Arboretum Library: Reading the Western Landscape Community Book Discussion 2022

“[The book is] a glossary of terms used to describe the landscape of North America... ‘but the writers’ intent was not to be exhaustive, let alone definitive.’ [Introduction] Instead, the aim was, in the windswept language of landscape writing, to name ‘the things we’ve picked out on the land,’ names we’ve held on to ‘to make ourselves abiding and real.’...Literature, or something like it, hovers over the project like an impending storm... ‘What many of us are hopeful of now, it seems, is being able to gain — or regain — a sense of allegiance with our chosen places...,’ [Introduction]” — Robert Sullivan, New York Times, December 3, 2006

Barry Lopez asked 45 poets and writers to define terms that describe America's land and water forms -- phrases like flatiron, bayou, monadnock, kiss tank, meander bar, and everglade. The result is a major enterprise comprising over 850 descriptions, 100 line drawings, and 70 quotations from works by Willa Cather, Truman Capote, John Updike, Cormac McCarthy, and others. Carefully researched and exquisitely written by talents such as Barbara Kingsolver, Lan Samantha Chang, Robert Hass, Terry Tempest Williams, Jon Krakauer, Gretel Ehrlich, Luis Alberto Urrea, Antonya Nelson, Charles Frazier, Linda Hogan, and Bill McKibben,Home Ground is a striking composite portrait of the landscape. At the heart of this expansive work is a community of writers in service to their country, emphasizing a language that suggests the vastness and mystery that lie beyond our everyday words.

“Raymond Chandler ...once said: ‘Hammett is all right. I give him everything. There were a lot of things he could not do, but what he did, he did superbly.’ He added, in a summary that helps define Hammett’s achievement: ‘He was spare, frugal, hard-boiled, but he did over and over again what only the best writers can ever do at all. He wrote scenes that seemed never to have been written before.’ He also gave his characters a distinctive language and convincing motivations in a genre that had grown stereotyped, flaccid and uninvolving.”--Robert McCrum, The Guardian

A coolly glittering gem of detective fiction that has haunted three generations of readers, from one of the greatest mystery writers of all time.. A Vintage Books Special Edition features an introduction by James Ellroy. A treasure worth killing for. Sam Spade, a slightly shopworn private eye with his own solitary code of ethics. A perfumed grafter named Joel Cairo, a fat man name Gutman, and Brigid O'Shaughnessy, a beautiful and treacherous woman whose loyalties shift at the drop of a dime. These are the ingredients of Dashiell Hammett's iconic, influential, and beloved The Maltese Falcon.

“Set in Chile in the early 1970s, [the book] traces the growth from innocence to experience of Mario Jimenez, a young postman whose sole duty is to deliver mail to [the poet] Pablo Neruda, the most famous citizen of Isla Negra, a tiny fishing hamlet. Neruda … bolsters Mario's romantic involvement with beautiful Beatriz by teaching the postman the magical, metaphorical language of poetry...This imaginative, amusing and ultimately ominous story depicts the perennial and uneven struggle between raw power and poetry.— Publishers Weekly [Made into the movie Il Postino.]

The book, which features gorgeous, full-color images of Morgan’s designs, also reveals much about her Paris education, her family life, her attitudes and her passions. By the end of Kastner’s book, Morgan feels close and dear. And we also understand how this prolific architect, who designed 700 buildings in her lifetime, could fade into obscurity after her death in 1957. Kastner’s book was 30 years in the making — it’s an exhaustive historic record that taps thousands of Morgan’s own letters (she saved everything), interviews with family and friends and Kastner’s own exposure to Morgan’s work. —  Gina Gotsill, Bay City News Foundation

This new biography--featuring over 150 archival images and full-color photographs printed throughout--introduces Julia Morgan as both a pioneering architect and a captivating individual. Julia Morgan was a lifelong trailblazer. She was the first woman admitted to study architecture at the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris and the first licensed to practice architecture in California. Over the first half of the 20th century, she left an indelible mark on the American West. Of her remarkable 700 creations, the most iconic is Hearst Castle. Morgan spent thirty years constructing this opulent estate on the California coast for the newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst--forging a lifelong friendship and creative partnership with him. Together, they built a spectacular and unequalled residence that once hosted the biggest stars of Hollywood's golden age, and that now welcomes hundreds of thousands of visitors each year. This compelling biography draws on interviews, letters, and Morgan's diaries, including never-before-seen reflections on faith, art, and her life experiences. Morgan's friendship with Hearst, her passion for California's landscape, her struggles with familial dementia, and her devotion to architecture reveal her to have been a singularly brilliant and determined artist.

