For the reader who once wore a mackinaw or grasped a shotgun shell or bamboo fishing pole, McManus once again offers a camp...
After 15 collected frolics (Into the Twilight, Endlessly Grousing, 1997, etc.), McManus returns, still camping in territory as daunting as his own backyard.
As usual, this is a comic backpack full of ineptitude in thick woods. With old reliable stock players like wife Bun, Retch Sweeney, Rancid Crabtree, and Crazy Eddie Muldoon, supported by Dicky Scroon Esq. and cousin Vile, McManus hikes past Starvation Flats to bivouac betwixt Mt. Horrible and Mt. Misery. In the author’s blistered hands, the environs of Blight, Idaho, are as real as those of Lake Woebegon or Yoknapatawpha County. Blight County is where our woodland Münchhausen does some of his hunting and fishing and most of his talking. He discusses his considerable concern with fearsome bears and comments at length on his bewildered feet. But along with contemplation on matters ursine and podiatric, McManus also communes with nature, insects in particular. He offers one chapter comprised of two sentences nearly sufficient to compete in length, though not topic, with Molly Bloom’s closing monologue in Ulysses. The Maupassant of Outdoor Life (where most of these pieces first appeared) presents stories in fine country style about mud, wiener stews, and Bob the celebrated wrestling toad of Blight County. In the personal-history department, we’re told that young Pat learned to drive in a truck that had a first gear so low it “could almost climb trees, and occasionally made the attempt.” Like many grown men, McManus has the psyche of a ten-year-old, and the tall tales of his youth when everything cost fifteen cents will evoke smiles. He is adept at baiting and playing out his pieces until he hooks readers. It’s a game of catch and release with his audience.
For the reader who once wore a mackinaw or grasped a shotgun shell or bamboo fishing pole, McManus once again offers a camp right at home—and real bucolic fun.Pub Date: June 3, 2002
ISBN: 0-8050-7078-8
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2002
Elegant essays marked by surprising shifts and unexpected connections.
Largely autobiographical meditations and wanderings through landscapes external and internal.
National Book Critics Circle Award–winner Solnit (River of Shadows: Edward Muybridge and the Technological Wild West, 2003, etc.) roams through a large territory here. The book cries out for an explanatory subtitle: “field guide” shouldn’t be taken as a literal description of these eclectic memories, keen observations and provocative musings. Four of Solnit’s essays have the same title, “The Blue of Distance,” but the first segues from the blue in Renaissance paintings to a turquoise blouse the author wore as a child, then to the blue of distance seen on a walk across the drought-shrunken Great Salt Lake. The second presents Cabeza de Vaca, a Spanish explorer who wandered for years in the Americas, and then several white children taken captive by Indians; their stories demonstrate that a person can cease to be lost not only by returning, but also by turning into someone else. The third blue essay explores the world of country and western music, full of tales of loss and longing. The fourth introduces the eccentric artist Yves Klein, who patented the formula for his special electric blue paint and claimed to be launching a new Blue Age. How does it all fit in? Don’t ask, just enjoy, for Solnit is a captivating writer. Woven in and out of these four pieces and the five others that alternate with them are Solnit’s immigrant ancestors, lost friends, former lovers, favorite old movies, her own dreams, the house she grew up in, harsh deserts, animals on the edge of extinction and abandoned buildings. All become material for the author’s explorations of loss, losing and being lost.
Elegant essays marked by surprising shifts and unexpected connections.Pub Date: July 11, 2005
ISBN: 0-670-03421-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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