The Orphaned Land, by V.B. Price

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When V. B. Price calls New Mexico an orphaned land, he's hardly kidding -- to its residents, the state often feels ignored or disregarded by the rest of the country, and in my experience that feeling is wrong only because much of the rest of the country doesn't even know it's there.

But Price isn't talking about how the rest of the country views New Mexico. At least, not directly. What he looks at is how many of New Mexico's current environmental issues are rooted in and fueled by its standing as a wasteland desert state, and he takes a heartfelt journalistic look into the problems and concerns facing the region in both an immediate and a long-view context.

This book is the first of its kind, in that no one before Price had so thoroughly gone spelunking into the interactions between modern humans and the New Mexican environment. While it asks for a common-sense approach to providing responsible stewardship to the land -- after all, what we do to our environments we ultimately do to ourselves -- The Orphaned Land is far from a crazed conservationist plea. Price has the science, the history, the sociology, and the politics worked out in his telling. He brings us up to speed on what's happening in New Mexico's environs, and he does it well.

What next, though? Price doesn't make it easy for us. He's done his work, writing a history for New Mexico so that the state may avoid repeating it. The prevention is up to everyone else; no one man can tackle it alone. And the call is not just for New Mexicans, because what happens in the Land of Enchantment will affect the rest of the world, and vice versa, in that lovely interconnected way our planet has of weaving us all together.

Really, I can't say enough about how thorough Price's research is, and how compelling his prose is. He's a master, and his poet's touch dances with his journalist background throughout the book. Whatever your environmental views, this book will get you thinking. It's already influenced my own writing in two separate projects -- neither of which you would expect to be influenced by an environmental history of America's forgotten state. For me, few accomplishments are higher than a book revving up the thinking motor. So thank you, Señor Price.

Triss, by Brian Jacques

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Gah, what a simple treat voices can be.

Think about it: You're reading a book, and it consists of printed words perceived visually on a page or a screen. There's no audio component (unless you're in recorded book zone), and yet a good writer is supposed to convey the sense of voice. The trick is pretty impressively magical, when it's pulled off.

Most of the time, it's not pulled off. Not really. You might make up a voice to go with the characters' speech, and the voice probably matches what you know about the character (gender, age, location, yadda yadda). But how often do the characters truly speak differently? Distinctly?

Brian Jacques might go a bit overboard with voices in Triss and the other Redwall books -- but hot damn, they're fun to read. You're never uncertain whether a Hare or a Guosim Shrew or a Ferret is speaking. And for the same reason your favorite movies and television shows are fun to imitate -- how long can you talk about Austin Powers or the Muppets without trying to sound like them? -- you get these voices stuck in your head.

And with them, the characters. And once a character is in your head, you really begin to care about that character's story. Isn't that a big part of what the joy of reading is all about?

Street Knowledge, by King Adz

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A shift in perspective is seldom a negative experience.

My thoughts about graffiti have been shifting for the past several months as I research a potential story idea, and sure enough, the broadening of my knowledge has proven positive. For years, I had the same reaction to graffiti that I think most people have -- it's a blight on any cityscape, and disrespectful of both the property owner and the community. For me, I lumped together as graffiti anything I saw spray-painted on walls and other surfaces that was not desired by the owners of these surfaces. And then I didn't give the whole idea much more consideration.

Some of what I thought in the past, I still agree with. In vastly over-simplified terms, I don't think people should paint their names (or even draw pictures) on personal property -- that is, homes and other private spaces owned by an individual or a family. And I think that if people are going to paint their names in the public viewing space, they could at least do something to make it either beautiful or (even better) thought-provoking, rather than treating a can of spray-paint as a surrogate penis used to pee on everything in sight.

But my perspectives have been broadened in other ways. First of all, what I lumped together as "graffiti" is, as most encompassing terms are, wildly lacking in the nuance of the different styles of street art. And that term is perhaps the key -- some spray-can folks are out to vandalize, while other people's motivation is the creation of art. The beautification of public space, the recapturing of public visual space (seriously, just think about how many times a day your eyes take in entirely unbidden advertising -- would your life not be better off taking in some form of art instead, whether or not you personally liked the style?), the stimulation of the mind, a raising of social consciousness: all of these are various and different goals of street art, and even so I'm leaving out a whole range of reasons.

