Average customer rating:
- The Tragic Story of the Mann Gulch Fire
- Uneven but thoughtful and inspiring
- Math?
- Reads like a detective novel
- A tragic and wonderful story
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Young Men and Fire
Norman Maclean
Manufacturer: University Of Chicago Press
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ASIN: 0226500624 |
Amazon.com
On August 5, 1949, lightning came crashing down in the vast spruce forest above Seeley Lake, Montana, and touched off a roaring blaze. As every Westerner knows, lightning means fire, but the fire that raged through Mann Gulch that day was huge--the sort that occurs only every few decades. A battery of paratrooper-firefighters, many of them fresh veterans of World War II, had been anticipating it, and even looking forward to the chance to fight a great fire. Before the day ended thirteen of those smokejumpers lay dead, their charred remains evidence that something had gone terribly wrong. Norman Maclean gives a thorough account of the incident in language not meant for the squeamish: "Burning to death on a mountainside is dying at least three times ... first, considerably ahead of the fire, you reach the verge of death in your boots and your legs; next, as you fail, you sink back in the region of strange gases and red and blue darts where there is no oxygen and here you die in your lungs; then you sink in prayer into the main fire that consumes." After August 1949, he notes, the Forest Service came to recognize that not all fires need to be fought and that fire benefits most forest ecosystems.
Book Description
On August 5, 1949, a crew of fifteen of the United States Forest Service's elite airborne firefighters, the Smokejumpers, stepped into the sky above a remote forest fire in the Montana wilderness. Two hours after their jump, all but three of these men were dead or mortally burned. Haunted by these deaths for forty years, Norman Maclean puts back together the scattered pieces of the Mann Gulch tragedy.
Young Men and Fire won the National Book Critics Circle Award in 1992.
"A magnificent drama of writing, a tragedy that pays tribute to the dead and offers rescue to the living.... Maclean's search for the truth, which becomes an exploration of his own mortality, is more compelling even than his journey into the heart of the fire. His description of the conflagration terrifies, but it is his battle with words, his effort to turn the story of the 13 men into tragedy that makes this book a classic."—from New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice, Best Books of 1992
"A treasure: part detective story, part western, part tragedy, part elegy and wholly eloquent ghost story in which the dead and the living join ranks cheerfully, if sometimes eerily, in a search for truth and the rest it brings."—Joseph Coates, Chicago Tribune
"An astonishing book. In compelling language, both homely and elegant, Young Men and Fire miraculously combines a fascinating primer on fires and firefighting, a powerful, breathtakingly real reconstruction of a tragedy, and a meditation on writing, grief and human character.... Maclean's last book will stir your heart and haunt your memory."—Timothy Foote, USA Today
"Beautiful.... A dark American idyll of which the language can be proud."—Robert M. Adams, The New York Review of Books
"Young Men and Fire is redolent of Melville. Just as the reader of Moby Dick comes to comprehend the monstrous entirety of the great white whale, so the reader of Young Men and Fire goes into the heart of the great red fire and comes out thoroughly informed. Don't hesitate to take the plunge."—Dennis Drabelle, Washington Post Book World
"Young Men and Fire is a somber and poetic retelling of a tragic event. It is the pinnacle of smokejumping literature and a classic work of 20th-century nonfiction."—John Holkeboer, The Wall Street Journal
"Maclean is always with the brave young dead. . . . They could not have found a storyteller with a better claim to represent their honor. . . . A great book."—James R. Kincaid, New York Times Book Review
Customer Reviews:
The Tragic Story of the Mann Gulch Fire.......2007-07-28
This true story by the author of A River Runs Through It tells the events surrounding the Mann Gulch Fire in 1949. A good portion focuses on the smokejumpers (paratrooping firefighters)13 out of 16 of which perished in the fire.
In those days, the smokejumping program was very new having been introduced within the past 8 to 10 years. The men had to be between the ages of 18 and 30, single, and in superb physical condition. The main tools they carried were a shovel and something called a Pulaski which is a combination ax and hoe built into one. They utilized these tools to dig fire lines, and fell trees ahead of the fire so as to reduce the amount of fuel and prevent it jumping from one tree to the next.
