New West Book Review
Desert Daze: Amy Shearn’s “How Far is the Ocean from Here”
A winning debut novel about a pregnant woman stuck in the New Mexico desert.
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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Amateur Historian Produces History of Old West All-Indian Battle
A amateur Crow historian has completed a history of a pivotal -- and mystical -- all-Indian battle in which his tribe defended its homeland.
The historian is Elias Goes Ahead, a storyteller and lifelong historian.
"I was brought up among natural historians," Goes Ahead told me at a table amidst teepees and cottonwoods at an encampment at Crow Fair, his tribe's annual powwow near Crow Agency on the sprawling reservation of the same name south of Billings. "Ever since I was a little boy, they told me stories, passed on their knowledge to me because I was the one who listened."
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Western Book Roundup
Nick Arvin Editorializes and a Denver Fiction Anthology
With the Democratic convention coming up, everybody in Denver seems to be thinking about politics these days, and writers are no exception. Denver novelist Nick Arvin (who I interviewed last year) wrote an editorial for this weekend's Rocky Mountain News about Barack Obama's skills as a writer, which predated his political ambitions. Arvin's thesis:
"I'd like to suggest that the fact that Obama is a writer -- not just a typer of e-mails and compiler of legal briefs but a writer of literary quality with the ability to craft compelling narrative and interrogate his own feelings on the page -- tells us some things about him that are worth considering as he competes for the presidency. These ideas flow from a few simple observations about writers generally."
And speaking of the Rocky, in contrast to all the bad news about book review sections disappearing from newspapers across the country, the Rocky's Editor-in-Chief John Temple has announced an innovative fiction contest, "A Dozen on Denver."
Also in the Roundup: Joyce Carol Oates' JonBenet Ramsey novel, Daniel Grandbois reads in Boulder, and a British take on the best Western novels.
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Diary of a Mad Voter: Joan McCarter
Book Review: Greg Lemon’s “Blue Man in a Red State”
Three new battleground state have opened up in this year's election: Nevada, Colorado, and Montana causing pundits and prognosticators every where to question the long-standing convention wisdom of the Republican lock on rural America. Greg Lemon's new book, Blue Man in a Red State: Montana's Governor Brian Schweitzer and the New Western Populism, helps shed a little bit of light on the resurgence of populism in one of those states with a profile of its colorful governor.
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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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New West Book Review & Interview
“Montana Ghost Towns and Gold Camps” by Bill Whitfield
Montana Ghost Towns and Gold Camps
by William W. Whitfield
Stoneydale Press, 240 pages, $19.95
Bill Whitfield often thinks about what Montana must have been like for the plucky miners and homesteaders who lived during the flourishing heyday of Montana mining towns. Although these miners would probably have a hard time envisioning the world we know today, thanks to Whitfield’s pictorial guide Montana Ghost Towns and Gold Camps, it’s easier for us to envision theirs.
Brimming with more than 450 raw and blunt photographic recollections of mostly left behind and disremembered mining structures, relics, and machinery, Whitfield’s book provides us with the nostalgic insight to be able to better see and understand the mining world, and the satisfying luxury of visiting the places where the rough and ready lived, worked, fought, drank and died. These bare photographs evoke emotions —solitariness, desperation—or images of pioneers’ and miners’ struggles to survive uncivil but simpler times.
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Western Book Roundup
Western Writing About Running: Any Thoughts?
I just finished reading an insightful memoir by one of my favorite writers, Haruki Murakami, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, in which he discusses how long distance running has enhanced his life and ability to write. The book doesn't have much to do with our region, but at the end, Murakami (who runs a marathon every year) writes a funny anecdote about the experience he had running in Boulder:
"One other memory I hold dear is running high up in Boulder, Colorado, with Yuko Arimori, the Japanese silver medalist in the marathon at the Barcelona Olympics. This was just some light jogging, but still, coming from Japan and running all of a sudden at a height of ten thousand feet was very tough—my lungs screamed, and I felt dizzy and terribly thirsty. Miss Arimori gave me a cool look and just said, 'Is something the matter, Mr. Murakami?'"
This prompted me to think that with so many avid runners in the mountain West, there must be some great literary writing about running set here. But as I pondered this, I was only able to come up with one example—Rick Bass's beautiful short story "Fires," from his 1997 collection In The Loyal Mountains. So does anyone out there know of any other remarkable stories or books about running in our region? If so, let me know!
Also in the Roundup: the Boise Nonfiction Writers host Courtney White, and the High Plains Book Awards adds a category for regional writing by women.
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New West Book Review
“Still”: Robb Kendrick’s Cowboy Tintypes
Still: Cowboys at the Start of the Twenty-First Century
By Robb Kendrick
University of Texas Press
232 pages, $50
The West's open range cowboy era that has been so romanticized in American myth, film, and books endured only for a short period during the 19th century, before fenced land became the norm, but photographer Robb Kendrick has devoted his career to capturing contemporary cowboys who look as though they've stepped right out of those legendary times. Kendrick doesn't costume his subjects to fit a role, unlike famous frontier photographer Edward S. Curtis (as Marianne Wiggins notes in her astute introduction), but he does have a great eye for men and women whose dress, faces, and demeanor make for an iconic look when he captures their image in a tintype, a photographic process that reigned in America from after the Civil War to the beginning of the 20th century.
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New West Book Excerpt
“Blue Man in a Red State”: An Excerpt
New West contributor Greg Lemon is a Montana journalist specializing in politics, and he recently published his first book, Blue Man in a Red State: Montana's Governor Brian Schweitzer and the New Western Populism (Globe Pequot Press, 150 pages, $22.95). The following is an excerpt from the book, covering the time Schweitzer spent in the Middle East in his mid-twenties. Lemon will discuss his book at the Borders in Bozeman on September 6 (2 p.m.).
Montana's Gov. Brian Schweitzer knew in college that he wanted to see the world. Given the fact that he was a farm kid from Geyser, Mont., Schweitzer figured his best chance to see the world was through farming. He majored in international agriculture at Colorado State University and earned his Master's degree in tropical soils from Montana State University. His first job out of college at the age of 25 took him to the Middle East to work as an agronomist on the massive project to farm the desert for the Libyan government.
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Western Book Roundup
LA Times Ends its Book Review and Colorado Seeks A Poet Laureate
As many have noted, the Los Angeles Times published its last freestanding book review section this weekend. That leaves the San Francisco Chronicle as the only paper west of the Mississippi with a separate newspaper book review section (the New York Times Book Review, Washington Post Book World, and the Chicago Tribune's books section also remain). Although the LA Times will incorporate some book criticism into the rest of the paper, its coverage of books will diminish. That's unfortunate, given the attention to Western books that the paper has provided, such as Nick Owchar's recent piece for the Times' book blog, Jacket Copy, analyzing Jim Harrison's introduction to a new edition of James Welch's The Death of Jim Lonely. (According to the National Book Critics Circle's interview with editor David L. Ulin, Jacket Copy and other online features will continue.)
Also in the Roundup: the Mountains and Plains Independent Booksellers Association announces its annual regional book award winners, Colorado puts out the call for a poet laureate, poet Maria Melendez reads in Salt Lake, and more on Rick Bass's Why I Came West.
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