The Land of Little Rain

The Land of Little Rain (The Modern Library Classics paperback, 2003)
by Mary Austin
USA, 1903

"For all the toll the desert takes of a man it gives compensations, deep breaths, deep sleep, and the communion of the stars. It comes upon one with new force in the pauses of the night that the Chaldeans were a desert-bred people. It is hard to escape the sense of mastery as the stars move in the wide clear heavens to risings and settings unobscured. They look large and near and palpitant; as if they moved on some stately service not needful to declare. Wheeling to their stations in the sky, they make the poor world-fret of no account. Of no account you who lie out there watching, nor the lean coyote that stands off in the scrub from you and howls and howls." --The Land of Little Rain, p. 10

Although The Land of Little Rain is very slow moving in parts, I liked this slender 109-page nature-writing classic quite a bit more than I would've expected from just a quick glance at that horrid New Age cover on my library copy above. Austin's prose is suitably spare and unadorned throughout this series of 14 non-fiction vignettes on life in the harsh southern California desert, but she has a great eye for detail and an unconventional point of view that provide for constant surprises when leafing through her work (to provide just one example, Austin is as likely to decry an act of violence with an unexpectedly secular aside--"Since it appears that we make our own heaven here, no doubt we shall have a hand in the heaven of hereafter" [40]--as she is to attribute John Muir's profound love of the natural world to his status as "a devout man" in another passage [95]). Geographically focused on the areas near the Mojave Desert and the Owens Valley in California where the author lived at the dawn of the 20th century, the Land of Little Rain's thematic concerns embrace the flora and fauna of the region, the itinerant gold prospectors still looking for their lucky strike, and--perhaps most interesting of all over a century later--Austin's interactions with the Paiute and Shoshone Indians and the Mexican settlers of her adopted home. Discovering that the midwest transplant and single mom Austin was so appreciative of these different cultures in an age notorious for intolerance of all kinds makes me want to learn more about this gifted writer sooner rather than later. Rating: 4 out of 5 stars. (http://www.modernlibrary.com/)

Mary Austin

The Modern Library edition of The Land of Little Rain includes a fine biographical sketch by Robert Hass, but other versions of the text are available online for free due to its status as a public domain work. For a good recent blog entry about Austin and her life, check out Prof. Peter Richardson's self-titled blog on Californian culture here.

Satan's Circus: Murder, Vice, Police Corruption, and New York's Trial of the Century

Satan's Circus: Murder, Vice, Police Corruption, and New York's Trial of the Century (Crown hardback, 2007)
by Mike Dash
UK, 2007

Since I'm suddenly behind on all my reading challenges except for the one that hasn't started yet, I'm glad that the 400+ page Satan's Circus will at least count for one of them. A meticulously-researched look into NYPD Lieutenant Charles Becker's death sentence for the murder of gambler Herman Rosenthal in 1912, the book's at its best evoking the period flavor of the Satan's Circus area--here described as the stretch of turf ranging vertically between 23rd and 57th Streets and bounded laterally by 6th and 10th Avenues--or what the author calls "the most glamorous, notorious square mile on earth" (p. 5) for its infamous all-night drinking, gambling, and prostitution district. Dash is strong at setting his main story within its historical and political contexts, linking the Becker case to just one stage among many in the rise of police corruption and reform movements in pre-Times Square Manhattan. Unfortunately, the parts dedicated to the "trial of the century" itself didn't really do it for me. Despite a colorful cast of real-life characters and a case in which a dirty cop seems to have been successfully framed for murder by an even more unscrupulous hoodlum, this chronicle never really connected with me as much as I would have liked. It's a good to very good read that fans of New York history should appreciate, but it probably could have used a little more dirt on the entertainment district to liven it up for everybody else--or at least me! (http://www.crownpublishing.com/)

A Land So Strange: The Epic Journey of Cabeza de Vaca

by Andrés Reséndez
USA, 2007
ISBN 978-0-465-06840-1

"For sheer drama and excitement, the journey of Cabeza de Vaca and his companions remains unrivaled, even by the adventurous standards of the Age of Exploration. Out of 300 men who set out to colonize Florida in 1528, only four survived: Cabeza de Vaca, two other Spaniards, and Estebanico. They became stranded. And to reenter European-controlled territory, they were forced into a harrowing passage on makeshift rafts across the Gulf of Mexico, years of captivity in what is now Texas, and a momentous walk across the continent all the way to the Pacific coast.