When dropped from the plane onto the ground by the fire, a foreman would be in charge of the crew as they fought the fire. In the instance of the Mann Gulch fire in Montana, the fire started out as a fairly decent sized fire. It then progressed into what is known as a "blowup." This occurred as a result of a combination of factors such as fuel type, moisture, incline of terrain, and wind.
It quickly got out of control and the crew had to run for their lives. Occasionally, in a blowup a vortex of fire will be formed which will sweep across a vast area burning everything in its path. It looks and functions like a tornado. I recently talked with a man who used to be a farmer and he indicated that when they burned fields to prepare them for future seasons a fire vortex would sometimes occur. He said it was an awesome and amazing sight to behold.
During the blowup it was not possible for the majority of the men to outrun the fire and they perished mainly from suffocation due to lack of oxygen. The foreman saw this happening and created a secondary fire to try to create a burned out place which would provide shelter from the main fire. Unfortunately, amidst the confusion of the fire, the men did not understand the foreman and thought he had gone crazy to be lighting a second fire. He did survive but all but 2 others did not.
A secondary portion of the book analyzes the various components of the fire, what caused it, and some of the science behind fire. Maclean spent around 12 years researching the book, gathering documents, interviewing the 2 remaining survivors and returning to the site of the fire. He was well equipped to tell the story having spent time as a forest fire fighter in his younger years before going on to be a literature professor and writer. The book was masterfully written but slightly meticulous at times. It is the type of story that would make a very dramatic movie if a studio were interested in producing it.
Uneven but thoughtful and inspiring.......2007-02-08
Pieced together after the author's death, you can see what this book would have been had he lived to complete it. In places, you have to push yourself through it. Still, it is worth your time. Tracing a tragedy trying to resurrect peace for souls long gone, you are put in touch with feelings and emotions that affect us all.
If you love the outdoors, adventure, and real men doing real things, this book is for you.
Math?.......2006-12-27
Has anyone out there checked Maclean's math on pages 229-230 of the paperback edition (second section of Chapter 12)? I'm no math expert, but shouldn't the hypotenuse of a right triangle with sides of 1,320 and 140 yards be a little over 1,327 yards, and not the 1,400 yards he indicates? Moreover, didn't all of the 140 yard vertical gain occur in the final half mile of travel, since the crew was moving on contour for the first quarter mile of "the race"? This would yield a total actual distance of only 1,331 yards. I was surprised by these errors given how meticulous Maclean was in the rest of his research.
This is a great book, though.
Reads like a detective novel.......2006-11-16
First, its important to note that the author did not complete this novel. Unfortunately, Maclean died prior to its completion, so others had to pull it all together for publishing. This perhaps lends to what I see as an "unpolished" quality, with some choppiness. That said, I felt it still merited four stars for what the author did. Maclean's research is extensive, and his conclusions are derived from numerous authoritative sources. It read like a mystery / detective novel for me, and I had trouble putting it down.
A tragic and wonderful story.......2006-11-09
This is a fine story of brave men in a tragic struggle. A struggle that they loose. The entire book covers the 16 minutes it took for these smoke jumpers to land, confront a "10'oclock" fire and die. Norman Maclean researches the human and scientific causes of this disaster. It was especially of intrest to me because when I went through the fire fighter academy here in Northern California, this was an incident that we studied. Norman Maclean writes in a sparcer prose than in "A River Runs Through It, and other stories" but it is no less facinating and we learn details about the authors life, that makes this story a personal one. He did not finish the book before his death and the last section was written with minimal editing from the original manuscript. This section is the most beautiful and moving of the entire book. I cannot recommend this book highly enouph.
Average customer rating:
- Raw. A structural disaster. Flat protagonists. Yet promising, uplifting, earnest and true.
- Engaging literature
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Drowning in Fire (Sun Tracks Series, Volume 48)
Craig S. Womack
Manufacturer: University of Arizona Press
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ASIN: 0816521689 |
Book Description
As a boy growing up in the Muskogee Creek Nation in Oklahoma, Josh Henneha feels inflamed and ashamed by his attraction to other boys. Lifted by his Aunt Lucille's tales of her own wild girlhood, Josh learns to fly back through time and uncover a legacy of ceremonies and secrets he can forge into a new sense of himself. Interweaving explicit realism and dreamlike visions, Drowning in Fire explores Josh's journey to understand his identity within the framework of his heritage.
