Average customer rating:
- Great Read
- A surprising, sentimental, but readable Baldacci
- Baldacci portrays a wonderful, moving story
- A heart warming story
- A gift requested by my Mother.
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Wish You Well
David Baldacci
Manufacturer: Grand Central Publishing
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The Winner
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Total Control
ASIN: 0446527165
Release Date: 2000-10-24 |
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David Baldacci has made a name for himself crafting big, burly legal thrillers with larger-than-life plots. However, Wish You Well, set in his native Virginia, is a tale of hope and wonder and "something of a miracle" just itching to happen. This shift from contentious urbanites to homespun hill families may come as a surprise to some of Baldacci's fans--but they can rest assured: the author's sense of pacing and exuberant prose have made the leap as well.
The year is 1940. After a car accident kills 12-year-old Lou's and 7-year-old Oz's father and leaves their mother Amanda in a catatonic trance, the children find themselves sent from New York City to their great-grandmother Louisa's farm in Virginia. Louisa's hardscrabble existence comes as a profound shock to precocious Lou and her shy brother. Still struggling to absorb their abandonment, they enter gamely into a life that tests them at every turn--and offers unimaginable rewards. For Lou, who dreams of following in her father's literary footsteps, the misty, craggy Appalachians and the equally rugged individuals who make the mountains their home quickly become invested with an almost mythic significance:
They took metal cups from nails on the wall and dipped them in the water, and then sat outside and drank. Louisa picked up the green leaves of a mountain spurge growing next to the springhouse, which revealed beautiful purple blossoms completely hidden underneath. "One of God's little secrets," she explained. Lou sat there, cup cradled between her dimpled knees, watching and listening to her great-grandmother in the pleasant shade...
Baldacci switches deftly between lovingly detailed character description (an area in which his debt to Laura Ingalls Wilder and Harper Lee seems evident) and patient development of the novel's central plot. If that plot is a trifle transparent--no one will be surprised by Amanda's miraculous recovery or by the children's eventual battle with the nefarious forces of industry in an attempt to save their great-grandmother's farm--neither reader nor character is the worse for it. After all, nostalgia is about remembering things one already knows. --Kelly Flynn
Book Description
It is 1940 and a tragedy sends two young children, Lou and her little brother Oz, along with their invalid mother, from New York City to the rugged mountains of Southwestern Virginia to live with their great-grandmother Louisa Mae Cardinal. The story is told with both heart-breaking elegance and large doses of touching humor as the lives of Lou and Oz are forever changed. The portraits of the land and its people are described with an extraordinary eye for detail, and the story flows through swells of prejudice, innocence, greed, faith, and the question of whether one can ever really wish another well. The climactic courtroom battle is as unpredictable as it is relentless and will not only decide the fates of Lou, Oz, and their mother, but also all who have been touched by them. There are over 2.5 million copies of David Baldaccis hardcover titles in print combined. After a phenomenal hardcover debut with Absolute Power (Warner, 1996), which reached #2 on both The New York Times and Wall Street Journals bestseller lists, Baldaccis subsequent thrillers have all been New York Times bestsellers. His latest hardcover, Saving Faith (Warner, 11/99), reached #2 on the Times list and #1 on the Publishers Weekly list. The Simple Truth (1998) and The Winner (1997) were Main Selections of Book-of-the-Month Club. Total Control was a Main Selection of The Literary Guild and of Doubleday Book Club.
Download Description
In 1953, a young family has a devastating car accident which leaves twelve year old Louisa (Lou) and her seven year old brother Oscar (Oz) with their Pulitzer Prize winning father dead and their mother a bedridden, invalid who has completely withdrawn. Their only relative is their father's grandmother who is a stranger to them but who is willing to take the children in and care for their mother. So they move with their mother from their home in New York City to their great-grandmother's remote farm in rural southwest Virginia. As Lou and Oz get to know Louisa, they also get to know the harshly beautiful land that has sustained their family for generations and is the source of their father's acclaimed novels. It's a hard life for two kids from New York City, getting up at five in the morning to start working the farm, no electricity, no phones, an outhouse. But with the help of their new best friend, Diamond Skinner, and the kindliness of town lawyer, Cotton Longfellow, they thrive under their great-grandmother's care until one day a mining company makes an offer for the land that Louisa refuses to sell. To keep their farm, with the mining company and their own greedy neighbors against them, Cotton must try their case in court. Lou and Oz pray for a miracle...and their prayers are answered in undreamed of ways.
Customer Reviews:
Great Read.......2007-08-21
At first I was I dreaded taking this book from my cousin. But now I am so happy I did! I grew up in the Georgia Mountains and this book felt like home! It made me miss everyone I grew up with and especially my great grandfather!
A surprising, sentimental, but readable Baldacci.......2007-08-16
I'm used to David Baldacci's thrillers, which are never less than good. This was somewhat of a surprise, an affectionate tribute to the Virginia mountains from which his family came. Occasionally that affection tips over into melodrama, and the final chapters are indeed contrived with rather too much maudlin sentimentality and fairy-tale ending. A reviewer elsewhere described it rather nicely as "The Waltons in honey", and I can understand why. Yet the story is told with style and flair, with generally nicely-caught characters and places. Sure, it's a fairy tale, but we could all use a fairy tale now and then, and this one will melt all but the hardest of hearts.
When you read it, you'll find that the title is an especially neat touch.
