Synopses & Reviews
These essays include meditations and arguments on becoming a writer; on old-growth forest and the practice of clear-cutting; on the fluid dynamics and biotic diversity and mythic resonance of rivers; on the writers Ken Kesey and Wallace Stegner; on the literary genre of creative nonfiction; on death and dying and the consolations of mortality; on the al-Qaeda attacks of September 11, 2001; and on my allegiances to the places and region and country I call home. So writes John Daniel in the introduction to his latest book of essays, The Far Corner, Daniel writes from the ground he walks on and the landscape he inhabits, spinning narratives that seek to define how he belongs to the land and to life itself. He takes his readers to beaches, old-growth forests, and deep river canyons--wild places, and places scarred by human exploitation--and leads us also through inner landscapes where he explores mortality, creativity, and spirituality. This collection extends John Daniel's earlier work in the personal essay form that Richard Nelson has called wise, deep, passionate, meticulously informed. An important contribution to the legacy of insight, beauty, and hope shaped by a new generation of American nature writers.
Review
Praise for John Daniel
"The Far Corner makes such good company because the writing is patient with what it wants to discuss. It thinks, recognizes nuance and includes it rather than dismissing it. The result is a view (of rivers, logging, Wallace Stegner, nonfiction prose) thats layered rather than simplistic and accurate rather than glib. John Daniels essays sound a voice that wants to tell the truth and that finds outand makes clearhow complicated and mysterious an effort this can be." Lex Runciman, Professor of English, Linfield College
As beautifully wrought as it is truthful, Rogue River Journal is a Walden for our time.” Pacific Northwest Booksellers Awards Committee
John Daniel has quietly established himself over the past decade as one of the premier writers on the West Coast.” The Bloomsbury Review
John Daniel loves wilderness of all kinds, and gets out into it every chance, but it is more than scenery he is after. He has a streak of mysticism, some generalized religious sense, that is stimulated by the natural world, by physical effort, as in climbing, and by participation in the sounds and smells and seasons of nature . . . his essays will win him devoted readers.” Wallace Stegner
Daniels writing is known for its clarity.” The Oregonian
Synopsis
John Daniel writes from the ground he walks on and the landscape he inhabits in the northwest corner of America, spinning narratives that seek to discover how he belongs to the land and to the wholeness of life itself. He takes his readers to beaches, old-growth forests, sagebrush steppe-lands, and deep river canyons wild places, and places scarred by human exploitation and leads us too through inner terrains where he explores mortality, creativity, and spirituality.
Both lyrical and informative, these essays are diverse in focus, various in length, and inventive in form one is constructed as a journal, two as linear montages. By turns playful, awed, cantankerous, and tender in tone, they deliver themselves in a style of high informality, welcoming readers to join the author as he journeys through some of the puzzlements, sadnesses, and small glories of living. This collection extends John Daniels earlier work, The Trail Home, in the personal essay form.