Customer Reviews:
Raw. A structural disaster. Flat protagonists. Yet promising, uplifting, earnest and true........2005-09-07
A sliver here, a shard there, a piece fallen under the couch and pushed to the side. Assemble these moments and spread them out on the floor. Look: There's turn-of-the-century Oklahoma and the Creek resistance to statehood. Here's a tension-filled scene of sexuality, boyhood, a near-drowning on a lazy summer day. An old woman who used to play bebop in roadhouses. A Sherman-Alexie-like family of Native American poseurs/clowns who stubbornly and humorously cling to a white evangelical church in an utterly incompetent, utterly naive attempt to assimilate and somehow connect to our own pathetic outsider attempts to belong.
But they're shards. Only pieces. The whole is a mess. Multiple point-of-view with no apparent purpose. A plot that starts here, lingers there, ends up here - not a river meandering, but a series of puddles staining the sidewalk. Two main protagonists - Josh Henneha and Jimmy Alexander - who are virtually indistinguishable in their bookish, passive, overly thoughtful ways; products of a beginning writer writing about himself, most likely. The prose that forgets that each word is a prayer and for entire chapters lets itself goose-step across the page despite earlier and later stunning passages of exquisite beauty.
If I were an editor. If I were a publisher. I'd grab Womack. I'd cultivate and encourage. The subject matter is huge and poignant, the idea of us/them, insider/outsider, spirit/material. Womack's historical sections of turn-of-the-century Creek culture are stunning and engaging. The book itself has a certain human power rarely found in mass-produced fare: it fairly glows with rage and angst and love and fear.
There's so much potential. I hope Womack is busy right now on his next book, and his next and next.
Engaging literature.......2001-11-22
Craig Womack's first fiction novel, "Drowning in Fire" reads at once like a familiar story told numerous times by your grandmother and like the exciting first experience with a new adventure. The writing is poetic and captivating, as are the inter-twined stories. Mr. Womack writes in a unique style combining stream-of-consciousness memory recall, brilliant use of local dialects and languages, and colorful characters lovingly described. The book reads like a first-hand account of personal history. It is a "can't put it down" page turner and a "I must re-read that page several times for the pure enjoyment of it" storytelling masterpiece. It is poetry and action adventure at the same time.
The story is about the experiences of growing up Native American and gay in the straight, white world of Oklahoma. But, it is also about what it means to be Native American, gay or not; it is about what it means to be gay, Native or not; and it is about growing up as an outsider in this world, Oklahoma or not. It is a rare book that trancends time, setting and race to touch universal themes. "Drowning In Fire" accomplishes this.
With this work, Craig Womack helps define modern Native literature. He has also written one hell of an entertaining, enjoyable, important book. Read this and you will not be sorry.
Average customer rating:
- I mainly bought it for Youd's prologue
- Excellent!
- Tripod Trilogy
- The Pool of Fire
- Great Read
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The Pool of Fire : 35th Anniversary Edition
John Christopher
Manufacturer: Simon & Schuster Children's Publishing
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ASIN: 0689855060 |
Book Description
Will has escaped from the City of the Tripods to deliver terrifying information to the colony of free people: The Masters are planning to change the earth's atmosphere to that of their own planet, exterminating the human race. There isn't much time to stop them, but Will and the others have no alternative but to try. Will they succeed in freeing the world from the control of the Tripods? And if they do, what will a free world be like after centuries of domination?
Thirty-five years after its original publication, we are proud to offer this anniversary edition of The Pool of Fire, featuring a new preface from John Christopher, as well as the author's fully revised text, available in the United States for the first time.
Customer Reviews:
I mainly bought it for Youd's prologue.......2007-07-27
The 35th Anniversary editions have prologues written at the time of their publication by Sam Youd, a.k.a. John Christohper himself. All three books have them and they are filled with a wealth of information about what he was thinking, aspects of the Masters, etc. For example, he originally did not set out to write a trilogy and did not even know what/who the Tripods were at the end of the first book. They also have the written text in the stories as he wanted them to originally to be. For those of you who grew up on this stuff, all the books are definitely a 'must have.'
