The Anthropology of Turquoise: Meditations on Landscape, Art, and Spirit by Ellen Meloy
324 pages
Published 2002
Read from August 16 to August 19
Rating: ★★★★½ out of 5
When you haven't read many books of a particular mold, the few that you do read inevitably suggest similarities between each other. Drawing comparisons between this book and Rebecca Solnit's A Field Guide to Getting Lost are unavoidable. Both collections mingle astoundingly articulate personal essays with digressions on art and the natural and human history of the American Southwest. Both sets of essays ramble over vast conceptual territories but remain loosely (sometimes very loosely) held together by the themes in their respective titles. Both spend an extravagant amount of time dwelling on the color blue (half of Solnit's book consists of ruminations on the theme "The Blue of Distance," while the entirety of Meloy's text relates, however indirectly, to the tints between blue and green). Of the two authors, I think Solnit writes the more concise, gorgeous prose, whereas Meloy conveys richer and rawer emotion, funnier, more heartbreaking, and at times more infuriating than anything in A Field Guide.
This is the sort of book you can't rush your way through, but it isn't a book that permits you to put it down for long, either. I feel inarticulate and dense after reading it, despairing of words to convey how Meloy's immense yet delicate imagery absorbed and abraded me. It wore me out, in a good way, leaving me both drained and replete, wrung out and refreshed. In a way I'm glad to be rid of it. Books this good can be parasitic, taking life from you while bending your will to their impulses. Perhaps I'm being dramatic. I liked this book, though.
No comments:
Post a Comment