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Title: Red : Passion and Patience in the Desert by Terry Tempest Williams ISBN: 0-375-72518-0 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 08 October, 2002 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.8 (5 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: Interesting perspective
Comment: Terry Tempest Williams is without a doubt one of the finest writers to tackle the intricacies of the American West in literature of any sort. Carrying her own torch is impressive enough, but Williams also evokes the activism and urgent motivation that calls us to appreciate, respect and save our remaining western wilderness that was so powerfully put into words by Edward Abbey. I have reviewed a portion of "Red" before (see "Desert Quartet"), so I will limit this review to the remainder of "Red".
Williams carries on the great and ancient tradition of storytelling to raise consciousness about uniquely Western, and specifically Colorado Plateau, issues. From the Hopi and Navajo peoples, down through the early American explorers, the proverbial cowboys and the present activist community, storytelling has been a central method of encapsulating emotion, opinion and experience into messages that have wide appeal. Williams, in stories such as "Coyote's Canyon" here in "Red", presents her powerful vision of an environmental movement wrapped in the spiritual connection with the stark, often harsh, always awe inspiring desert and given wings by action. Like Abbey, Williams does not shy away from controversy, and her opening to the title essay is a list of places that strangely grows longer each time I contemplate the names set forth. Williams gets personal here, and the blunt approach of listing over a hundred places brings to my mind the fact that I have walked on much of that ground... and that I have seen the critical need to protect these remaining places from the industrious uses and agricultural manipulation that has occured on the infinitely vaster balance of the Colorado Plateau. In this way, "Red" has demonstrated its effectiveness. Some may say that as a resident of California I might have no reason to comment on Utah... and I would, as Williams exhorts in "Red", flatly disagree. Every one of us has a responsibility to work toward a better world, and Williams manages to say this without preaching it or patronizing the reader. (Besides, my mother lives in southern Utah, and I have walked hundreds of miles of that beautiful land...).
In summary, "Red" is another jewel of a book from Terry Tempest Williams. I am glad to see "Desert Quartet" back in print, though I sorely miss Mary Frank's wonderful illustrations that were in the original. This is a book which is not a difficult read, nor a scholarly treatise... rather, it is a frank, realistic look at a serious challenge facing the United States right now.
Rating: 5
Summary: Writing to Save Wilderness
Comment: Terry Tempest Williams created this book to fight for Wilderness with the best tool she has, her writing. The beauty of her words hang in the air and cut like a knife. When asked by a friend why she writes, Williams responds: "I write as an exercise in pure joy. I write as one who walks on the surface of a frozen river beginning to melt. I write out of my anger and into my passion. I write from the stillness of night anticipating - always anticipating. I write to listen. I write out of silence. ...I write because it is the way I talk long walks. I write as a bow to wilderness. I write because I believe it can create a path in darkness."
Rating: 5
Summary: In Every Way, A Great Work
Comment: Both a piece of literary artistry and passionate activism, "Red"'s audience appeal is the broadest of any book I've ever read. The book's structure, both wild and bounded by cadences of space, conforms strategically to Ms. Williams' conceptual take on the color red - red represents heat, anger, unpredictability, the lifeblood of the earth that runs through human beings and all earth's creatures, and is concentrated in the searing deserts of the American West where Ms. Williams lives. A thematic tapestry though it is, it is, at its core, a living breathing message presented selflessly and succinctly by a woman who I believe understands the need for a lifelong journey down the parallel rails of human and non-human nature until these rails converge. I recommend this book highly.
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Title: Refuge : An Unnatural History of Family and Place by Terry Tempest Williams ISBN: 0679740244 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 01 September, 1992 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: An Unspoken Hunger : Stories from the Field by Terry Tempest Williams ISBN: 0679752560 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 29 August, 1995 List Price(USD): $11.00 |
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Title: Coyote's Canyon by Terry Tempest Williams, John Telford ISBN: 0879052457 Publisher: Gibbs Smith Publisher Pub. Date: 22 March, 1999 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Pieces of White Shell: A Journey to Navajoland by Terry Tempest Williams, Clifford Brycelea ISBN: 0826309690 Publisher: University of New Mexico Press Pub. Date: June, 1987 List Price(USD): $13.95 |
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Title: Leap by Terry Tempest Williams ISBN: 0679752579 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 18 September, 2001 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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