Excellent!.......2006-11-06
This is the fourth and final book in the Tripod series. In order, they are: "When the Tripods Came", "The White Mountains", "The City of Gold and Lead", and "The Pool of Fire". This entire set is an excellent read that both young teenagers and adults will enjoy. My daughter and I really enjoyed these books!
Tripod Trilogy.......2006-11-05
This is a very engaging set of books for any middle-school reader. Boys especially might enjoy it. I have loved it ever since I first read it about 16 years ago!
The Pool of Fire.......2006-03-10
The novel The Pool of fire is a very enjoyable book to read. It held my interest because of it's thrilling rush of action, which John Christopher has a great style of this technique.
In the novel a few favorite passages were made. As a tripod destroys Will's boat while they are traveling in the war. This interested me because it put a true meaning to true meaning "up a creek without a paddle" and all the gear that was saved had to be carried. Another part of the book that interested me was when Will had to escape slavery by going down a sewage pipe. The reason this drew my attention was because of the humor.
In The Pool of Fire John Christopher has a great way of keeping my interest. He managed this by always has something big or major going on.
As I read this novel I learned some great vocabulary. I would also recommend this book to any body because it's so action packed.
Ryan
Creston Ca.
Great Read.......2005-09-09
This is a great series for kids of all ages. We are reading it to our 6 year old who is inthrolled and cannot wait for the next night and the next chapter! My mother in law read it to my husband and he is thrilled to be reading it to his child!
Average customer rating:
- Richie's Picks: THE BIG BURN
- The Big Burn, G.S.'s Reveiw
- The Big Burn
- THE BIG BURN is a great choice.
- Excellent historical fiction!
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The Big Burn
Jeanette Ingold
Manufacturer: Harcourt Paperbacks
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"Out there in the distance, the pink spread from sky to ground, became a pink-and-red-and-bronze mass of color billowing up in the southwest and running toward him. Sticks appeared to be tumbling through the air before it. Then Jarrett realized they were too far away to be sticks. My god, he thought, those are trees."
Wildfires were a terrifying experience 100 years ago, and they have become equally terrifying to many Americans in recent drought years. The Big Burn is based on the true story of one of the worst wildfires of the century, a conflagration that destroyed 2.5 million acres of public land and killed 90 people. In the hot, dry summer of 1910, hundreds of small fires were burning all over Montana and the Idaho panhandle, lit by dry thunderstorms, sparks from trains, untended campfires. On August 20, a blowup began as the many blazes, pushed by wind, raced up the slopes until they joined to ignite a crown fire that roared across treetops, creating its own wind in a mighty inferno.
This novel tells the story of three pairs of young people in the fire's path: Ranger Samuel Logan and his 16-year-old brother Jarrett, who yearns to fight this fiery monster; Lizbeth, who loves the forest, and her aunt Celia, who wants only to profit from it; and two African American soldiers, honorable Seth and his shifty sidekick, Abel. The way their lives interlock with the fire and each other, and the "field notes" that document the course of the blaze make up a thrilling novel with much authenticity for the place and time and for the nature of wildfire itself. (Ages 10 to 14) --Patty Campbell
Book Description
Based on the events surrounding one of the biggest fires of the twentieth centry, The Big Burn is a portrait of a time and a place and an event that altered the face of Montana and Idaho, changed the way we fight wildfires, and dramatically transformed the people on the front lines forever.
Customer Reviews:
Richie's Picks: THE BIG BURN.......2006-09-25
THE BIG BURN is a fascinating and harrowing historic novel set in the midst of a forest fire that trashed Northern Idaho and Western Montana in 1910. It was a large forest fire. "How large?" you may ask. Okay--If there are 640 acres in a square mile and there were nearly three million acres affected by THE BIG BURN, then we're talking an area nearly 4700 square miles. Sonoma County, where I live, is one-third that size. If you consider the San Francisco Bay Area counties of Santa Cruz, Santa Clara, San Mateo, San Francisco, Marin, AND Sonoma together, then you've got a sense of the scale of the destruction. For those of you on the East Coast, we're talking Long Island, plus all of New York's boroughs, and the counties of Westchester, Rockland, Putnam, Orange, Dutchess, and Columbia.
