From Powells.com
Few
authors who have read at Powell's over the years inspire an audience quite
like Barry
Lopez. Admittedly, at the City of Books he's playing to a home crowd.
Lopez lives on a beautiful stretch of the McKenzie River about two hours
south of Portland. But we suspect he has the same effect on audiences
everywhere. Lopez reads, as he writes, with remarkable grace and authority.
Though he is a first rate fiction writer, Lopez is probably best known
for his nonfiction about the natural world. Lopez's first popular work,
Of
Wolves and Men, was a national bestseller and received a number of
awards. His most celebrated work, Arctic
Dreams: Imagination and Desire in a Northern Landscape, received the
1986 National
Book Award and is now widely considered a classic of the genre.
Though Lopez writes regularly for such publications as Harper's,
Paris Review, and Orion, About This Life is his first
nonfiction book in several years, and includes his most personal work
to date. The wise and lyrical essays in this collection recount Lopez's
early life, his far flung travels to such places as Hokkaido Island, the
Galápagos, and Bonaire, and, of course, a handful of eloquent pieces
about the current state of our relationship to the natural world. In an
earlier essay Lopez predicted the recent rise in popularity of "nature
writing." He suggested that it is "that strain of American literature
that, more than others now, is pursuing the ancient discourse on human
fate." If that is true, with writers of the caliber of Barry Lopez,
the genre is in good hands. Martin, Powells.com
Synopses & Reviews
The acclaimed National Book Award winner gives us a collection of spellbinding new essays that, read together, form a jigsaw-puzzle portrait of an extraordinary man.
With the publication of his best-selling Of Wolves and Men, and with the astonishing originality of Arctic Dreams, Barry Lopez established himself as that rare writer whose every book is an event, for both critics and his devoted readership. Now, in About This Life, he takes us on a literal and figurative journey across the terrain of autobiography, assembling essays of great wisdom and insight. Here is far-flung travel (the beauty of remote Hokkaido Island, the over-explored Galápagos, enigmatic Bonaire); a naturalist's contention (Why does our society inevitably strip political power from people with intimate knowledge of the land small-scale farmers, Native Americans, Eskimos, cowboys?); and pure adventure (a dizzying series of around-the-world journeys with air freight everything from penguins to pianos). And here, too, are seven exquisite memory pieces hauntingly lyrical yet unsentimental recollections that represent Lopez's most personal work to date, and which will be read as classics of the personal essay for years to come.
In writing about nature and people from around the world, by exploring the questions of our age, and, above all, by sharing a new openness about himself, Barry Lopez gives us a book that is at once vastly erudite yet intimate: a magically written and provocative work by a major American writer at the top of his form.
Review
"Never far from hand is the certitude, and attendant quandaries, of a need for ethical leanings, social responsibility, a keen moral intelligence." Kirkus Reviews
Review
"...in his travel writing Lopez takes readers not only out of themselves to another place but into themselves as well. It is the psychic landscape that compels him....Next to Lopez and a handful of other writers struggling to find meaning in a world gone wrong, the rest of us seem like pale shadows." Sara Wheeler, New York Times Book Review
Synopsis
The acclaimed National Book Award winner gives us his first major work of nonfiction in a decade: a collection of spellbinding new essays which, read together, form a jigsaw-puzzle portrait of an extraordinary man.
From the publication of his bestselling Of Wolves and Men and the astonishing originality of Arctic Dreams, Barry Lopez established himself as that rare writer whose every book is an event, both with critics and among his enormous readership. In About This Life he assembles essays of great wisdom and insight: far-flung travel (remote Hokkaido Island in Japan; the Galápagos) and naturalist provocations (why do we deprive people with intimate knowledge of the land -- small farmers, Indians, native Hawaiians, cowboys -- of political power?); pure adventure (a dizzying series of around-the-world journeys with air freight -- everything from penguins to pianos); as well as never-before-published Rilkesque memory pieces that represent his most personal work to date.
A book at once vastly erudite yet intimate, a magically written work by a major writer at the top of his form.
About the Author
Barry Lopez is the author of twelve books and is a contributing editor at Harper's. He lives in western Oregon.