Baldacci portrays a wonderful, moving story.......2007-08-01
I have read several of Baldacci's books. i.e., Total Control, The Simple Truth, and Saving Grace and I have enjoyed all these novels. This book, if you are not aware, is a major departure from his normal genre. I suppose he is following in the paths of Grisham, Patterson, Hiaasen, and Parker by stepping out of their genre to create human interest, and young adult type stories. I think it's great that these gifted authors are creating such wonderful stories, (A Painted House, by Grisham comes to my mind) especially those stories for the young adult group.
I thought this book was a wonderful, relaxing tale. It has its sad parts but it is still a heartwarming story. The author's descriptive scenes of the beautiful rural Virginia during the 1930's were terrific. Don't expect any mysterious killers, car crashes, love scenes, just a homegrown country story that is very enjoyable. There's no need for me to detail the characters and plot as there are numerous reviews already. In summary, I think it's a moving story with richly portrayed characters that I encourage you to read.
Another novel that has its roots in human drama is Tommytown by Robert L. Saunders. This author is outstanding as he heralds the story of motherhood as 35 year old; Helen struggles to raise 7 children in sheer poverty during the 1950's. It was a time when there was no public assistance and laws protecting women's rights were non-existent. Saunders holds nothing back as he takes the reader into this hamlet and makes you part of Helen's desperate situation. He deals with serious issues with a light-hearted spirit and splatters bits of humor to make Tommytown an exceptional story that all mothers should read. I highly recommend this novel. You won't be disappointed. Have a Good Read.
A heart warming story.......2007-06-29
this is a story of love,strength, courage, humor and most importantly...family
A gift requested by my Mother........2007-06-27
She said after she had finished reading it that she preferred David Baldacci's other writings far more, not that this was bad, it wasn't, she just preferred his regular genre.
Book Description
A rich, colorful history of California centering on the untold story of America 's biggest farmer, J.G. Boswell, who controls more than $1 billion worth of water rights and real estate in the heart of the state.
J.G. Boswell is the biggest farmer in America. Over the past fifty years he has built a secret empire while thumbing his nose at nature, politicians, labor unions and every journalist who ever tried to lift the veil on the ultimate "factory in the fields." Now eighty years old, with an almost pathological bent toward privacy, Boswell has spent the past few years confiding one of the great stories of the American West to Mark Arax and Rick Wartzman. The King of California is the previously untold account of how a Georgia slave-owning family migrated to California in the early 1920s, drained one of America 's biggest lakes in an act of incredible hubris and carved out the richest cotton empire in the world. Indeed, the sophistication of Boswell 's agricultural operation--from lab to field to gin--is unrivaled anywhere.
Much more than a business story, this is a sweeping social history that details the saga of cotton growers who were chased from the South by the boll weevil and brought their black farmhands to California. It is a gripping read with cameos by a cast of famous characters, from Cecil B. DeMille to Cesar Chavez.
Customer Reviews:
The king of California.......2006-11-04
This book is way too long and somewhat redundant and boring. The basic story is good, but the author takes too much time and too many pages to tell it.
History, Biography and Expose?.......2006-06-23
I would recommend this book to anyone interested in politics, agriculture, or water rights. It is a well-written and very readable.
It follows four generations of the Boswell family to trace how they assembled the largest industrial farm in the world. Along the way, the authors explore the history of the San Joaquin valley and those who came there to farm it, those who left and those who got left behind. For every group that made a fortune, there were many others who were disappointed. There are plenty of interesting stories of Washington and Sacramento politics, and stories of common people following dreams.
The book examines the effect of large scale farming on farm owners, on those who work the farms now and those who worked them in the past. It provides some good background on the politics of water rights and government involvement in farming, and on the involvement of agriculture in local, state and federal politics.
If you are interested in the politics and history of water in the western states, Cadillac Desert by Marc Reisner is one of the best books I have read on any subject.
Overstuffed but Worth Reading.......2005-11-26
I grew up in Fresno, in the shadow of agribusiness. The story behind "King of California" is a fascinating and important one but I'm not sure this "biography" does it justice. I disliked the awkward mixture of history and journalism. Is this an expose, a biography or history? Its never really clear and the way the book is organized, around the four seasons, is particularly opaque. What does it mean to call a section, "winter?" when it is covering history spanning decades and contains interviews with living people? That said, the material is fascinating. From the role the Boswell's played in taming Tulare Lake, to the development of modern cotton farming, the politics of agriculture and the way big business in general got access and results in subsidies and favorable policy. Early on, Tulare Lake and by extension, the San Joaquin Valley in its pre-U.S. days is described with a vividness I've rarely read elsewhere. However, the description of the Boswell's roots in racism and its legacy in the Central Valley is definitely worth telling but I think it gets too little space here and competes with so many other subjects. Frankly, I'm surprised that this book has gotten the acclaim that it has. While its clearly well researched, the writing is spotty lucid in some places and sensationalized elsewhere. I think the book tries to cover far too many topics; Water politics, cotton farming, racism in California, family history, corporate intrigue, labor issues, flood control and company towns. Had it narrowed it focus to just water, cotton and corporate intrigue, I think it would have been a far more powerful book.