"Field Notes: In the summer of 1910, rangers who were used to working in isolation suddenly found their forests filling with strangers. With new fires breaking out daily through July and older ones stubbornly resisting control, the Forest Service's District One had no choice but to hire more and more men to fight them. By the end of the month, there were almost three thousand firefighters scattered across the district's several forests...W.B. Greeley, would later write, 'It was a case of hiring anyone we could get. We cleaned out Skid Road in Spokane and Butte. A lot of temporaries were bums and hobos. In a bad fire year, the temporary is the weakest link in the chain'...They went into the burning forests wearing the clothes they'd been recruited in, and the ones wearing street shoes or snug wool suits would regret that. They worked for twenty-five cents an hour with board, thirty if they provided their own food..."
In THE BIG BURN we do meet a few scoundrels. But the main characters here are three young people--Jarrett, a local boy who leaves his harsh dad; Seth, a southern kid in a black regiment who is trying to live up to the memory of his dead father; and Lizbeth, a young woman originally from New England, who is falling in love with the land she's found herself homesteading with her young, widowed aunt. All three cross paths before finding themselves in the midst of Hell on Earth.
Perhaps the publisher is calling this an "ages 12 and up" to spare younger children potential nightmares from the vividly drawn scenes of towering flames bearing down on our heroes. But for any kid whose tastes run to disaster and survival, mixed into a coming of age story, THE BIG BURN is a riveting read.
The Big Burn, G.S.'s Reveiw.......2005-04-13
Jeanette Ingold has pulled out all stops in her book called The Bug Burn. In this exciting tale of Idaho's wildfires in 1910, three young adults battle the forces of nature. Seth, Jaret, and Lizbeth each fight life in their own way, and overcome personal obstacles. Seth is an African American trying to fit-in in the army. Jaret is a rebel son as he goes looking for a job in firefighting after he got fired from his railroad job. Lizbeth is a niece who is trying to convince her aunt not to sell their homestead. I like this book because it is full of action and adventure, but educational at the same time. I would give it five out of five stars because I had a fun time reading it and learned a lot from it. I can't tell you the ending, but I can give you a little sneak peek. The strong wind blows many fires together, creating a giant blaze. That blaze charges forward, burning everything in its path. Eventually it comes to a city named Wallace, and everyone has to work together to try to stop it. Do they succeed? Read the book, The Big Burn, to find out.
The Big Burn.......2005-03-26
I think that The Big Burn was a very precice and educational book. The main carachters were Jarett, a young man wanting to fight fires with his older brother; Seth, An afircan American young man trying to show his pride for his country by joining the army; and Lizbeth, a young women trying to stay and keep her aunt from selling their home. The setting is 1910's, in Idaho and Montana. They over come some goals, and others are crushed. This all adds up untill the climax were all the flames come together and
THE BIG BURN is a great choice........2004-07-29
In light of the recent wildfires in Colorado and Arizona, THE BIG BURN is an interesting book, but it would certainly be noteworthy under any circumstances. The story follows two young men and a young woman as they encounter and combat the infamously ferocious Montana wildfires of 1910. Jeanette Ingold deftly switches perspectives throughout the tale to keep the reader interested in this well-crafted historical novel.
Jarrett, the brother of a forest ranger, is on a quest to prove himself to his gruff father; Lizbeth, living with her widowed aunt, wants to preserve her adopted Western home; and Seth, a young black soldier, is dedicated to serving his country and overcoming racial prejudice. Apart and together, they transcend traditional teenage roles and attempt to save their homes from the fires that ravaged the Montana and Idaho wilderness during the summer of 1910. Some of the plot developments may seem cliché (romance blooms where you'd probably expect --- close calls end with last-second rescues, etc.), but overall the adventure is unlike any other book available. This overlooked event in US history provides a wealth of excitement for a talented writer. The parallel stories of the three protagonists allow for several viewpoints of every episode; Ingold paints a comprehensive portrait of the true historical events of the period.
