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Western American Literature | 1991

Aldo Leopold's Wilderness: Selected Early Writings by the Author of A Sand County Almanac ed. by David E. Brown, Neil B. Carmony (review)

Peter Wild

Ironically, when Aldo Leopold’s A Sand County Almanac appeared in 1949, it sold so few copies that the publisher soon consigned it to the out-ofprint oubliette. With the florescence of the environmental movement some ten years later, however, the volume was back in the bookstalls, where it has remained a favorite. Now, few are the lovers of nature who don’t have Leopold’s breakthrough statements on their minds, if not on their lips, for instance, that “A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise.” Today, the observations of the forester/essayist enjoy such wide acceptance, and they seem so obviously true, that they all but ring with the ageless authority of holy writ. Yet Leopold took years pondering his experiences with the U.S. Forest Service in the Southwest before he created the striking paragon of A Sand County Almanac. We can trace his development through his early articles, but many of them appeared in small journals and would be difficult to exhume. Editors Brown and Carmony have done us the favor of assembling two dozen of the pieces anticipating Leopold’s later masterwork. They are wisely selected, for they show that Leopold “could see what others could not.” He understood the value of wolves to a healthy ecosystem, even while the government zealxad ously slaughtered the predators as enemies. Balancing this, the editors admit that Leopold’s truths were hard-won, for the forester sometimes blundered badly on other ecological issues. Despite the inevitable errors, the upshot is that Leopold was finely blessed, able to think linearly, as must the scientist, and also holistically, as does the poet. Hence, the convincing richness of his posthumous book. Brown and Carmony have done more than perform the tedium of scholxad arly spadework. Their introductions, notes, bibliography, and choice of unusual photographs show their appreciation of Leopold and a sympathetic grasp of the issues surrounding him. Aldo Leopold’s Wilderness is that rarity, laborious scholarship rendered into a gracefully useful work.


Western American Literature | 1990

Growing Up with the Country: Childhood on the Far Western Frontier by Elliott West (review)

Peter Wild

Necessary Theater includes dramas by Judith and Severo Pérez, Milcha Sánchez-Scott, Luis Valdez, Arthur Girón, and El Teatro de la Esperanza. Soldierboy, the collaboration of Mr. and Mrs. Pérez, was first produced by the famous Teatro Campesino under the direction of Luis Valdez. The drama depicts a Chicano war hero’s return to his family in 1945, where he fights another war against Anglo racism and family pressures. Valdez’s The Shrunken Head of Pancho Villa also shows a family in crisis, battling over the Chícanos’ Mexican heritage in the postwar West. The Mexican cultural hero Villa becomes a role model for Chicanos and continues the tradition of the western outlaw. La Víctima by El Teatro de la Esperanza likewise blends fact and fiction in tracing the life of one family from its first border crossing during the Mexican Revolution to the present. The documentary thus exposes the infamous western history of mass repatriations of Mexicans. Although they often dramatize cultural conflict in the West, Chicano plays share many concerns of western drama. As the above synopsis shows, Chicanos, like westerners, regard their collective past as a still powerful deterxad minant of the present. Chicano characters struggle as fiercely with their Mexican heritage as western heroes do with the haunting frontier legacy. In Chicano and western drama, familial and cultural survival intersect. While the younger generation embraces the future, the older generation provides the link with the past. These and other parallels lend themselves to further inquiry. Because of its almost exclusive reliance on previously unpublished materxad ial, Necessary Theater complements Nuevos Pasos or other earlier anthologies. The one reprint in the collection is the play by Luis Valdez, who more than anybody inspired the creation of Chicano theater. Valdez, of course, is better known for his still unpublished musical drama Zoot Suit and his collaborative efforts with El Teatro Campesino than for his first play. Although the Teatro’s “actos” are available in print, at least one should have been included in Necesxad sary Theater instead of two selections by El Teatro de la Esperanza. This is a minor omission in the otherwise superbly edited and annotated collection. Huerta, the leading critic of Hispanic theater in the United States, introduces each play with a brief biography of the author, a production history, and a commentary. Necessary Theater is, indeed, necessary reading for Chicanos and Anglos.


Western American Literature | 1987

Rising from the Plains by John McPhee (review)

Peter Wild

In the artistic-geological tradition of John Wesley Powell, Rita Deanin Abbey and G. William Fiero have combined their intellectual curiosities to explicate the desert country of the American Southwest with its aesthetic and scientific meaning. The book is a visual delight, juxtaposing the geological photographs of Fiero with the artistic translations of Abbey in a format and quality of presentation publisher Gibbs M. Smith continues to certify. The reader is to be engaged and delighted on three points: format, text, and rhetorical effect. The book’s format considers mutual points of interest existing between the artist and geologist by considering their relationships “to desert environxad ments, space, color, and form.” Interestingly, Abbey’s paintings and relief structures are not based on the geological photographs, as they might first appear; rather, according to the authors, the “photographs were selected because of their strong correspondence to the completed works of art.” The format, then, is about the correspondences that exist naturally between archexad typal patterns, environmental patterns, and the perception needed to distinxad guish them. Likewise, the text has been written with both the informative and emotive in mind. Readers can learn about the physicality of the desert and still find themselves musing over the aesthetic underpinnings of this informaxad tion. Each textual area of interest is a discussion between the hemispheres of knowledge in a language that is technical and poetic. The rhetorical effect of this dialogue between art and geology is reflecxad tion. Fiero allows the reader to know the geological wonder of “bare land.” Abbey’s works reinforce the idea that active viewing makes or remakes an object, whether a geological formation or a painting. Both views align the perception and making of patterns to the human imagination. Abbey and Fiero have created a kaleidoscopic book. As the reader turns the pages, new patterns appear and vision is sharpened.


Western American Literature | 1990

A Western Sun Sets in the East: The Five "Appearances" Surrounding John C. Van Dyke's The Desert

Peter Wild


Western American Literature | 1993

Sky's Witness: A Year in the Wind River Range by C. L. Rawlins (review)

Peter Wild


Western American Literature | 1991

Confessions of an Eco-Warrior by Dave Foreman (review)

Peter Wild


Western American Literature | 1991

Of Chiles, Cacti, and Fighting Cocks: Notes on the American West by Frederick Turner (review)

Peter Wild


Western American Literature | 1990

For Earth's Sake: The Life and Times of David Brower by David Brower (review)

Peter Wild


Western American Literature | 1990

Natives in Exile by Dirk Harman (review)

Peter Wild


Western American Literature | 1990

Seasonal: A Life Outside by Ed Engle (review)

Peter Wild

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