This small band of men thus became the first outsiders to behold what would become the American Southwest and northern Mexico, the first non-natives to describe this enormous land and its peoples. Conversely, innumerable natives living in the interior of the continent experienced the passage of the three Spaniards and the African as an extraordinary portent, a first brush with the world beyond America. The natives called the four travelers 'the children of the sun' because they seemed to have come from such unimaginably remote lands." (Reséndez, 2-3)

For our latest installment in the Back to History Challenge, I'm pleased to note that Andrés Reséndez, a professor of history at UC Davis who hails from Mexico City, has written an outstanding companion piece to Naufragios called A Land So Strange: The Epic Journey of Cabeza de Vaca. Although I chose the quote above to start with in part because it does such an effective job of selling Cabeza de Vaca's story, I also like it because Reséndez' sensitivity in considering both sides' reactions to this early New World encounter is typical of his style. As a result, his book, accurately described as "the extraordinary tale of a shipwrecked Spaniard who walked across America in the sixteenth century," is just a delight. What's more, reading this text side by side with Cabeza de Vaca's own version of events will probably only increase your appreciation of the original.

Where Naufragios basically begins in media res, for example, Reséndez thankfully backtracks to provide biographical information on ill-starred expedition leader Pánfilo de Narváez and a wealth of background info on Spain's maritime activities in the 16th century. Moving ahead to the even juicier parts of Cabeza de Vaca's narrative, Reséndez' history is equally adept at filling in the various lacunae that are either glossed over or left unaddressed in that early chronicle. An epilogue concerning what happened to the four survivors after they returned to "civilization" is particularly moving. All in all, this is an extremely engaging and eye-opening account that should be of interest whether or not you've ever read Naufragios in the first place. In addition, there are a host of carefully-chosen maps and images and a full 18 pages worth of suggestions for further reading for those who want to know more about the world of the four survivors--Cabeza de Vaca, Castillo, Dorantes, and the slave Estebanico--"who were European and African by birth...but becoming American by experience" (10). A superb read.

• Reséndez, Andrés. A Land So Strange: The Epic Journey of Cabeza de Vaca. New York: Basic Books, 2007.

Bonus: Click here for a nice interview with Professor Reséndez where he talks about his book.

Naufragios

Naufragios (libro de bolsillo, 2003)
por Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca
España, 1542 y 1555
ISBN 84-376-0851-1

"Los indios, de ver el desastre que nos había venido y el desastre en que estábamos, con tanta desventura y miseria, se sentaron entre nosotros, y con el gran dolor y lástima que hubieron de vernos en tanta fortuna, comenzaron todos a llorar recio, y tan de verdad, que lejos de allí, se podía oír, y esto les duró más de media hora. Cierto ver que estos hombres tan sin razón y tan crudos, a manera de brutos, se dolían tanto de nosotros, hizo que en mí y en otros de la compañía creciese más la pasión y la consideración de nuestra desdicha". (Cabeza de Vaca, 121)

Este libro fue un verdadero encanto. Un clásico de la literatura hispanoamericana colonial, la obra es la relación en primera persona de Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, el tesorero de la expedición de Pánfilo de Narváez a conquistar la Florida en 1527 para el entonces rey Carlos V de España. Después de una serie de desventuras e un errabundeo de nueve años en las tierras que ahora pertenecen a los Estados Unidos y México, Cabeza de Vaca reapareció al lado opuesto del continente en 1536 como uno de sólo cuatro sobrevivientes (tres españoles e un esclavo de Marruecos) del proyecto. Seis años más tarde, escribió este testimonio para compartir con su rey todo lo que pasó durante los años "que por muchas y muy extrañas tierras que anduve perdido y en cueros" (76).