Ingold intersperses the chapters with "field notes" chronicling the wildfires and wilderness firefighting from an objective standpoint. These sections are actually where she writes best and they are a testament to the thorough research that went into writing the book. Both historically accurate and dramatically engaging, THE BIG BURN is a great choice for anyone who is interested in learning about the phenomena of forest fires while also reading a great story.
--- Reviewed by Lowell Putnam
Excellent historical fiction!.......2003-03-24
Ingold tells the reader that if you talk with anyone in Idaho or Montana for long enough, the subject of the Big Burn will come up, and the person telling you about it will expect you to know all about it. After reading Ingold's well-researched book, any reader would be able to contribute to the subject. Set in 1910, when forest rangers were new, railroads were huge, and immigrants were still flooding the country, The Big Burn tells the story of the wild fires of the northwestern United States. Ingold gives us three main characters: Jarrett, Lisbeth and Seth. These teenagers each deal with the fire in their own way, and find that there is more to fighting fires than a little water or ditch digging. The three do meet in the tale (it is plausible), and each tell their view of the events in concurrent chapters. Ingold breaks in with facts and accounts of actual events, which makes the fictitious story feel all the more real.
Ingold has done her homework, and it shows in the story. Her afterword, acknowledgements, and list of suggested reading at the end all provide valuable information. The only problem I had with the book was a bit of charaterization--the relationships between the characters felt forced and unbelievable, particularly the budding romance between Jarrett and Lisbeth. On their own, the characters were strong, interesting, and contributed to the story. But when they came in contact with the others, even the minor characters became a bit forced in the relationships in which they were observing or participating. Otherwise this is a wonderful example of great historical fiction.
Average customer rating:
- A Page-Turner that happens to have Amish Characters
- NO STRANGE FIRE is an incredible novel.
- A great way to learn about the Amish lifestyle
- An excellent portrayal of Amish life.
- Ehtnographic novel about the Amish barn fires in Big Valley
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No Strange Fire
Ted Wojtasik
Manufacturer: Herald Press
ProductGroup: Book
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Customer Reviews:
A Page-Turner that happens to have Amish Characters.......2003-03-08
I won't deny that the list of noted Amish and Mennonite reviewers listed on the back cover did give me pause when I first picked up this novel, but after the Chapter 1, I was hooked. Wojtasik's elaborate, post-modern rendering of an Amish youth venturing out into the "englische world," exploring his identity, values, and faith, captivated my imagination. I found his use of a young Amish boy to carry what is clearly a traditional American tale as masterful. Rather than turning to what have become the stock characters of the "other" in the final decades of the twentieth century, Wojtasik turns to a well established community of the past, if you will, to reinvent and retell the American mythical experience or journey. The motifs suggesting Dante, Scripture, and a host of American literary texts (such Melville's _Moby Dick_ or Poe's _Arthur Gordon Pym_) aid the author in creating a multi-leveled tapestry, forcing the reader to experience this simple tale in a most sophisticated manner. And beneath all of this is the tale of the American--Irving's "Rip Van Winkle" or Potok's Danny of _The Chosen_--trying desperately to break the chains of the past, reinvent himself, and find his own personal paradise. What is perhaps the most fulfilling part of this text is the fact that unlike so many American protagonists, Jacob finds redemption, learns to balance both his individual desires (his suggested future friendship with Paul V.) and is able to return home.
Finally I would argue that although this novel can be instructive in elucidating the ways of the Amish, it is mainly an excellent read that happens to have characters from the Amish community.
NO STRANGE FIRE is an incredible novel........1999-10-14
Mr. Wojtasik has managed to create an incredibly evocative work interweaving biblical narrative, Dante's INFERNO, and literary allusions as well as present the Amish culture all within the framework of a mystery novel--that is the true achievement. NO STRANGE FIRE is an accomplished and powerful first work of fiction. Everyone should buy it and read it. This is money NOT WASTED.
A great way to learn about the Amish lifestyle.......1999-05-11
OK... Let's start with what this book ISN'T... It ISN'T a first rate mystery. The ending is predictable, the surprises are nowhere to be seen, and the dialogue between the characters is wooden and highly unrealistic. BUT... what this book IS is an interesting format to learn about the Amish. It's all presented here in a tale-like (if pedestrian paced) story. So, if you've always wanted to learn about the Amish, but were unsure of a "fun" way to go about it, this may be for you, but if you want a spine-tingling, page turning tale, I'd suggest you spend your money elsewhere.