Surfaced and Harpooned.......2005-04-26
This far-reaching book is quite an accomplishment in biography and investigative journalism. Arax and Wartzman cover the history of the immense Boswell farming company of California, and the two guys named J.G. (the founding uncle and the current chairman, his nephew) who built the company into the largest cotton operation on Earth. Through cutthroat competitive instincts and political wheeling-and-dealing, the Boswells amassed tens of thousands of acres in California's Central Valley, and were instrumental in eliminating what was once the largest freshwater lake west of the Mississippi, as the former Tulare Lake was transformed into a festering network of levees, canals, and cesspools dedicated to the mass production of cotton. Thus, the Boswells built the area's environment, culture, and economics for their own profitability.
The book also serves as a great exploration of the business of factory farming, detailing the racism and poverty experienced by Black and Mexican workers, as well as the shifty agricultural and hydrological politics of Big Ag in California - as the Boswells and their competitors/allies buy politicians, stack laws and regulations in their favor, and claim flood control as a reason to alter the natural course of rivers and to completely drain the vast Tulare Lake. Best of all, we see how big business really works out West, with the hypocrisy of so-called rugged outdoorsmen (actually pampered CEO's) who incessantly rail against government interference while also taking in millions of dollars in taxpayer subsidies that are meant to help the little guy. This book is immensely informative but does often get tied up in unnecessary details, such as descriptions of petty political shenanigans in the construction of a nearby dam. But the motto of the Boswell clan has been that a whale can't be harpooned if it doesn't come to the surface (a legacy of silence and obfuscation), but Arax and Wartzman have deftly cracked into the wall of secrecy surrounding the Boswells and their often ill-gotten empire, [~doomsdayer520~]
Tremendous historical, political, and social epic.......2004-11-09
The book centers around three generations of Boswells as they migrated from Green County Georgia to Kings County California and became the largest producers of cotton in the world, without becoming a household name.
The book also tells of the natural, social, and political histories of the San Joaquin Valley from the days of indigenous peoples and the first Spanish invaders to the present day.
The epic is a fascinating study of twentieth century American history, society, economics, business, finance, management, politics, public policy, labor relations, mechanization, technology, modernization, and nature.
The more personal stories of family, romance, crime, and punishment read more like a good novel.
Some have found the authors liberally biased, but as a conservative, I found the authors well balanced in their presentations of all sides of the stories.
As others have said, the scope is huge and the research extensive. As someone who was born and raised in Kings County California, I found this heretofor unknown local history to be quite fascinating. Nevertheless, I believe this book will have broad appeal to many readers.
Average customer rating:
- Nice Compilation, but why not all 9?
- A Little House Collection: The First Five Novels (Little House)
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A Little House Collection: The First Five Novels (Little House)
Laura Ingalls Wilder
Manufacturer: HarperCollins
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ASIN: 0060769092
Release Date: 2006-10-03 |
Customer Reviews:
Nice Compilation, but why not all 9?.......2007-08-22
For those looking for a nice reading collection of the Little house books, this is a great start. One large book containing the first 5 novels in the little house series.
The illustrations are somewhat sparse, but well done. The writing of course is unchanged from the original books. It's very nice to have them all in one large book, but I wish they had all been included - as of this time I'm unable to find a similar such collection for the remaining 4 books.
The text size is generous and the two column format is easy to read with kids clustered around.
A Little House Collection: The First Five Novels (Little House).......2007-03-21
My children and I love this book. I grew up watching Little House on The Prairie when I was little and wanted to share this delightful experience with them. They both enjoy the unfolding tale, particularly my 7 year old. She is eager for tomorrow and the next episode! There is great attention to detail in the writing, yet there is a feeling of it being easy to read and take in.
Customer Reviews:
epitaph for a peach.......2007-10-02
wonderful. when you read this work you can actually feel the soil, smell the grass, and taste the fruit. a greeat read
Not so much an epitaph, but a love letter to the land.......2007-08-08
I feel a connection with David Masumoto. Not that I've met him or anything - in fact, there's a good chance I never will (although I keep hoping that one summer day I can make it over to his farm to pick peaches). No, this feeling is based on an impression that we have both fought the same fight over different things, for the same reasons. It is also because he writes so poignantly about a landscape I grew up in. Mr. Masumoto is an organic farmer in the valley of California, and his story is becoming more and more familiar to me as I see this way of life disappearing across the country.
A third generation Japanese American peach and grape farmer, David Masumoto inherited the family orchard from his father. He also had the heritage of his childhood memories of how that particular peach variety, Sun Crest, tasted and ran with juice unlike the pretty red baseballs that have passed for today's supermarket peach varieties. Mr. M wanted to show the world how delightful an old-fashioned peach could be.
When he took over his father's farm, he resolved to not only continue growing his Sun Crests, but to do it organically. This would prove challenging in our day and age of cheap, quick fixes; moreover, it would test his strongly felt ideals. The land needed to heal and replenish itself after years of chemical fertilizers and toxic pest control methods. Masumoto had to take his example from research on other organic farming practices, planting wildflowers to encourage beneficial insect life and sowing "green manure" crops to act as natural mulch and compost. All this took time, patience, and faith that his hard work would eventually pay off.
Epitaph for a Peach is rich in sensory descriptions, philosophy, and nostalgic flashbacks. It is a picture of the way a farmer's life is connected to the seasons, capricious weather patterns, and changing market conditions. Not incidentally, Masumoto also teaches about the obscure history of Japanese farmers in the Valley - something that even I, native to Fresno, had little idea of. Reading this book was a slow, thoughtful experience much in the same manner that one slows down to savor a rich fruit. Recommended to anybody interested in history, growing food, or the vanishing California landscape.