“One of the more hidebound notions about American art is that modern art photography was strictly an East Coast phenomenon, and that Los Angeles represented a cultural backwater...[The author’s] groundbreaking study of...icons Edward Weston and Margrethe Mather, thoroughly debunks this falsehood. [The] exhaustively researched tome reveals how Weston’s work greatly matured during the 1920s in the semi-rural Tropico, now southern Glendale. ...Warren saw Weston as a complex figure, with as many shortcomings as lasting creative triumphs. ’I admire his work tremendously,...but he could be duplicitous and manipulative. He was extremely ambitious and driven. He had to support a family, after all.’”— Kirk Silsbee, Los Angeles Times

This captivating biography reveals the previously untold love story of Edward Weston and Margrethe Mather. Both were photographic artists at the center of the bohemian cultural scene in Los Angeles during the 1910s and 1920s, yet Weston would become a major Modernist photographer while Mather, who Weston ultimately expunged from his journals, would fall into obscurity. The book reveals how they and their entourage sought out the limelight as the Hollywood film industry came of age.  Based on ten years of research and illustrated with extraordinary images, some never published, this history has a captivating range of characters, including Charlie Chaplin, Imogen Cunningham, Max Eastman, Emma Goldman, Tina Modotti, Vaslav Nijinsky, and Carl Sandburg. The lively text brings to life the ambiance of this exciting time in Los Angeles history as well as its darker side. Artful Lives exceeds any previously published account of this key period in Weston's development and reveals Mather's important contribution to it, making it an essential reference in Weston studies.  

“[...The book] consists of twenty short essays, ...which blend several narrative elements [including] the author['s]... own evolution in understanding the ecology of grasslands, and his journey of discovery from childhood... [H]e delves deep into the ecology of Western America, ...revealing the enormous complexity of the interaction of humans with the Grass family that stretches far into our primal past ... and how many ways we are still tethered to their ecology... I especially appreciated the thoughtful passages on ranching in the West--how utterly marginal it has always been, and how important it remains as an appropriate land use... The chapter about the black footed prairie dog was my favorite--...on this ubiquitous, seemingly abundant and yet very threatened creature...". — Panayoti Kelaidis, Goodreads.com

Part autobiography, part philosophical rumination, this evocative conservation odyssey explores the deep affinities between humans and our original habitat: grasslands. In a richly drawn, anecdotally driven narrative, Joe C. Truett, a grasslands ecologist who writes with a flair for language, traces the evolutionary, historical, and cultural forces that have reshaped North American rangelands over the past two centuries. He introduces an intriguing cast of characters--wildlife and grasslands biologists, archaeologists, ranchers, and petroleum geologists--to illuminate a wide range of related topics: our love affair with turf and how it manifests in lawns and sports, the ecological and economic dimensions of ranching, the glory of cowboy culture, grasslands and restoration ecology, and more. His book ultimately provides the background against which we can envision a new paradigm for restoring rangeland ecosystems--and a new paradigm for envisioning a more sustainable future.

