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by Carol Ann Bassett
(Oregon State University Press, 120 pages, $12.95)
Carol Ann Bassett's personal essays about landscapes from all corners of the world blend simple and acute observations with personal narratives. Bassett charts her journeys, both physical and metaphysical, including times when she pushes herself too hard and when deeply personal questions remain unanswered.
The introduction to A Gathering of Stones: Journeys to the Edges of a Changing World begins with a languid description of a basket of rocks and bones, a private archeology from her journeys--Botswana, Oregon, Baja California. Bassett describes the beauty of the desert with brevity and, with precision, paints a picture that locates the reader in the scene.
In a trip to Mexico's Barranca del Cobre (Copper Canyon) to learn about the Tarahumara people, she charts her own experiences more than her intellectual discoveries. In one passage she writes, "I have come here to write about the Tarahumara Indians, who believe that night is the day after the moon, and butterflies are souls that fly away after death." She also writes respectfully of her subjects, never assuming or passing judgment.
This is not impersonal, superior-minded travel narrative. Instead, Bassett writes in the first person and unabashedly shares many emotions, including the loneliness of the stark landscape that often surrounds her. The book ends with Bassett in Nepal, descending through the trees in a swirl of prayer flags. She has, in the most earnest way, come home. A Gathering of Stones is the perfect companion for a trip into the desert, the foothills of the Himalayas or the nearest easy chair. Nadia Cannon
war is a force that gives us meaning
By Chris Hedges
(Public Affairs, 211 pages, $23)
Rarely is a book so timely as Chris Hedges' latest, which is a refreshing jolt of cerebral and emotional clarity to war's all-encompassing destruction. With every sentence, Hedges reminds us, as if we needed reminding, that war, in its absolute essence, perverts all it touches.
Hedges' stunning eloquence reads as though especially written for the current debate over Iraq: "War finds its meaning in death. The cause is built on the backs of victims, portrayed as always innocent...these dead become the standard-bearers of the cause and all causes feed off a steady supply of corpses.... [T]he cause, sanctified by the dead, cannot be questioned without dishonoring those who gave up their lives. We become enmeshed in the imposed language. When any contradiction is raised or there is a sense that the cause is not just in an absolute sense, the doubts are attacked as apostasy."
War is piles of corpses, war is enslavement, war destroys human and civil rights; and war reduces extremely complicated matters to dangerously simple jingoism. Which is the perfect segue to George II, his White House henchmen, and the imposed language of Oil War II.
As a journalist, Chris Hedges has covered nearly every war on the face of the earth since the 1960s. From these experiences he forged his book's well-considered conclusion: No one ever really wins a war. After reading this book, even the most strident moralist will understand that everyone--both good guys, and bad--will suffer unimaginably if we allow ourselves to be drawn deeper into militaristic machinations.
If there were ever a time to read War Is a Force, it's now. When you're finished, pass it on to friends, family, distant relatives--strangers, even. Steven Fidel
the lone surfer of montana, kansas
by Davy Rothbart
(21 Balloons, 124 pages, $8)
I don't really know much about Davy Rothbart. Sure, he just did a big tour promoting his magazine, Found (a publication focusing on found objects), and he's been on NPR, but he's still a mystery, which makes this debut all the more intriguing.
The stories here are as assured and full of life as someone fully at home in his craft. The flawed narrators and the impending threat of tragedy remind me of Denis Johnson. The fleshed-out details and Midwestern atmospherics recall Charles Baxter (who endorses the book on the back cover). The anything-can-happen criminal tension could be mistaken for Jim Carroll.
In "Elena," the narrator tells how he gets involved with Mexican strip-club owners to make some dirty money. His job is to lure truckers to the club, where they are beaten and robbed. When he falls in love with the 14-year-old daughter of one of the dancers, his dreams disintegrate painfully.
The powerful title story tells of a young couple from Virginia searching for themselves as they take a long roundabout road trip to Arizona. The instability of young love is uncomfortably apparent: "I loved her terribly and she loved me, too. I also knew she held things back, that she hadn't yet fully revealed herself to me, but I figured that's why we were headed to Arizona--to explore one another, to open ourselves completely.... She'd been through a lot; for her, closeness was difficult, even harrowing."
All of Rothbart's stories are told in first person, which only adds to my curiosity about his personal history. Maybe I'll find out more someday. For now, this book is enough. Kevin Sampsell
WWeek 2015