The reasons for public art are as diverse as the materials used -- to say that all street art is spray-painted is like saying Renaissance art was all done with a paintbrush. Would I have ever thought of cross-stitched civil disobedience, or vinyl-printed billboard hijacking, or clothing fashion, or even vendored food as street art? Not before reading Street Knowledge, one heck of an introductory encyclopedic look at the world-wide realm of street culture.

I'm not suggesting you should change your own opinions of what you call graffiti. But there's much more to the artistic side of the act than Banksy (though that guy deserves the recognition he gets). Would learning a bit more about the culture of street art harm you in any way? Even if your mind remains unbudged, at least you'd have good solid backing for your beliefs. I'm pretty sure that's simply called an education.

Even the street artists wouldn't want you to agree with them. They'd want you to think about what they're doing. That's about as civil a disobedience as I've ever heard of.

Chronicles: Volume One, by Bob Dylan

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Every serious artist, as far as I can tell, perceives a need to conquer the elements of the craft from the masters who came before. I think that, on some level, most of these same artists hope to create some element that is entirely new to the craft, or to extend an already existing element beyond any previously known bounds, or to combine two elements which were prior strangers.

Like him or not, you'd be hard pressed to claim that Bob Dylan didn't accomplish any one of these feats as a songwriter; hell, you'd be hard pressed to prove that he didn't accomplish all of them. He's been part of the western social conscience for so many decades now that up-and-coming artists in any field might feel daunted looking at his accomplishments and thinking, That guy has done so much, and I could never hope to match him for creativity, production, innovation, or fame.

Which is why my favorite part of Chronicles was when Dylan waxed prosaic (the guy's a pretty great prose writer, too) on starting to write songs. (All quotes from page 51.)

He starts off with curiosity, the siren which I would argue sings to all folks crazy enough to be artists: "Sometimes you just want to do things your way, want to see for yourself what lies behind the misty curtain." But even Bob Dylan's muse doesn't simply transmit music through him like a radio antenna: "It's not like you see songs approaching and invite them in. It's not that easy."

He's driven in his craft both by ambition and by his singular experiences: "You want to write songs that are bigger than life. You want to say something about strange things that have happened to you, strange things you have seen." But he realizes that all the drive and desire and curiosity in the world isn't enough, for then comes the careful practice and application of the art: "You have to know and understand something and then go past the vernacular. The chilling precision that these old-timers used in coming up with their songs was no small thing."

While I noodle about on the guitar, I'm no songwriter. But as an author, I take both great solace and deep inspiration from knowing that one of the greatest songwriters of the last hundred years went through -- and possibly still goes through -- the same challenges that my peers and I face. Dylan's hurdles take him off a pedestal and place him in a very human sphere. He may be more talented than I am, and he's certainly more accomplished, but ultimately he's just another human with a desire to create Something Beautiful. Just like me, and maybe just like you, too.

Travels in the Interior of Africa, by Mungo Park

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First things first. I want to say, unsullied by other musings, that Mungo Park's book is a delight to read. His story is remarkable; it is his writing, though, that won my mind. He is frank and sympathetic; his eye for detail is complex and yet easily conveyed; and his spirit is (to use the inevitable next word) indomitable. (Thank you, Jenny, for giving me this book for my birthday!)
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People are drawn to the "true story." I can't really understand why, to be honest. Certainly the allure has to do with the always-shocking realization that, sometimes, life itself can be as perfectly interesting and unlikely as a piece of fiction. Those three little words that sometimes follow book or movie titles are clearly meant to bring the droves a' running and make the implausible believable: "A True Story." (Or the legal-loophole version: "Based on a True Story.")

I wonder whether most folks believe that "true stories" are really and honestly true; that the portrayal of events in a book or film are precisely in the order and manner that they happened in "real life;" that somehow, because a series of events actually occurred and wasn't simply made up in some artist's head, it inherently contains more truth than a made-up piece of work.

No, even those "true stories" that are told by your favorite uncle at a family barbeque are tweaked to make the telling better, to make the implausible more plausible, and to make the mundane monumental. That's what a storyteller's job is.