-Andrea, aka Merribelle
The Struggle Continues.......2004-01-24
I live somewhat north of the area Mr. Masumoto writes about - where the San Francisco Bay Area Suburbs collide with the San Joaquin Farmlands. The Peach and Cherry Orchards and the Sweet Corn, Tomatoes and Strawberries are currently holding their own - but like Mr. Masumoto's Peaches and Grapes, only tenuously, and with great courage. If you would like to understand not only how these people live, but who and why they are, you should read this book. It is both beautifully written and thought provoking.
Epitaph for a Peach.......2002-07-31
It is rare to read a book where the author works miracles with his hands and his words. I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys non-fiction but finds it dry, without humanity. David Mas Masumoto is anything but dry. His land may be at times, but his poetic prose is anything but. His relationship with his family, his family's farm and nature is a rare combination. I highly recommend this read.
Best book about farming I've ever read.......2001-06-09
"Epitaph" is a gem and a masterpiece. Masumoto is a good farmer, a truly dedicated family man and a gifted writer. The story is in part about his love affair with a wonderful variety of peach.
City people will know why supermarket peaches disappoint and country people will recognize the sad story of a farmer who, the harder he tries the more frustration he finds. The peaches you find in the supermarket are there because the consumer/supermarket/broker/ value "shelf life" more than flavor.
Peaches don't travel well and they don't last long. The farmer must choose the right variety, prune it exactly the right way at exactly the right time, fertilize and water at the right time, pray fervently for the right weather conditions.
Only then, if the peach absorbs enough sun to fully mature, will it have the full bursting ambrosial flavor a peach should have. Only the sun can make a peach sweet and flavorful. Most really delicious peaches won't last more than three or four days after they are picked.
A good peach should be eaten as it is right out of hand. Not put in a pie or jam or cake. Only a good farmer can grow a perfect peach and no supermarket want them. Where is the answer?
You'll fall in love with farming and weep a bit as you read the Masumoto family story. Perhaps you won't fully appreciate what today's farmers are up against, but this book will give you more insight than you ever had before.
If you are from a farming family you will fully appreciate every word of this beautiful story of a San Joaquin Valley farm.
Book Description
When most people think of Cajun cooking, they think of blackened redfish or, maybe, gumbo. When Terri Pischoff Wuerthner thinks of Cajun cooking, she thinks about Great-Grandfather Theodore’s picnics on Lake Carenton, children gathering crawfish fresh from the bayou for supper, and Grandma Olympe’s fricassee of beef, because Terri Pischoff Wuerthner is descended from an old Cajun family. Through a seamless blend of storytelling and recipes to live by, Wuerthner’s In a Cajun Kitchen will remind people of the true flavors of Cajun cooking.
When her ancestors settled in Louisiana around 1760, her family grew into a memorable clan that understood the pleasures of the table and the bounty of the Louisiana forests, fields, and waters. Wuerthner spices her gumbo with memories of Cajun community dances, wild-duck hunts, and parties at the family farm. From the Civil War to today, Wuerthner brings her California-born Cajun family together to cook and share jambalaya, crawfish étoufée, shrimp boil, and more, while they cook, laugh, eat, and carry on the legacy of Louis Noel Labauve, one of the first French settlers in Acadia in the 1600s.
Along with the memories, In a Cajun Kitchen presents readers with a treasure trove of authentic Cajun recipes: roasted pork mufaletta sandwiches, creamy crab casserole, breakfast cornbread with sausage and apples, gumbo, shrimp fritters, black-eyed pea and andouille bake, coconut pralines, pecan pie, and much more. In a Cajun Kitchen is a great work of culinary history, destined to be an American cookbook classic that home cooks will cherish.
Customer Reviews:
It's the Real Thing.......2007-08-23
by Peggy Fallon, author Ice Cream and Frozen Desserts DK Publishing, 2007
This book travels between my nightstand--where I enjoy Terri's thoughtfully written prose and stories of her colorful family--to my kitchen, where I revel in her detailed recipes for fried chicken, grits, and gumbo. Lots of good food here, and I recommend this book to anyone interested in authentic Cajun cuisine.
True Cajun Style.......2007-01-27
Real Cajun style cooking! It has great recipes along with great stories behind the recipes. A must have for the Cajun Style lovers.
Cajun Like I Grew Up Eating.......2006-12-08
The opening wording on the flyleaf of this book expresses a couple of points better than I can. 'When most people think of Cajun cooking, they thing of blackened redfish (or blackened nearly anything else) or, maybe, gumbo.'
No, blackened meats and a bunch of other dishes are the creation of New Orleans chefs preparing foods for the tourists. Note, I'm not saying that I don't like these dishes, they just aren't the kinds of foods that I grew up with in the swamps of South Louisiana.
This book talks about the kinds of things we really ate. We had things like etouffee, shrimp boil, jambalaya. Just like she says. But then I do find a few points with which I disagree.
For instance on page 225 she says that they usually use quick grits, which cook in just a few minutes, rather than stone-ground or old-fashioned grits, which take up to an hour to cook. The stone-ground are delicious, but very difficult to find outside of the South.
Terrible, terrible, sacrilege. Go on the web and you can find lots of places that sell 'real' grits. Just substitute them for her recipies that use grits. Incidentally I highly recommend her Baked Spicy Cheese Grits, page 223. Her recipie is a bit different than mine, I put in a bit of spicy sausage. She puts in eggs. You might also want to try varying the types of cheese you use: blue cheese is good, so is Velveeta. Try this at a pot luck, you'll be surprised at the result.