“...Le Guin is among the ... most respected American writers who regularly set their narrative in the future to force a dialogue with the here and now... [The book] is a slow, rich read, ...a liberal utopian vision, rendered far more complex ... by a sense of human suffering. ...The novel is about an imaginary people living in a far distant future on the Pacific coast. As a native of Berkeley, Calif., who lives in Portland, Ore., Mrs. Le Guin obviously knows her fictional territory. Moreover, if anyone is the world's greatest authority on the Kesh, it's the author, since she invented them. .”—Samuel R. Delany , New York Times

“It seems strange that more use has not been made of the opportunities for story making that are presented by the life of Chinese [immigrants] in America...Such a book, therefore...which deals with humorous and domestic phases of Chinese [American] life is refreshingly welcome. The writer tells her tales with a charming lightness of touch. Of the 36 stories in the collection, 20 are tales of Chinese [American] children and it is in some of these that the author is in her happiest vein. The stories are gathered in book from [many magazines.] It is well that they are so gathered for they deserve the success with the public that they have evidently had with the editors" — San Francisco Call, July 7, 1912

A rediscovered classic of linked short stories set in San Francisco's Chinatown, portraying Chinese Americans as they fall in love, encounter racism, and wrestle with their new, hyphenated identities--a century before writers like Maxine Hong Kingston and Amy Tan. Set in early twentieth-century Chinatown, Mrs. Spring Fragrance and Other Writings is the story of Chinese men and women living in the United States as they wrestle with prejudice and forced detention; choose to become wholly Americanized or stay true to their cultural heritage; meet both kind and predatory Americans; and find love, purpose, and understanding within their families. By turns ironic and heart-rending, these stories are windows into the lives of everyday people in an unforgiving, often racist city who find solidarity and hope in the most unexpected places.

Questions discussed:
• Icebreaker: Tell a brief story of one of your family members from the turn of the 20th century?
• Did the places, Seattle and San Francisco, resonate from other things you’ve read or experienced? Yes/No? Why?
• Do they seem like myths or fables as the introduction avers? Yes/No? Why?
• What did you think about the way the stories were told?
• Did it seem modern or of its time or something else? Yes/No? Why?
• What do you think the stories told, generally or with specific examples, about her or a life as a biracial person, and/or as an immigrant?
• What was she trying to tell us about Chinese marriage customs and relations between the married couples?
• Who is your favorite character? Why? Your least favorite? Why?
• What surprised you most about the book? Why?
• What did you think about her non-fiction writing at the end of this edition as opposed to the short stories? How did they differ?
• Any other ambiguities we need to clear up?
• Any other questions you have for the group?
• Favorite line, image, or passage?

“[The book] takes its title from The Tempest... Lucy Waring is a struggling actress who comes to visit her sister on Corfu. One of her neighbors is a renowned actor who’s taken a bit of a sabbatical and his son, a musician with whom Lucy comes to blows at first. [The book] is vintage Mary Stewart, with a murder or two, a mystery, romance, suspense, and lots of magic thrown in. Lucy is your typical Mary Stewart heroine: plucky, feisty, and has no end of courage to get her through her adventure. Her relationship with Max Gale is somewhat predictable, but much more interesting is Sir Julian … The plot moves at great speed, and there are some truly wonderful scenes in this book: none more so than Lucy’s initial encounter with the dolphin. I loved the author’s descriptions of Corfu. I also loved how Mary Stewart incorporates the political atmosphere of Corfu and Greece into the plot of this novel. This Rough Magic is, in my opinion, one of the better of Mary Stewart’s books.— A Girl Walks into a Bookstore blog

British actress Lucy Waring believes there is no finer place to be "at liberty" than the sun-drenched isle of Corfu, the alleged locale for Shakespeare's The Tempest. Even the suspicious actions of the handsome, arrogant son of a famous actor cannot dampen her enthusiasm for this wonderland in the Ionian Sea. Then a human corpse is carried ashore on the incoming tide ...

Here are the questions discussed on February 23, 2022

Icebreaker: Tell about a time you visited or lived on an island. Was it different? How? How not?
• Was she "plucky" and "feisty" as described in the review above? What does that mean in terms of a feminist view or not?
• Did the author think the romance was necessary? Why? Why not? Did you? Why? Why not?
• What did you think of the landscape? Did it seem Mediterranean? BTW "limes" in this story are not citrus. In the U.S. British "limes" are "lindens", probably Tilia europea.
• Any plot points we can chew on? Plausibility, etc.
• How is this book of its time? How would this book be different if it was written today?
• How does Shakespeare's Tempest fit in here?
• Who was your favorite/least favorite character? Why?
• What would you imagine if this was written from the island residents' point of view, not the tourists?
• How was the writing style, pace, etc.?
• Any other ambiguities we need to clear up?
• Any other questions you have for the group?
• Favorite line, image, or passage?