Thank goodness that Travels in the Interior of Africa doesn't begin with some such declaration of veracity. Mungo Park convinces me that his story is true in the purest sense, which is not to say the literal sense.

Whether his story is true or not doesn't matter a whit. Do I believe that he could carry the entirety of his travel journal in the brim of his hat at the end of his journey? Not really. That's the romanticism throughout that makes Park's tale so appealing and appetizing. Fully true or not, his tale is the sort of vacation-in-a-book that we all need, once in a while.

Bunnicula, by Deborah and James Howe

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The pleasures of reading aloud are possibly topped only by the pleasures of being read aloud to. I imagine many of the readers of this blog spent an incredible number of childhood hours snuggled up on the couch or in bed with someone reading from the pages of a cherished book, or a brand-new library book, or an old family book finally pulled off the shelf.

The simple act of reading aloud together must trigger so many aspects of our humanity that signal to us that the world is at rights. We get the intimacy of metered voices, the vibrations of speech humming between our bodies, the shared vicarious adventures and explorations and discoveries, the naturally close physical proximity... I think there's several good reasons that my golden retriever would plop down next to us every time we read aloud as a family.

Yet we lose the pleasures of reading aloud once we grow older. Short of having another little kid around the place who deserves and yearns to be read to, why would we take the time to read a story together? Most of us read more quickly silently and alone than we can out loud, and even if you have the time and the willingness to do so, then there's the issue of what particular book to read out loud. It's just so... complicated, right?

But for just a moment, I want you to think back to those times of being read to. Think of how perfect the world was when someone held you with one arm and a book with the other. Think of how you could hear and feel the person's voice through his or her body, or through the couch cushions. Remember the change in tone that let you know just where in the story you were -- was everything lost for our hero, or was she about to triumph?

If you can recall those times in your life and not want to read aloud to someone, I'd love to donate you to science for just a while. Reading together, in my experience, is one of the most natural-feeling activities we as humans have. I highly recommend seizing someone important to you, whether it's a child or your romantic partner doesn't matter, and asking them if you'd like to read a book together. Pick your favorite book as a grown-up, find a new book at the library, or pull that old childhood favorite out from the closet under the stairs and give it a go.

My own partner and I wish we read together more often, though we're finding it easy to make time once we put a little effort into it. Our latest Halloween-themed venture -- Bunnicula -- was one of her childhood staples, and I had never read it before. After sitting down with it and three of its sequels (Howliday Inn, The Celery Stalks at Midnight, and Nighty-Nightmare), I feel like I know her and understand her a little better.

Tally one more for reading aloud bringing people closer together.

Molly Fox's Birthday, by Deirdre Madden

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(This post may be most relevant for the readers of this blog who are in or ever think they might be in a writing workshop of any kind.)

One of my two regular writing workshops this fall is with Deirdre Madden, the author of Molly Fox's Birthday and a number of other books. I've never been in a workshop at this level before this semester, so in large part I had no idea what to expect. Ultimately, while I can enjoy many aspects of the class, I notice that my classmates' most common complaint is one I can sympathize with. The teacher, while insightful in her feedback, tends to want more of the same exact thing out of each writer's work.

In short, she always wants to see a better evocation of place; in other words, she wants to see every detail of people, of rooms, of objects, of landscape, of anything that is present in a scene.

Bullheaded writers that we are, we declare that our writing doesn't need such level of detail, that our writing emphasizes other aspects than the visual. I'm as bad as the next student.

Then I read Molly Fox's Birthday. It's a lovely book, and quite enjoyable for someone just getting to know Dublin like I am. What I took away from it, though, is that Deirdre writes through the visual details. That is, she doesn't simply evoke place--she puts the place to work, and through her descriptions, the reader learns an incredible amount about the characters, their motivations, their desires, their makeup.

The solution clicked. What each of us in class was failing to do was not necessarily including enough details about place. What we were failing to do was find our own ways to evoke the essence of the characters populating our work. Deirdre distills her characters though visible physical details; no matter how we were doing it, if we were doing it successfully, she would probably never take issue with the visual in our work.

So to all workshoppers present and future: I really do recommend reading the work of your teachers. You'll likely gain an interpretive insight into their feedback that will help you decode their comments on your work and aid you in revising and improving your writing.