Try some of her Gumbos.
Try a lot of her recipies, you'll be glad you did.
In a Cajun kitchen.......2006-09-01
Recipes are easy to follow and use ingredients easily found stocked in everyday grocery stores and personal kitchens. An added bonus was the personal angle of the stories about the originators of the recipes. There is gentle humor and good advice on almost every page. Best of all, the several recipes I tried not only looked good, but tasted wonderful. This book is NOT about burning your taste buds with "hot and spicy" but enjoying flavor bursting tastes. The book is everything I hoped for in a Cajun cookbook. I agree with the book reviewers!
Book Description
Winner of the Boston Globe/L. L. Winship/PEN New England Book Award, 1995
"A poignant account of return and recommitment, darkened by the realization that her contract with the land might soon be broken. . . . Brox describes crisply yet with great feeling."
-Maxine Kumin, The New York Times Book Review
Customer Reviews:
a little book about a small farm written with unusual poetry and love.......2007-08-31
I am a city person, and the closest I have been to a small farm is buying apples in the autumn at a roadside stand. I have no idea how I chose to buy this book and Jane's two other ones, but I did buy it and fell in love with it. The poetry is deep; she tells the story of her aging father who in his eighties tries to keep his beloved farm going, her brother who has stayed to help but is angry and sometimes dysfunctional, her mother, and her own return after many years. These are wound around and blended with tales of seasons of growth -- of apples, berries, all sorts of corn and the customers who show up decade after decade to buy what they loved last year. It is truly a spiritual book, and gives this city girl a sense of the enduring earth and its gifts and the people who are closest to it.
Here and Nowhere Else.......2000-01-04
Here and Nowhere Else captures with its perfect language the timeless undulations of rural living. It is not so much like reading a book as it is like walking the land with someone who respects both the comfort and the pain it can give. A truthful recording of enormous loss and a lyric epitaph for a family farm.
Book Description
A passionate literary innovator, eloquent in language and uncompromising in his social observation and his pursuit of emotional truth, James Agee (1909- 1955) excelled as novelist, critic, journalist, and screenwriter. In his brief, often turbulent life, he left enduring evidence of his unwavering intensity, observant eye, and sometimes savage wit.
This volume collects his fiction along with his extraordinary experiment in what might be called prophetic journalism, Let Us Now Praise Famous Men (1941), a collaboration with photographer Walker Evans that began as an assignment from Fortune magazine to report on the lives of Alabama sharecroppers, and that expanded into a vast and unique mix of reporting, poetic meditation, and anguished self-revelation that Agee described as "an effort in human actuality." A 64-page photo insert reproduces Evans's now iconic photographs from the expanded 1960 edition.
A Death in the Family, the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel that he worked on for over a decade and that was published posthumously in 1957, re-creates in stunningly evocative prose Agee's childhood in Knoxville, Tennessee, and the upheaval his family experienced after his father's death in a car accident when Agee was six years old. A whole world, with its sensory vividness and social constraints, comes to life in this child's-eye view of a few catastrophic days. It is presented here for the first time in a text with corrections based on Agee's manuscripts at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center.
This volume also includes The Morning Watch (1951), an autobiographical novella that reflects Agee's deep involvement with religious questions, and three short stories including the remarkable allegory "A Mother's Tale."
Customer Reviews:
An American Classic.......2006-03-27
This recently reissued collecton of Agee's work includes the brilliant, touching photos of Walker Evans with James Agee, photos made during the Depression Era of the 'thirties. Agee's writings are true Americana, his prose flows and the reader is made a part of the families about which he writes. This compilation belongs in the library of anyone concerned with human feelings in times of hurtin', hunger, and need. If you lived through the time,as I did, you will know it again through Agee's superb reflections on it.
Rich Reading Experience.......2006-02-03
Lately, I find myself returning to literature written before I was born (1956). When I saw the review of LET US NOW PRAISE FAMOUS MEN in THE NEW YORKER, I became instantly convinced that I should purchase it. I'd known Agee's work since I was 13, when I first read DEATH IN THE FAMILY. I belonged to the Scholastic Book Club and every month my mother gave me change out of her the bottom of her purse so I could buy the books I had faithfully marked on my order form. I was haunted by this book as a teen, and I remain haunted still. I will always believe that few American writers ever achieved anything comparable to the beginning of DEATH IN THE FAMILY, a short italicized introduction which begins: "We are talking now of summer evenings in Knoxville, Tennessee in the time that I lived there so successfully disguised to myself as a child." Agee's sensory details throughout DEATH amaze. Another stunning passage reads: "Supper was at six and was over by half past. There was still daylight, shining softly and with a tarnish, like the lining of a shell;" I could go on, because every page of this book is a treasure. But I would like to turn my attention to LET US NOW PRAISE FAMOUS MEN, which I had never read until now.
I will preface my remarks by saying that I am a writer currently very interested in the distinction between fiction and non-fiction writing. Agee addresses this issue by saying: "In a novel, a house or person has his meaning, his existence, entirely through the writer. Here, a house or a person has only the most limited of his meaning through me: his true meaning is much huger." It's perhaps this interest of mine in the craft of writing itself that has made FAMOUS MEN so fascinating to me.
