A pleasure for men entering autumn, and for anyone who knows how to flick a line.
Meditations on the art of angling, mortality and more in one of those charged places where meditations come easily—Yellowstone National Park.
Yellowstone is now in the news for its disconcertingly rumbling volcanoes, but Wetherell (Soccer Dad: A Father, a Son, and a Magic Season, 2008, etc.) inclines to timelessness and the eternal verities, since he is confronting the specter of turning 55, “the real big 5-5, not the phony big 5-0 that I had passed in a breeze.” When a man of a certain leaning has to face such portentous moments, he does so with reel in hand. “For most people,” writes the author, “trout fishing is a much handier motive than philosophy.” That sentiment echoes Norman Maclean, the great philosopher of American rivers, but Wetherell does more than echo. He offers a refreshingly original set of observations on all manner of things, particularly the advance of years, which men are supposed to endure stoically and with mouths clamped shut. Echoes of Robert Bly and Iron John? Some, but there’s none of Bly’s touchy-feely, drum-circle squishiness here. Instead, Wetherell recommends that men of his age light out for the territory, as Roald Amundsen set off for the poles and, at 54, dreamed of traversing the Arctic in a zeppelin. Men of his age, arthritic but increasingly wise, are not supposed to spend much time staring into mirrors, Wetherell counsels, even though, as he notes in passing, Montaigne wisely said, “Old age plants more wrinkles in the mind than it does on the face.” Looking into a glassy trout stream makes for a seemly substitute. So Wetherell, pondering the history and meaning of wild Yellowstone, concludes that fishing is what matters in life, and ties on a “big Wooly Bugger and [plays] the chuck-and-duck game instead.”
A pleasure for men entering autumn, and for anyone who knows how to flick a line.Pub Date: March 1, 2009
ISBN: 978-0-8032-1130-8
Page Count: 178
Publisher: Univ. of Nebraska
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2009
One of the great pitchers in baseball history (and one of the most outspoken and disagreeable), Gibson recalls his storied career with the capable help of Wheeler (I Had a Hammer, not reviewed) and shows he's not done being ``difficult.'' A ferocious competitor who made his living pitching high and tight, Gibson had a reputation throughout his 17 years with the St. Louis Cardinals for being just as uncompromising and angry off the field, especially concerning racial matters. Gibson was raised in an Omaha, Nebr., housing project, where his older brother was hero, mentor, and coach. After college, Gibson, who claims that he was better at basketball than baseball, signed a contract with both the Cardinals and the Harlem Globetrotters, playing one year for the latter. He calls his first professional baseball manager, Johnny Keane, ``the closest thing to a saint that I came across in baseball.'' When Keane replaced Solly Hemus (whom Gibson despised) in 1961, it turned the Cardinals', and Gibson's, fortunes around. Known for his extraordinary performances in the postseason, Gibson had a World Series record of 7-2, with a 1.89 ERA and an incredible 92 strikeouts over 81 innings. He won 20 games in five different seasons and in 1968 posted a 1.12 ERA in 305 innings. Gibson offers some fun and insightful recollections of big games, friends, and teammates such as Tim McCarver, Joe Torre, and Bob Uecker, and legendary matchups with Juan Marichal (``the best pitcher of my generation''), Sandy Koufax, and Don Drysdale. Despite his Hall of Fame credentials, Gibson claims he's been ostracized from the game and hasn't held a baseball job since 1984. Though he grouses a lot about being slighted by major league baseball and rehashes all-too-familiar racial difficulties, it is refreshing to get the fiery Gibson's take on the grand old game. (8 pages b&w photos, not seen) (First printing of 75,000; $75,000 ad/promo; author tour)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-670-84794-1
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
A history more splendid than any maharaja’s golden howdah. (b&w illustrations throughout)
A celebration of the Indian elephant, though the animal’s current precarious circumstances make this a cautionary tale as well.
While Alter (All the Way to Heaven, 1998, etc.) has spent many years in the subcontinent, this work stems from a series of journeys he made throughout India during 2001–02, ranging from Assam to Dehradun to the southern tip. It’s a story well and fondly told, of myth and art and great Indian masterworks, with a smattering (which is all that’s really known) of natural history about the Indian elephant’s behavior and biology. Alter notes that only a small percentage of Indian elephants live in national parks; the majority roam in forest reserves and private land, leaving them vulnerable to habitat encroachment and poaching. Dividing his time equally between scouring ancient texts and observation in the field, the author finds a close braiding of intimate knowledge of the elephant with the creature’s mythological status. In some instances they are portly, playful gods, in others emblems of authority, such as war elephants. As scholarly as Alter can be, he also has a knack for describing the elephants’ landscape: a gilded-green river under a saffron sky, flowers and birds flashing orange and turquoise, groves of bamboo and ordered ranks of teak trees. He works the animal’s contradictory status as both “an emblem of desire, the image of gajagamini—a woman whose walk is as seductive as an elephant’s,” and as a marauding raider, ruining a farmer’s crop in a night. The elephant’s survival cannot be assured solely by creating sanctuaries, Alter warns: it requires a “sustained commitment” from state and citizen alike.
A history more splendid than any maharaja’s golden howdah. (b&w illustrations throughout)Pub Date: May 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-15-100646-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2004
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