“Most books about one-room schools refer with nostalgia to pioneer days, but this refreshing story takes place in the Trans-Pecos section of Texas...Tired of ‘the rat race,’ Jones settled for half the salary when he became ‘teacher, principal, janitor’ of a one-room school in Terlingua, Tex. The reader comes to know the Jones family, schoolchildren, their parents, trustees, bureaucrats, and becomes deeply involved in all the red tape and struggle to accredit the school. Today’s massive educational problems are reduced to understandable size in this lighthearted study”—Ruth C. Ikerman, Los Angeles Times, September 28, 1978

Here are the questions discussed, March 30, 2022
Icebreaker: Who was your favorite teacher/instructor/professor and why? And/or Tell us about an isolated place you visited or lived at and what was the most astonishing thing about trying to visit and or live there.
How would this book be different if it was written today?
Who was your favorite character and why? Least favorite? Why?
Do you believe the story? Why? Why not?
Why do you think he was compelled to write the book?
What did you think of the writing style?
What did you think of his landscape descriptions? Teaching descriptions? Town description? And why?
Do you think he explained what happened sufficiently? Why? Why not?
Do you perceive the story as idyllic, hardscrabble, or something else? Why?
Why do you think he wrote this book?
What did you think of the chapter beginnings?
Why do you think Playboy Press published it?
Was it a satisfying read? Why? Why not?
Any ambiguities we need to clear up?
Favorite line, image, or passage?

Shedding profound natural light on the inner lives of migrant workers, Jaime Cortez's debut collection ushers in a new era of American literature that gives voice to a marginalized generation of migrant workers in the West. The first-ever collection of short stories by Jaime Cortez, Gordo is set in a migrant workers camp near Watsonville, California in the 1970s. A young, probably gay, boy named Gordo puts on a wrestler's mask and throws fists with a boy in the neighborhood, fighting his own tears as he tries to grow into the idea of manhood so imposed on him by his father. As he comes of age, Gordo learns about sex, watches his father's drunken fights, and discovers even his own documented Mexican-American parents are wary of illegal migrants. Fat Cookie, high schooler and resident artist, uses tiny library pencils to draw huge murals of graffiti flowers along the camp's blank walls, the words "CHICANO POWER" boldly lettered across, until she runs away from home one day with her mother's boyfriend, Manny, and steals her mother's Panasonic radio for a final dance competition among the camp kids before she disappears. And then there are Los Tigres, the perfect pair of twins so dark they look like indios, Pepito and Manuel, who show up at Gyrich Farms every season without fail. Los Tigres, champion drinkers, end up assaulting each other in a drunken brawl, until one of them is rushed to the emergency room still slumped in an upholstered chair tied to the back of a pick-up truck. These scenes from Steinbeck Country seen so intimately from within are full of humor, family drama, and a sweet frankness about serious matters - who belongs to America and how are they treated? How does one learn decency, when laborers, grown adults, must fear for their lives and livelihoods as they try to do everything to bring home a paycheck? Written with balance and poise, Cortez braids together elegant and inviting stories about life on a California camp, in essence redefining what all-American means.

“[The author]’s debut story collection, ... opens with “The Jesus Donut,” where a group of kids living in a fictional but all-too-real Gyrich Farms Worker Camp get a visit from a mobile doughnut vendor. …[The story] sets the tone for the collection’s waggish and tender look into this significantly ignored world of California migrant communities, here set around Watsonville in the 1970s — both documented and undocumented — mostly through young Gordo’s point of view and his local cast of characters. ...Cortez, a Bay Area author, masterfully navigates adverse conditions of migrant life while prioritizing in these stories the way people adapt to their circumstance — managing to find joy and amusement, love and triumph, that which makes us delightfully human — amid its challenge.”— Mia Jeffra, San Francisco Chronicle, August 16, 2021