Another thing: In the beginning pages, Agee writes with absolute humility towards his own writing and his subject matter. This was stunning to me, because I've also read Agee's movie reviews, and in those writings Agee is witty, merciless, honest, and very confident in his own opinion. In short, they are some of the best movie reviews I have ever read. However, FAMOUS MEN is another kind of writing altogether. As Agee admits, his efforts to capture his subject matter through words were a failure. Words are inefficient, inadequate in matters so huge. He wrote: "If I could do it, I'd do no writing at all here. It would be photographs; the rest would be fragments of cloth, bits of cotton, lumps of earth, records of speech, pieces of wood and iron, phials of odors, plates of food and of excrement."
That FAMOUS MEN is not more popular does not surprise me, nor was Agee surprised, I think, when the book got bad reviews and suffered poor sales. FAMOUS MEN, I think, is not the sort of book that would ever gain wide acceptance. It is a flawed masterpiece that takes a lot of work to absorb, but well worth the effort.
I don't know the extent to which Agee may have been devastated, nonetheless, at the way America turned its back on his masterpiece. I do know that Agee seemed to suggest in the early pages of FAMOUS MEN that the worst thing that can happen to any artist is mass acceptance. Perhaps mass acceptance is something the writer both wants and fears; I don't know. But Agee does say in FAMOUS MEN that he felt that as soon as, say, Beethoven's music is used as a form of relaxation or as a background to the mundane activities human beings inevitably become so wrapped up in, then the music has lost its vitality. That is why Agee suggests:
"Get a radio or a phonograph capable of the most extreme loudness possible, and sit down to listen to a performance of Beethoven's Seventh Symphony or of Schubert's C-Major Symphony. But I don't mean just sit down and listen. I mean this: Turn it on as loud as you can get it. Then get down onto floor and jam your ear as close into the loudspeaker as you can get it and stay there, breathing as lightly as possible, and not moving, and neither eating nor smoking nor drinking. Concentrate everything you can into your hearing and into your body. You won't hear it nicely. If it hurts you, be glad of it."
The same might be said for FAMOUS MEN. You can't read it as you would some other books, even DEATH IN THE FAMILY, which has a nice and clean chronological structure. You have to really pay attention when you read FAMOUS MEN. If you concentrate, you will hear FAMOUS MEN in your whole body. And if it hurts you, you will be glad.
An Overlooked-Writer.......2005-09-26
Let me be clear... I've not read the present volume though I've read the individual books collected in it years ago. "A Death in the Family" remains vivid in my memory, depite almost 30 years since I last read it, and "Let Us Now Praise Famous Men" is an absolute classic.
Though I have not yet received the LOA edition, I was compelled to add a review if only to counter the first reviewer here who is intent on seeing only ideology rather than the writing. If the work is looked at without the rose-colored glasses of (conservative) political correctness, you'll find there is an amazing writer and thinker behind the words.
Just read the works for yourself, not through an ideological smokescreen.
Let Us Now Reexamine Famous Men.......2005-09-23
Agee was an outrageous bleeding-heart, a man whose life and work were compromised by posturing, mawkishness and complacency in anguish. The gush of his prose--the hemorrhaging of that bleeding heart--is deeply, plangently, cloyingly purple. His endless rhapsodies betray a stubborn adolescence that will delight those who see an artist as a perpetual kid and repel those who don't.
Immense suffusions of tenderness are not the most helpful or respectful way of responding to fellow human beings, and they signal an obsession with one's own feelings instead of their ostensible object. In this regard, one notes that Agee's tenderness did not prevent him from engaging in serial adulteries and enforced threesomes, devoting his life to personal fulfillment rather than self-denying altruism, and indulging himself to death by the age of 45. Of course Agee felt guilty about all this (his writing fairly reeks of a rotting conscience), but he saw his guilt as a reassuring index of purity, like the parishioner who sees confession and absolution as a license to go on sinning.
Moreover, Agee's tenderness was reserved for the disadvantaged. The obverse of this solicitude was an affected brutality of reference to just about everyone else (except family and friends, his favorite artists and his latest lover). This tough-talking pose, which has not worn well, assumed a moral superiority that the record does not bear out.
Art and morality are not the same thing, but Agee thought they were, and this confusion permeates his work. Again and again he makes moral claims upon us which he thinks that his aesthetic project will validate. It does nothing of the kind: it merely aestheticizes.
Agee did possess extraordinary powers of lyric observation, and a sharp mind when he wanted to use it; but aching sensitivity, metastasizing into ecstatic intoxication, tended to distort his vision, soften his rigor and sentimentalize his voice. He has his devoted followers, or rather his cultists, but one doubts that his place in the canon is as secure or exalted as they might wish, or as this Library of America volume would suggest.
Average customer rating:
- Couldn't even finish it
- A safe antidote for suburban cluelessness
- a pretty good effort for a city boy
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Farm: A Year in the Life of an American Farmer
Richard Rhodes
Manufacturer: Bison Books
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ASIN: 0803289650 |
Amazon.com
Farm lyrically recounts a year in the lives of Tom and Sally Bauer, solid Midwesterners who work the bottomlands of the Missouri River to grow "a harvest few city people could have identified ... the foundation of their diet, the principal food plant of the Western world": corn. The two rise before dawn in all kinds of weather, tending to the hundreds of tasks farmers must master in the face of heavy odds--foreclosures, climbing interest rates, a then-sickening economy, and, always, the uncertainties of the weather and the health of their crops. Richard Rhodes makes it clear that their lives are hard, but the Bauers love to till the soil. Doubtless few urbanites will want to don bib overalls after reading Farm, but anyone who reads the book will appreciate the difficulty of farmers' lives and the courage of those who lead them.
