Book Club in September.
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New West Author Interview
An Interview with Erin Hogan
Erin Hogan's first book, The Spiral Jetta, is an entertaining account of the road trip she took through the American West in her Volkswagon Jetta, seeking the greatest hits of land art, including Robert Smithson's Spiral Jetty and Michael Heizer’s Double Negative in Utah and Walter De Maria’s Lightning Field in New Mexico. Hogan, the director of public affairs at the Art Institute of Chicago, recently answered some questions via email about why these artists were drawn to the West to create their works, how her perceptions changed over the course of the journey, and the fate of her Jetta.
New West: What first gave you the idea to embark on a land art road trip through the West? Did you plan to write a book about it from the beginning?
Erin Hogan: I had actually wanted to take a trip like this for a while. I mentioned it to an editor friend of mine who said, “Absolutely! You should do this, and then you should write a book about it!” I wasn’t sure I could make a book out of it, but I did think I could write an article or two about the experience. So while I was on the trip I took a lot of notes and pictures and recorded people at these various sites. When I sat down later to start writing, well, I guess I had more to say than I thought I would, and it just grew into the book.
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Western Book Roundup
Tony Hillerman Dies at 83 and Western Books for Politicians
New Mexico novelist Tony Hillerman died Saturday in Albuquerque of pulmonary failure at the age of 83. Hillerman wrote a well-loved series of mystery novels featuring Navajo characters, and the New York Times ran a lengthy profile of his career. Galleycat pointed to a touching essay about Hillerman by Deanne Stillman (whose recent book we excerpted here). Stillman wrote for LA Observed about how HIllerman was her teacher in journalism school in New Mexico, and how he helped her and others find the confidence to write.
The long presidential campaign will finally conclude next Tuesday—or whenever the ballots are tallied. Although many of us are thoroughly sick of anything pertaining to politics at this point, I thought I'd share the results of a book survey I participated in a few months ago. Jeff Lee of the Tattered Cover's Rocky Mountain Land Library asked a bunch of writers and bookish people in the region to put together a "reading list for the President-Elect: A Western States Primer for the Next Administration." High Country News published some of the responses last month, including those from Rick Bass, Barry Lopez, Laura Pritchett, Teresa Jordan, and Aaron Abeyta.
Also in the Roundup: My recommended Western books for the next President, Annie Proulx says she wants to leave Wyoming, while Edward P. Jones and Philip Gourevitch get ready to settle into Laramie.
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Western Book Roundup
Guy from Albuquerque Wins Nobel Prize in Literature
This year's Nobel Prize in Literature was awarded to Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, a French citizen, or as I prefer to think of him, a guy from Albuquerque. According to the Nobel Prize website, "Since the 90s Le Clézio and his wife share their time between Albuquerque in New Mexico, the island of Mauritius and Nice."
The American literary blogosphere has been abuzz for a couple weeks over the comments that Horace Engdahl, the permanent secretary of the Swedish Academy, made to reporters from the Associated Press. Engdahl said: "The U.S. is too isolated, too insular. They don't translate enough and don't really participate in the big dialogue of literature…That ignorance is restraining."
Since he is the "top member of the award jury," his beliefs would seem to put any American writer out of contention for the Nobel until Engdahl resigns. When Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio was announced as the winner last week, most took it as a sign that Engdahl had made good on his promise to exclude Americans, but the guy lives part time in Albuquerque. How non-American can he be?
Also in the Roundup: The University of Nebraska Press has reason to celebrate, the Women Writing the West symposium kicks off in Denver, and the Colorado Book Award winners are announced.
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New West Interview
An Interview with Amy Shearn
In Amy Shearn's debut novel, How Far is the Ocean From Here, Susannah Prue, a nine-month pregnant surrogate mother for a wealthy Chicago couple flees to the desert "somewhere between West Texas and East New Mexico" and installs herself at the “godforsaken fleabag” Thunder Lodge motel, where she tries to sort out her complex emotions and makes a set of quirky friends. I recently interviewed Shearn via email about the inspiration for her book, writing from the perspective of a pregnant woman, and how she "always felt like anything could happen in the southwest."
