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Title: Hole in the Sky: A Memoir by William Kittredge ISBN: 0-679-74006-6 Publisher: Vintage Books USA Pub. Date: 01 June, 1993 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.43 (7 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Lost on the range
Comment: Kittredge's excellent, thoughtful, and well-written book is a memoir of growing up on a ranch in southeastern Oregon. This is arid country where spring runoff from the mountains gathers in lakes and swamps used for millennia as a stopover by migrating waterbirds. Enter the enterprising Kittredge family, and during the 20th century thousands of acres here were transformed into a vast irrigated ranch, its chief output evolving from cattle to grain to hay to feed milling and feedlots. More to the point, they built an agricultural empire and became wealthy.
The author, born into this world in the 1930s, looks back from the vantage point of 1992, long after leaving the ranch behind and settling in Montana. What he sees is the wreckage of three generations blighted by ambition, greed, arrogance, and no small amount of alcohol. Kittredge talks often about how personal stories illuminate and ground people's lives, yet he and so many of the people around him are directionless and unmoored. His book is a story in which words like "reckless," "hapless," and "heedless" are often used to describe actions.
It is a painful book because there is so much heartache in it, so much confusion, shame, isolation, and fear. There are betrayals, infidelities, friendships and marriages ended, deaths from accidents and mishaps. In all of it, from earliest memories to those of a man on the verge of middle-age, the author describes a deep uncertainty about his own worth and his purpose in life. For many years, it seems to be only the grueling hard work of the ranch, which he only half understands, that keeps him distracted from a sense that nothing is real. (Steady consumption of alcohol and extramarital sex also figure into the mix.)
The book is something of a coming-of-age story about a young man whose manhood continually seems to elude him, well into his thirties. He can go through the motions in the hardworking environment of seasoned cowboys and field hands (an episode in which he takes the place of an injured hay stacker is an example), but he remains unsure of himself, wanting the security of the family ranch, while hating himself for not pursuing the writing career he believes is his real vocation. It's a wonderfully (and frustratingly) complex picture of a young man self-destructing. And in his seeming indifference to his own children, you sense a repetition of the same indifferent parenting that has led him into this emotional cul-de-sac. Significantly, he remarks often about the lack of a guiding hand to show him the way to be a man.
As a kind of confessional, it is a compelling book, and the impact of the story is underscored by the vast Western landscape against which it plays out. I recommend this book to anyone with an interest in the West and ranch life, cowboys, family sagas, and coming-of-age memoirs. As a companion volume, I'd also suggest Judy Blunt's ranch memoir "Breaking Clean" for its similar themes of emotional dislocation.
Rating: 3
Summary: Not a bad read.
Comment: Never heard of Mr. Kittredge. I borrowed the book from a neighbor - picked it up, opened it in the middle, read a paragraph and said to myself, 'OK, this guy can write.'
It was a pretty good read. Between chunks of self-obsessed, mawkish ranting, there are some wonderful descriptions of eastern Oregon, and many short, vivid character studies.
I'll take a chance on his fiction when and if I run across any. Whether it'll be good or not, I can't tell from this memoir. But I'm sure it'll be well written.
And if I'm ever in Montana, I'll bang on his door and get him out for a round of golf.
Rating: 4
Summary: The frontier we all can imagine
Comment: William Kittridge's autobiography, A HOLE IN THE SKY begins in the wilderness around the foothills of southeastern Oregon and retells, in lucid detail, the events of his childhood leading up to his time in the Air Force, to his many marriages, to his emergence as a writer who writes in a prophetic voice with a great sense of prose.
Looking back to his childhood years, Kittridge aims to return to that innocent age and allow the reader to engage in his coming of age...to the point where your feet are engulfed in the wet grass of early morning dew, and you imagine the grandeur of taking care of 8,000 acres of open territory.
In the end, he claims that: "We are a part of what is sacred. That is our main defense against craziness, our solace, the source of our best policies, and our only chance at paradise." Thus, we are open to the realities that life, growing up on the western plains, was not an American historical fairy tale, but rather a true test of ones self-worth and distinction.
A wonderful read...I highly recommend!
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Title: Owning It All by William Kittredge ISBN: 1555973663 Publisher: Graywolf Press Pub. Date: 01 June, 2002 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: The Last Best Place: A Montana Anthology by William Kittredge ISBN: 0295969741 Publisher: University of Washington Press Pub. Date: 01 June, 1990 List Price(USD): $29.95 |
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Title: The Best Short Stories of William Kittredge by William Kittredge ISBN: 1555973841 Publisher: Graywolf Press Pub. Date: 01 July, 2003 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: The Portable Western Reader (Viking Portable Library (Paper)) by William Kittredge ISBN: 0140230262 Publisher: Penguin Books Pub. Date: 01 July, 1997 List Price(USD): $17.00 |
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Title: Homestead by Annick Smith ISBN: 1571312137 Publisher: Milkweed Editions Pub. Date: 01 October, 1996 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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