Book Description
Richly textured and deeply moving, Farm chronicles a year in the life of Tom and Sally Bauer of Crevecoeur County, Missouri, who cultivate nearly two square miles of the surface of the earth. They struggle to build up their farm, harvesting corn, birthing calves, planting wheat, coping with the vagaries of nature and government regulations. Required of them are ancient skills (an attunement to the weather, animals, crops, and land) as well as a mastery of modern technology, from high-tech machinery to genetics and sophisticated chemicals.
Customer Reviews:
Couldn't even finish it.......2005-11-02
With the disclaimer that I refused to invest any more of my life in the completion of this book, I have to say that this is among the worst books that I've never read. I was attracted to it because of (i) Rhodes' reputation, and (ii) the legacy of, and current connection to, farming in my own family. My intimate familiarity with farming (see note ii above) might have made me more sympathetic to, or perhaps more critical of, this book - I don't know. Anyway, I found it to be flat and uninspired. Perhaps it is a good read for someone who has never, ever stepped foot on a farm. However, I think that listening to an ag report on the radio would be just as informative, and about as interesting.
A safe antidote for suburban cluelessness.......2002-09-02
What a damned shame this book is out of print! If it were up to me, this book would be required reading for anyone planning to relocate to the midwest from either the east or west coast, particularly if you grew up in the suburbs.
FARM details the deceptively complicated life of a midwestern farm couple, their 3 kids, two dogs and assorted friends, crops, livestock, farm machinery, etc. Farming is certainly no walk in the park. The further you venture into this book, the more emotionally exhausted you feel as Rhodes brings home in brilliant detail all the pulls, pushes, tugs, restraints and jolts that go into this lifestyle. How do they do it?
Around the biographical data concerning the Bauer family, Rhodes introduces a staggering array of ancillary subjects, summarizing each with deadly accuracy coupled with a comfortable and easy-to-digest writing style. (Even soils and compactor mechanics are rendered comprehensible for those of us who never "tested well" on mechanical reasoning!)
For east/west coast new arrivals to the midwest who couldn't feel more lost if they'd just landed on Jupiter, this book sheds lots of light on many of the onstensibly incomprehensible mores, rhythms, habits and tendencies of midwestern life that persist in the behavioral patterns of even those who are more than a generation removed from the farm or the small town. With Rhodes as your guide, it's easier to understand the positive aspects of why they do what they do and less painful and exasperating to conform yourself to behaviors that will make them accept you more. I'd need a calculator to add up all the dumb mistakes I could have avoided over the past 10 years if I'd been armed with the information contained in Rhodes' book.
However, 1989 was a long time ago. Since then a new breed of "agri-preneurs" led by Ron Macher, Small Farm Today, the various editors of Storey Books and others is slowly guiding America's farmers away from traditional wholesale masochism toward direct marketing of specialty crops and livestock.
Rhodes' FARM and Macher's MAKING YOUR SMALL FARM PROFITABLE form a veritable old and new testament of American farming -- and an important primer for the aging suburban Boomer who wants to replace lifelong cluelessness with a practical body of knowledge with which to become at least a small part of the solution -- the voting booth, perhaps?!!
a pretty good effort for a city boy.......1999-04-23
As an american farmer, I was curious as to how a non-farmer would depict a way of life so diffrent from his own. I think Richard did a fine job in showing just how tough things can be sometimes and also the humor that goes along with this way of life. I did find a few technical errors that would not be noticeable to any one unfamilar with farming or its equipment. Overall this is a very good book for any one curious about "life down on the farm" or any one just looking for a good light read. I have read and reread this book several times and will probably do so again in the future. So there you have it, an endorsement from a farmer for a book about a farmer.
Average customer rating:
- Fairly accurate portrayal of life in the fields
- A very good politically 'incorrect' book.
- Working Cotton
- The life of a child in a migrant family.
- A Moving Depiction of Migrant Labor
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Working Cotton
Sherley Anne Williams
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John Henry (Picture Puffins)
ASIN: 0152014829 |
Book Description
This child’s view of the long day’s work in the cotton fields, simply expressed in a poet’s resonant language, is a fresh and stirring look at migrant family life. “With its restrained poetic text and impressionist paintings, this is a picture book for older readers, too.”--Booklist
Customer Reviews:
Fairly accurate portrayal of life in the fields.......2002-03-18
I read this book as part of an assignment. It is a Caldecott Honor Book and I am very familiar with picking cotton. I was born the daughter of a cotton share-cropper, so my earliest memories are some of the very same things that appear in this book.
Cotton picking by hand is hard. It is backbreaking, and the days are hot and long. However, I had a few concerns about this book. It is written in the local dialect and speech patterns of the Black child who is telling the story. It was rather difficult to read but easy to understand what she meant. Since this is a child's book, I am not certain that every child would understand the language system that is portrayed. A teacher needs to be completely aware and ready to explain the dialect.
Also, even though the child describes a typical day of cotton picking, hard, hot, long,and lonely for socialization, I do wish the fact had been brought out that other ethnicities picked cotton as well as Blacks. It is hard work no matter who picks the cotton.
The illustrations were done nicely and the family structure was portrayed as intact. However, it reminded me all too well of the long, hot days my family spent in the cotton fields.