Here are the questions discussed on Wednesday, April 27, 2022:
Icebreaker: How did you come to understand the labor that tends the food you eat?
What do you perceive the tenor of this book to be? Happy? Sad? Sweet? Bittersweet? All? Something else?
What is the author trying to tell the audience?
Who was your favorite character and why? Least favorite?
Which was your favorite story and why? Least favorite?
Are the stories believable, fables? fantasies? Why?
What did you think of the writing style? What are the strengths and/or weaknesses of his writing?
Did you see the landscape and feel the heat and other weather elements, etc.? Why? Why not?
Why do you think this became short stories, rather than a novel or a memoir?
Do you perceive the story as idyllic, hardscrabble, or something else? Why?
In some reviews he has been compared to John Steinbeck or David Sedaris. What do you think about these comparisons?
Does this seem like a first literary attempt? Why? Why not?
How are his approaches to “difficult subjects”, i.e. alcoholism, physical abuse, figuring out sexuality, death, etc.?
Any ambiguities we need to clear up?
Favorite line, image, or passage?

"[The book] attempts to bring ethnic studies & environmental studies into conversation. ... [She] positions goodlife writing within the interstices of mainstream environmental studies, Chicana/o studies, & Mexican American literary texts that emerge out of experiences of dispossession, poverty, and racism. [Her] decolonial stance is defined by engaging values & processes that reject Western epistemologies in order to make space for indigenous practices that have survived colonizing structures. ... In this sense, [the book] proposes a more nuanced understanding of environmentalism, one invested in building bridges between […] strands of knowing that posit mutually beneficial relationships between humans & the natural world. Goodlife writing embeds traditions of community, nonpossessiveness, & humility that never succumbed to modernist values.”— Cordelia E. Barrera, Resilience: A Journal of the Environmental Humanities

Winner of the Western Literature Association's 2017 Thomas J. Lyon Book Award in Western American Literary and Cultural Studies   Mexican American literature brings a much-needed approach to the increasingly urgent challenges of climate change and environmental injustice. Although current environmental studies work to develop new concepts, Writing the Goodlife looks to long-established traditions of thought that have existed in Mexican American literary history for the past century and a half. During that time period, Mexican American writing consistently shifts the focus from the environmentally destructive settler values of individualism, domination, and excess toward the more beneficial refrains of community, non-possessiveness, and humility. The decolonial approaches found in these writings provide rich examples of mutually respectful relations between humans and nature, an approach that Priscilla Solis Ybarra calls "goodlife" writing. Goodlife writing has existed for at least the past century, Ybarra contends, but Chicana/o literary history's emphasis on justice and civil rights eclipsed this tradition and hidden it from the general public's view. Likewise, in ecocriticism, the voices of people of color most often appear in deliberations about environmental justice. The quiet power of goodlife writing certainly challenges injustice, to be sure, but it also brings to light the decolonial environmentalism heretofore obscured in both Chicana/o literary history and environmental literary studies. Ybarra's book takes on two of today's most discussed topics--the worsening environmental crisis and the rising Latino population in the United States--and puts them in literary-historical context from the U.S.-Mexico War up to today's controversial policies regarding climate change, immigration, and ethnic studies. This book uncovers 150 years' worth of Mexican American and Chicana/o knowledge and practices that inspire hope in the face of some of today's biggest challenges.

Here are the questions we discussed on May 18, 2022, as we walked to the top of Tallac Knoll and admired our goodlife.

Icebreaker: Tell about when the light came on for you that “we” (meaning life and non-life on earth and in the cosmos) are all relatives.

Succinctly, what is the author trying to tell the audience?
What was your favorite literary example that she used? Least favorite? And why?
Can you follow her logic?
Do you agree with her examples? Can you cite an example of area that might need some clarity? Can you provide what you think she means in that case?
What did you think of the writing style? What are the strengths and/or weaknesses of her writing?
Did this book change any of your thought processes? Which? Why/Why not?
How does this book fit or play off other things you have read about Latina/o labor and/or relationship to the environment? Examples?
Any ambiguities we need to clear up?
Favorite line, image, or passage?