An excellent portrayal of Amish life........1999-01-07
A fine blend of the inside world of the Amish and an interesting mystery. Well written and I am looking forward to more books by Mr. Wojtasik.
Ehtnographic novel about the Amish barn fires in Big Valley.......1998-12-18
This books is an excellent ehtnography of Amish living in Big Valley, Pa. It is a story about the Amish barn fires with vivid descriptions and believable characterization. The author tells the story like a true "mystery". Having been to one of the bed and breakfasts up the road from much of the story line it was even more interesting to me. There are specific descriptions of Amish life interweaved with true mystery storytelling. If this novel were advertised and made commerical it would be a best seller.
Average customer rating:
- Unpretentious but great modern classic
- It has to be my favorite
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Norman Maclean Reading: A River Runs Through It (Excerpts) Young Men and Fire (Work in Progress)
Norman MacLean
Manufacturer: Amer Audio Prose Library Inc
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Audio Cassette
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Young Men and Fire
ASIN: 1556441266 |
Customer Reviews:
Unpretentious but great modern classic.......2005-12-29
Please note that I limit my remarks to the main excerpted novel.
I've often heard that this is a superbly crafted novel, and it announces this from the very opening sentence, almost the way Gravity's Rainbow did with the infamous line, "A screaming comes across the sky." But unlike the prolix Pynchon, McLean is an author of deliberate economy and calculated brevity, which he knows how to put to good use. As a result, McLean knows how to tell a good story, and this tale certainly ranks as one of the greatest of the many works inspired by the venerated hobby of fly-fishing.
Speaking for myself, I'm willing to compromise on certain things. For example, I'm willing to sacrifice craftsmanship for creativity, and an author who shows great originality or even brilliance but is a little rough around the edges formally or stylistically, is probably even rarer. You can see this in certain composers, too. For example, Beethoven's transitions are sometimes a little rough, unlike Mendelsohn's or Schubert's, who, like McLean, show superior craftsmanship here. But there's no doubt that Beethoven was the greater composer of the three (although all three are certainly great composers). Also, Schubert had a truly artesian gift for coming up with melodies that even his mentor, Beethoven, lacked. And yet Beethoven is still the greater composer because of his other many strengths.
But before I wander too far into the muddy Elysian fields of comparative aesthetics, McLean's book has become a classic of northwestern writing, and many think it belongs in the Pantheon of great American literature, an elevated position the pragmatic and unpretentious Scottsman in McLean might have regarded with a somewhat jaundiced eye. But as a friend of mine once remarked, unlike Barth's later books, whose literary merit rarely exceeds their pretentions, McLean's book transcends the fly-fishing genre, exceeding its modest aspirations to become a truly great novel in its own right. Overall it's a finely crafted, unpretentious, but great little modern classic.
It has to be my favorite.......1998-11-18
When I first saw the movie, I thought to myself, is there a book. Well there is one, it is the most accurate desription of the way a fly-fisherman thinks, feels,is. Like the way a rod feels in your hands, what to do if you hooka big brown trout. I know because that is my life. This book surpases even "My Name is Asher Lev".
Average customer rating:
- A slice of history
- Five Stars Primarily Because of Its Importance
- Tragic, insightful story of the segregated South
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Fire in the Flint (Brown Thrasher Books)
Walter Francis White
Manufacturer: University of Georgia Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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Quicksand and Passing (American Women Writers Series)
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Flight (Voices of the South)
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Home To Harlem (Northeastern Library of Black Literature)
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There Is Confusion (Northeastern Library of Black Literature)
ASIN: 082031742X |
Customer Reviews:
A slice of history.......2004-12-01
This book is not as unkown as the reviews above suggest. The book is on the reading list of some history and American Lit courses at the University of Georgia. I discovered the book in a display on Georgia History at a shopping mall near Atlanta. I was then able to check it out of my local library. I thought the book was excellent. Unfortunately, the Klan was at its peak in 1924, the same year the book was published. Unfortunately Mr. White knew was he was talking about.