A very good politically 'incorrect' book........2000-12-12
Some books that I read do not catch my eye right away, but this one caught my eye for a couple of reasons. For one, this book reminded me of the stories that my grandmother used to tell me about when she would be in the fields picking cotton. Two, this book does not make picking cotton sound like a bad thing at all. When my grandmother would tell me stories about being in the cotton fields, the stories would never sound bad, or harsh. Her stories made me want to pick up this book and read it. This book is about a little girl named Shelan who goes to the fields every morning to go pick cotton with her family. Her family consists of her father, mother, her two older sisters, and her baby sister Leanne, who her mother has to carry while she picks cotton. The story is told through Shelan's eyes, from the time that they get on the bus at dawn, to the time they leave the fields at sunset. The illustrations were as vivid as the little girl telling the story. The pictures were hazy, just like a very hot day, where there are no trees. I thought that was very symbolic. I liked this book a lot, for different reasons. But I do have one or two concerns about this book. For one, the book may not be suitable to teach to just "any" child. I think that a children's book is supposed to move at a comfortable pace. Not make the child think too hard, but just enough to spark some creative ideas. Every child is not going to be able to relate to this book, like others would. To make it plain, I do not think that a Black child would have as much trouble understanding this book, as opposed to children of other ethnicities. I (a Black male) understood the dialect in this book very well and I enjoyed reading the "broken language" because that was what I was used to as a child. I did not think twice about the dialect until I had to analyze it. After I read the whole thing, I wondered if children of other backgrounds would be able to understand this book. The author was not trying to think "politically correct," but rather, correct in the eyes of the little girl. Shelan doesn't know any better than to talk the way that she does. Just like any little child does not recognize their "grammatical speaking errors." I think that whoever is going to read this book to a class of little children should be conscious of what children they are reading it to. The makeup of the class who receives this book is very important. Just like Nappy Hair, this book is very real as far as language and vivid images are concerned. This book is very good nevertheless, and hearing a great storyteller tell this story would be a treat to the senses.
Working Cotton.......2000-04-21
The Caldecott Medal book that I chose to read for this assignment was called Working Cotton. It is about an African American family's daily work picking cotton from the fields. Williams incorporates a good deal of African American culture into the story. Her familiarity with the dialect allows for the story to be portrayed in a very realistic way. The story is written in the third person as a young girl details her and her family's daily routine of getting up at dawn and riding a bus to the cotton fields where she, her brothers, and her father picked cotton. All the while, the mother sat along side of the field and tended to their new infant child. What makes this book unique is that it is written in a dialect that is very much expected from a less educated population. Williams uses this dialect effectively to bring the story to life. Miriam Youngerman's 1994 article in Children's Literature Association Quarterly Touches on the importance of dialect in children's books. "The dialect is a large part of the storytelling. Any children's story with a setting of a different time and place should be frelected in the dialect and the dialogue of the story" (241). As it relates to Working Cotton it is the dialect that truly makes the story convincing. Another strong aspect of this book are Carole Byard's detailed illustrations. These drawings do a great job of depicting the strain and hardships that cotton pickers dealt with on a daily basis. Every picture clearly illustrates the feelings and emotions of the characters. The illustrations take up entirely both sides of every page while the text is written on top of them. Overall, I think that this story is a strong cultural story for children to read. I believe that it is important to for children to understand the importance of hard work and willingness to help. Too many children are growing up expecting to always be taken care of. My generation is very guilty of this. Books like Working Cotton, though too remedial for adults, can go a long way to establishing an appreciation for hard work and good literature.
The life of a child in a migrant family........1999-06-02
A children's book based on a book of poems by Sherley Anne Williams that first appeared in the mid-1970s. It is about a migrant family (in this case, an African-American family) who are bused from one cotton field to another to pick cotton in which the children have to help. The book is really an indictment against child labor. It shows the hardships of this life, how important the "family" is, how tired and exhausted everyone (especially children) are at the end of the day, and how much children miss playing with other children. Reading the book with other children should lead to some fruitful discussions. It is beautifully written and illustrated. The illustrator was Carole Byard and the book was a 1993 Caldecott Honor book (i.e., a runner-up to the Medal winner) for best illustrations in a book for children.
A Moving Depiction of Migrant Labor.......1998-10-30
Working Cotton is a very moving look at a little girl, Shelan, and her daily life of working the cotton fields. It realistically brings to life the hardships that she and her family face, through sparse prose and impressionistic artwork, the reader feels the burden of the cotton sack upon their back. I almost cried reading it, knowing that for many children in the United States and worldwide this type of work is typical and expected to help the survival of the family. Its a good book to share with children to help them not take for granted the life that they lead. And its also a great way to show that not every story has a happy ending, just an ending.
Average customer rating:
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Our Common Country : Family Farming, Culture, and Community in the Nineteenth-Century Midwest
Susan Sessions Rugh
Manufacturer: Indiana University Press
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ASIN: 0253339103 |
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Agrarian ideology flourished in the nineteenth-century Midwest, where countless settler families carved homesteads out of the prairie and nurtured ideals that we consider distinctively American--independence, democracy, community, piety. Our Common Country explains the making of the family farm culture in the heartland by telling the story of families in rural Fountain Green, Illinois, from settlement to century's end. A richly textured social history narrative of people the reader will come to know, the book examines three themes: changing cultural identities, the expansion of the market, and the adoption of class-based gender ideologies.
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