No tengo ganas de entrar en el debate sobre la veracidad de Cabeza de Vaca como narrador aquí (si quiere saber más, veáse los comentarios agudos del editor Juan Francisco Maura en su introducción a esta edición), pero hasta un simple resumen de los "ingredientes" de su historia incluiría asuntos como huracanes, ataques dirigidos a o sufridos por parte de varios grupos de indígenas, episodios de hambre e incluso del canibalismo, un periodo de esclavitud para los españoles, otros periodos de vivir en paz con los "indios", varios ahogos, etcétera. ¿Increíble o sencillamente difícil creer? Cada uno tendrá su propria respuesta, pero a lo largo de su narración Cabeza de Vaca nunca deja sorpresarnos. Además, muchas de las escenas narradas parecen proceder de experiencias auténticas como la de los indios en la cita arriba. La nota: ¡totalmente divertido: cinco estrellas de cinco estrellas!

*****

"The Indians, upon seeing the disaster that had befallen us and the disastrous circumstances which we were in with so much misfortune and misery, sat down among us. And with the great grief and pity that they had in seeing us in such straits, they all began to cry so loudly and so earnestly that the wailing could be heard very far away from there. They did this for more than half an hour. To be sure, seeing that these men so lacking in reason and so primitive, in the manner of beasts, were so grief-stricken over us, only increased the agony and the reflections about our wretched situation in me and others in my company." (Cabeza de Vaca, 121)

This book was a sheer pleasure. A classic of Spanish-American colonial literature, the work is the first-person account of Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, the treasurer on Pánfilo de Nárvaez' expedition to conquer Florida in 1527 for the then king Carlos V of Spain. After a series of misfortunes and nine years spent wandering in lands that now belong to the United States and Mexico, Cabeza de Vaca reappeared on the other side of the continent in 1536 as one of only four survivors (three Spaniards and one slave from Morocco) of the mission. Six years later, he wrote this testimonial for his king to convey everything that had happened during the years when he passed "through the many and very strange lands where I wandered lost and in animal hides" (76).

I don't want to enter into the debate about the truthfulness of Cabeza de Vaca as a narrator here (those wanting to know more should see editor Juan Francisco's Maura's trenchant comments in his introduction to this edition), but even a simple summary of the "ingredients" of his story would include matters like hurricanes, attacks directed at or received from various indigenous groups, portrayals of starvation and even of cannibalism, a period of enslavement for the Spaniards, other periods of living in peace with the "Indians," various drownings, etc. An incredible story or just difficult to believe? Everybody will have their own response to that, but Cabeza de Vaca never once fails to surprise us throughout the length of his narrative. In addition, many of the narrated scenes seem to come from authentic experiences such as the one about the Indians in the quote above. Grade: totally entertaining--five out of five stars!

• Cabeza de Vaca, Álvar Núñez. Naufragios (edición de Juan Francisco Maura). Madrid: Cátedra, 2003. (http://www.catedra.com/)

Places Left Unfinished at the Time of Creation

Places Left Unfinished at the Time of Creation (2000 paperback)
by John Phillip Santos
USA, 1999
ISBN 0-14-029202-0

"It sometimes seems as if Mexicans are to forgetting what the Jews are to remembering. We have made selective forgetting a sacramental obligation. Leave it all in the past, all that you were, and all that you could not be. There is pain enough in the present to go around. Some memories cannot be abandoned. Let the past reclaim all the rest, forever, and let stories come to their fitting end." (5)

A beautifully-written meditation on the passage of time and the repatriation of cultural memory. While ostensibly a very personal memoir dedicated to unearthing the truth behind the untold story of his grandfather Juan José's apparent suicide in 1939, family history eventually merges with an almost cosmological mysticism here as the San Antonio native Santos' search for answers leads him further and further afield in time and space piecing together the puzzle of his family's "lost history in Mexico" (122). Somewhere along the line, this investigation into his roots and the subsequent reflections upon what his closest relatives gained and lost when they fled the violence of the Mexican Revolution to take up a new life in Texas become linked to universal themes about exile and how we all relate to the past. Like the voladores, whose aerial performances he so admires, Santos' own fearless narrative arc unfolds with both poetic grace and an almost pre-Columbian precision in an elegiac testimonio shot through with magic and realism. A superb achievement. (http://www.penguinputnam.com/)