"the world is painted on a wild dark metal"
SHADOW COUNTRY
Peter Matthiessen
This had been sitting on my shelf in the commandeered personal library back home since about the spring of 2008, if I remember correctly. The text of the receipt, stuck somewhere between two random pages a third of the way in, was completely worn. But in keeping with my resolution to, this year, read bigger books, I figured it was finally time to dust this one off and plunge in.
This epic and stylistically virtuosic retelling of the life and legend of Everglades sugar cane planter and outlaw E.J. Watson and his attempts at empire building on the near-lawless Florida frontier at the turn of the twentieth century is the melding together and reformatting of three previously separate novels. Together, they provide a fascinating and monumental panorama, performing the neat trick of making the course of Watson's life a microcosm and prism of the nation's own changing throughout the course of his existence. His childhood is burdened with having grown up on the losing side of the Mason-Dixon during the Redemption Era and his frustrated attempts at bringing his corner of Paradise into the modern age reflect the callous and sometimes stilted progress that attended the nation's own mechanization and modernization, the devaluing of human life in the construction of which was a major feature in both Watson's enterprise and the modern industrialist's.
Book 1 in the tome presents a fractured portrait of Watson's last days, Book 2 makes a protagonist of one of his sons, set out, after a stint in WWI, to uncover the truth behind his father's demise, and Book 3 allows Watson to sing his own song, tracing his life from childhood to its end, presenting a man constantly at war with himself, his good intentions and his humanity tussling forever and, more often than not, losing to his shadow self.
An incredible piece of literature. I don't know that I would've been ready for it back in 2008. But I'm certainly content to have read it when I did.
Highly recommended.
Peter Matthiessen
This had been sitting on my shelf in the commandeered personal library back home since about the spring of 2008, if I remember correctly. The text of the receipt, stuck somewhere between two random pages a third of the way in, was completely worn. But in keeping with my resolution to, this year, read bigger books, I figured it was finally time to dust this one off and plunge in.
This epic and stylistically virtuosic retelling of the life and legend of Everglades sugar cane planter and outlaw E.J. Watson and his attempts at empire building on the near-lawless Florida frontier at the turn of the twentieth century is the melding together and reformatting of three previously separate novels. Together, they provide a fascinating and monumental panorama, performing the neat trick of making the course of Watson's life a microcosm and prism of the nation's own changing throughout the course of his existence. His childhood is burdened with having grown up on the losing side of the Mason-Dixon during the Redemption Era and his frustrated attempts at bringing his corner of Paradise into the modern age reflect the callous and sometimes stilted progress that attended the nation's own mechanization and modernization, the devaluing of human life in the construction of which was a major feature in both Watson's enterprise and the modern industrialist's.
Book 1 in the tome presents a fractured portrait of Watson's last days, Book 2 makes a protagonist of one of his sons, set out, after a stint in WWI, to uncover the truth behind his father's demise, and Book 3 allows Watson to sing his own song, tracing his life from childhood to its end, presenting a man constantly at war with himself, his good intentions and his humanity tussling forever and, more often than not, losing to his shadow self.
An incredible piece of literature. I don't know that I would've been ready for it back in 2008. But I'm certainly content to have read it when I did.
Highly recommended.