Five Stars Primarily Because of Its Importance.......2002-12-18
The reason I rate "The Fire in the Flint" five stars is because it is one of the many novels (books as a whole) written by very intelligent African American authors, which do not receive their just due by the mainstream press. Those in the know about the type of society we live in realize that certain books, certain films, certain plays which are truly outstanding, get ignored for reasons that are part of an agenda sometimes unnoticed even by those pushing the agenda. Through this novel (NAACP executive secretary Walter White's first, and I think only one), White proved that he knew from where the South's and this nation's racial problem sprang. Had he not chosen a career as a civil rights leader, and instead, become a full-time novelist, this book proves that eventually he could easily have ranked as high in stature as the best serious novelists in the country. But, obviously, he had his own reasons for pursuing the career path that he did. No doubt, some of those reasons had to do with pragmatism. Nevertheless, this is a very impressive first effort, given that it is alleged that White wrote the entire novel only in a matter of weeks while on a vacation.
Imagine what he might have written had he taken a year or two, to refine his theme and narrative? And rest assured, there are PLENTY of other African Americans of White's era who, no doubt, had similar creative talent. Let "The Fire in the Flint" be a lesson to all of us, regarding what we truly DO NOT know about plenty of talented, impressive people, primarily forgotten by history, as well as those not even written up in the history books.
Tragic, insightful story of the segregated South.......2000-03-28
Fire in the Flint is a striking novel that is not only valuable as a work of literature, but also as a historical resource about racial oppression in the segregated South. The main character is a black Harvard-educated doctor who returns home shortly after World War I to set up a medical practice in Georgia. I enjoyed the way that the author W. White tells the story through the eyes of this courageous (and naive) character -- he is familiar with the rules of the segregated South, but at the same time his education and status have made him a stranger, outraged and frustrated at the oppression of his people. Overall this novel is tragic but insightful and as a student I found it very instructive. (I could have done without the clunky romantic side plot that fell flat in my opinion.) Still, a great book!
Average customer rating:
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Baptized in the Fire of Revolution: The American Social Gospel and the Ymca in China, 1919-1937
Chun Hsing
Manufacturer: Lehigh University Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0934223416 |
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Captain's Fire, The
J.S. Marcus
Manufacturer: Knopf
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover
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ASIN: 0679401849
Release Date: 1996-02-20 |
Book Description
In a comic, disturbing, intense, coming-of age novel that takes readers from the suburbs of Milwaukee to the ruins of the old Prussian capital of Konigsberg--and introduces them to skinheads, drag queens, and international hustlers--Marcus chronicles the exploits of a young American Jew who, in an alarmingly Oblomovian fashion, is becoming physically larger and larger.
Customer Reviews:
Cartography of the Mind.......2002-05-24
In the stories in "The Art of Cartography," his delightfully original earlier book, Marcus made an artform of a constantly shifting focus, stories that began as an account of one person but then shifted to another, then another, rather like the meanderings of a bubble-headed gossip on speed. That chattering, miniaturist style, with its interweaving threads and outlandish divagations, has metamorphosed here to an interior monologue par excellence, darker and at the same time more substantive, with a seemingly undisciplined series of digressions, wheels within wheels, to make even "Wittgenstein's Nephew" sound linear and conventional by comparison. The narrator, a bookish young American Jew living in post-wall Berlin, full of observations variously geographic, familial and intellectual, was no doubt too worldly and literate to appeal to much of the American reading public, and this may account for the book's relative lack of success, in spite of a bookjacket encomium by Walter Abish. But make no mistake: Marcus is a major talent, a heavyweight in a generation with seemingly few of them, and moreover one of few writers around with the wherewithal to push language and novelistic form in a bracingly new direction. This work is a success in every important way.
Why wait until the world catches up with Marcus? Buy a remaindered copy of "The Captain's Fire" and enjoy him now.
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Guarding the Fire: A Textbook on Spirituality for Young Men
Manufacturer: Good Ground Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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Writing for Standardized Tests
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This Earth of Mankind (Buru Quartet)
ASIN: 1885996233 |
Product Description
A superb resource for educators and parents seeking to respond to the needs of young men in an uncertain and changing world.
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