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New West Book Review

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. [more]

Western Book Roundup

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. [more]

New West Book Review

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. [more]

Western Book Roundup

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. [more]

New West Book Review

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. [more]

Western Book Roundup

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. [more]

New West Book Review

Loving Frank
by Nancy Horan
Ballantine Books, 400 pages, $14

Mamah Borthwick Cheney, the protagonist of Nancy Horan's arresting debut novel, Loving Frank, faces the crossroads of her life in Boulder in 1909. In Horan's novel, which weaves imagined conversations and scenes into a framework of historical fact, Mamah has fallen in love with the architect Frank Lloyd Wright, who designed the Oak Park, Ill. home she shared with her husband and two children. She takes a train to Boulder to support her best friend through a difficult pregnancy, having just confessed the affair to her husband.

Nancy Horan will discuss Loving Frank at the Boulder Book Store on July 31 at 7:30 p.m.
[more]

Western Writers

Steven Wingate's debut book, Wifeshopping, is a collection of witty, insightful stories centered on men's quest for love and marriage. Wingate has been teaching composition and creative writing at the University of Colorado since 2001, and last year he won the Bakeless Prize for fiction sponsored by the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference, which included the prize of his collection's publication by Houghton Mifflin. Amy Hempel, who judged the contest, wrote in her introduction that his stories' success "comes from Wingate's surpassing skill as a writer, and his vision of what can happen when we are made to forfeit a fantasy." I recently interviewed Wingate via email about his knack for evoking varied settings in his stories, the writing advice he gives to his students, and how the Bakeless Prize changed his life. Wingate will appear at the Tattered Cover (LoDo) on July 30 (7:30 p.m.), Poor Richard's Bookstore in Colorado Springs on August 7 (5 p.m.), and the Boulder Book Store on September 9 (7:30 p.m.).

New West: When did you move to Colorado and what brought you here?

Steven Wingate: I was born in New Jersey and moved to Colorado Springs at age thirteen. My father had always wanted to move out to Colorado—drawn no doubt by the mythology of personal renewal that has been drawing people to the West forever—and after he died when I was just shy of eleven, my mom decided to move us here. [more]

Western Book Roundup

The Atlantic's summer fiction issue is out, and it includes a new story by Missoula's Aryn Kyle, who launched her career in that magazine in 2004 with "Foaling Season," which won a National Magazine Award. She later extended that story into her first novel, The God of Animals. Kyle's new story, "Nine," also features a young protagonist, and Kyle's deft way with children as characters is one of the subjects of an interview by Jessica Murphy Moo featured on The Atlantic's website. They also discuss the University of Montana's MFA program, which Kyle calls "an invaluable experience," and how Kyle was inspired by the changes in her home town, Grand Junction, Colo., to extend "Foaling Season" into the novel it became.

The Rocky Mountain Land Series at the Tattered Cover in LoDo will feature Courtney White on Tuesday, July 29 at 7:30 p.m. White shared an excerpt from his new book, Revolution on the Range: The Rise of a New Ranch in the American West, with New West readers earlier this year.

Also in the Roundup: Portland's "Writer's Edge" Conference, and Montana State's new literary magazine seeks submissions. [more]

New West Book Review

Why I Came West: A Memoir
By Rick Bass
Houghton Mifflin, 238 pages, $24

Rick Bass' new book Why I Came West is subtitled "A Memoir," but it's more of a cri de coeur. Bass spends a few pages discussing his life, explaining how he came to move to the remote Yaak Valley of northwest Montana after growing up in Houston, and devotes the rest of the book to a philosophical reflection on twenty years spent as an environmental activist. His goal, simply put, is that he wants "the last roadless lands in the Yaak Valley to be designated as wilderness."

Although he thought this was a fairly modest aim when his quest began, he met vehement opposition or indifference from his neighbors, logging interests, and politicians. Bass never could have predicted the course his life would take when he left his job as a petroleum geologist in Mississippi and drove with his eventual wife west and north until they hit his "beloved supple landscape with its velvet folds and curves," a valley in which no species has gone extinct since the last ice age. [more]

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