New West: How did you come up with the idea to build a novel around a nine-month-pregnant woman fleeing to the desert?
Amy Shearn: It really all came from an image that just popped into my head of this pregnant woman driving alone through the desert. I had a vague idea that somehow the baby wasn’t hers, which obviously didn’t make any sense, so the whole process of writing the book was really an exercise in picking apart this mystery I’d set up for myself. Also, I’m just interested in those weird things that the human body can do. Pregnancy itself is surreal enough, but surrogacy sounds like science fiction.
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New West Book Review
25 New Mexico Photographers Featured in New Book
Photography: New Mexico
Edited by Thomas F. Barrow, Kristin Barendsen, and Stuart Ashman
Fresco Fine Art Publications, 284 pages, $95
In the first half of the twentieth century, New Mexico's rugged landscape, rich culture, and generous sky attracted a throng of photographers who came to define the form, including Edward Weston and Ansel Adams. As Stuart A. Ashman writes in his introduction to Photography: New Mexico, Mabel Dodge Luhan invited artists and writers to Taos to visit the "desert salon" she maintained, and many came, including D.H. Lawrence, Paul Strand, and Georgia O'Keefe.
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Western Book Roundup
Bozeman Launches New Community Reading Program
The first One Book-One Bozeman joins a number of other regional community reading programs when it kicks off this week, featuring Mountains Beyond Mountains by Tracey Kidder. The program, organized by "A host of volunteers and community partners, including the Bozeman Public Library, the Bozeman Public Library Foundation, Hopa Mountain, MSU, and Yellowstone Public Radio," according to its website, will include a series of varied events now through October 15, such as book discussions, a photo exhibit (opening September 5 at the Bozeman Public Library), cooking lessons, and storytelling and writing workshops for kids.
One highlight: on October 9, Dr. Michael Iseman of Denver's National Jewish Medical Center will discuss his research on multi-drug resistant tuberculosis, and the work of Paul Farmer, the subject of Kidder's book.
Watch for Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper's announcement of the next One Book, One Denver selection next week. They've been accepting book nominations from the community on their website, so it will be interesting to see this year's pick.
Also in the Roundup: The Democratic Convention gave a boost to the Tattered Cover, and the University of New Mexico Press launches a fall reading series.
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New West Book Review
Desert Daze: Amy Shearn’s “How Far is the Ocean from Here”
How Far is the Ocean From Here
By Amy Shearn
Shaye Areheart Books, 307 pages, $23
Amy Shearn's surefooted debut novel How Far is the Ocean From Here transports readers to the "godforsaken fleabag" Thunder Lodge motel in the middle of a stretch of desert "somewhere between West Texas and East New Mexico," the last place you'd think the nine-month-pregnant protagonist, Susannah Prue, would want to be in high summer. In the time-honored tradition followed by those who've made a hash of their lives, Susannah is fleeing west. She is serving as the surrogate mother for a wealthy couple, and with the due date two weeks away, she impulsively drives out of Chicago and fetches up at the Thunder Lodge.
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New West Book Review
Land Art Rover: Erin Hogan’s “Spiral Jetta”
Spiral Jetta: A Road Trip Through the Land Art of the American West
By Erin Hogan
University of Chicago Press
180 pages, $20
My husband announced one day that he and my daughter had been out making "land art." The next time I walked out back I saw what he meant: they had gathered dozens of dandelions and arranged them in a yellow streak flowing down a channel in a boulder, the sort of thing artist Andy Goldsworthy did in Thomas Riedelsheimer's beautiful documentary Rivers & Tides. I'm a little hesitant to admit this, but we're land art junkies. We've been to see Goldsworthy's work at the Storm King Art Center in New York, and we've made a pilgrimage to Dia: Beacon, the New York museum that is the hub of the Dia Foundation, which funds and maintains much of the land art in the American West.
But we haven't been to see Robert Smithson's famous "Spiral Jetty" in Utah, and we live only one state away from it, so we can't claim any real cred, unlike Erin Hogan, who braved endless miles, desert heat, poor directions, rutted roads, loneliness, and dubious bar company to take readers to the "Spiral Jetty" and beyond in her endearing first book, Spiral Jetta.
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