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Title: Leap by Terry Tempest Williams ISBN: 0-679-75257-9 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 18 September, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.71 (7 reviews)
Rating: 2
Summary: Mormons, painters, and Hell: Oh MY!
Comment: Terry Tempest Williams is first and foremost a naturalist. I say this not out of some secret biological knowledge of her, but simply as an extrapolation from her own writings. In her book REFUGE, she focuses on birds and the wild life preserve around the Great Salt Lake. The personal life bleeds out of the story of the natural in a way as to make the two seamless... and they are. In LEAP, Williams focuses her attention on the great triptych by Heronymous Bosch (El Bosco) - 'The Garden of Delights'. The triptych represents the three states of human (animal) existence as dictated by early Christian doctrine: Eden, Earth, and Hell. In each, human forms are involved - with an assortment of nearly unrecognizable creatures - in all manner of lewd, sensate, or holy activities. The painting perhaps is - for a naturalist like Williams - an unignorable bridge to a sort of philosophical incantation of one's own personal life.
Though the book is told in four distinct parts, there is little cohesion. Each of the first holds some resemblance to the corresponding frame of the triptych it is supposed to represent, but not effectively enough to be truly meaningful. Essentially, I detected three distinct modes of writing scattered unpredictably throughout the book: an anecdotal style dedicated to Bosch and 'el Prado' (the museum in which it is housed) related activities, confessionals of the author's past and experiences, and an unexpurgated glut of rambling free-style writing that I guess is supposed to be philosophical or poetic, but is just sophomoric. It isn't difficult to find TTW's strengths. When speaking of nature - real nature, not the nature of the painting - her talents soar. Sadly, these moments are few and far between. The anecdotes of both TTW's life and others around her are fun, but not really enough to warrant more than a quick aside. The bulk of the book is in fact made up of those aforementioned stream-of-consciousness writing exercises that read like a teenagers angst-ridden journal more than the thoughtful prose of a serious adult writer. While Williams' attempts here are magnificent... she gets an A+ on concept (and what a truly excellent concept) the book fails in her lack of confidence. There is a clear insecurity here. TTW is best when at her calmest, but she wants to beef it all up, to be a serious writer, a stirring writer, a philosophical and educated writer; she so desperately wants everyone to be wowed by what she is saying that the result is a bunch of nonsense that doesn't amount to anything. With all said and done, there is no revelation about the painting, no revelation about Mrs. Williams and her relationships: to her father, her husband, and her religion (Mormon), and no real revelation about what we are supposed to think about all this writing. It all ads up to a boring bit of artistic voyeurism.
Rating: 5
Summary: Listen
Comment: You need not being a devoted fan of Terry Tempest Williams or Bosch, but you must abandon all thoughts of literary "tradition" while you read this. She's breaking tradition, linear thought, and countless other rules we associate with great writing. But if you open yourself--there is pure brilliance behind those pages. Passion behind her words.
Leap places a powerful grip on the reader as Williams takes you through the panels of the triptic, through her life and the life of the painting. What does it mean to surrender to your passions? An inquisitive look at at painting that will turn you inside out, take you in circles, through heaven and hell and somewhere along the way, you'll find restoration.
Rating: 5
Summary: Intensely fascinating.
Comment: When do we ever take the time to stop and smell the roses, or to indulge our obsessions, or to give our inner voice the time it deserves? This author did all those things, and then went a step further in getting her observations and insights down. She's a smart and introspective writer and my mind is whirling from her journey with the painting. This is a risky book... she admits we may find her crazy, and I did at times. But being in her wild, cerebral, artistic zone was not boring or banal... this book is not a superficial beach read. It made me want to look harder and deeper at the world around me and to listen with attentive ears. Bravo! Bravo!
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Title: Red : Passion and Patience in the Desert by Terry Tempest Williams ISBN: 0375725180 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 08 October, 2002 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: 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: 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: 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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