|
|
|
Book Review
| Lines on the Land: Writers, Art, and the National Parks. By Scott Herring. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2004. xi + 199 pp. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index. Cloth $49.50, paper $16.50.
|
| Early writers and artists struggling to present the scenic magnificence of the western national parks worried that they were not equal to the task. Sights like the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone and Yosemite Valley left these visitors awestruck. Writers like John Muir and artists like Thomas Moran sought ways to become one with the places they represented, to understand them to the deepest degree possible. The products of their interpretations contained extravagant, even religious praise. The resulting writings and art works captured the public's imagination, as they still do for many Americans today. Such nature interpreters created what author Scott Herring called the "canon" of the national parks. |
1
|
|
Later, however, the narratives of authors and artists took on a different tone as they surveyed and interpreted the same parks. Some major figures like Ernest Hemingway chose to ignore the national parks entirely. But authors like Edward Abbey and Rick Bass and artists like Roger Minnick are at best bemused and more commonly outraged by what they see. According to Herring, that anger stems from the vast gulf between what the canon presents and the crowded, commercial recreation places that the parks have become. |
2
|
|
Lines on the Land is first and foremost a critique of art and literature. Herring focuses on the meaning of the national parks as the subject of these artistic and literary interpretations. He posits that early authors and artists spoke of park landscapes as sacred sites that required great effort to truly understand. Later observers faced auto-bound tourists; he uses Mencken's descriptor, the "booboisie," who are incapable of comprehending these holy places. Recent artistic interpreters of the parks, he suggests, rail not against real physical damage to the environment, but the death of the experience described by the canon-makers. These writers accuse the National Park Service of pandering to the lowest common denominator and Herring agrees that the actions of the Mission 66 program seem to justify that conclusion. He quotes Rick Bass who called the parks "places of narcissistic self-gratification, immense malls in which even the animals become consumer items" (p. 157). Contrasted with the canon, in which the parks "could, should, and must be perfect" (p. 172), these descriptions express and reinforce rage among the modern artistic interpreters. |
3
|
|
This thesis is not entirely new, but it is presented here in an engaging and thought-provoking book that is well written and illustrated. The book is divided into five chapters that move from the creation of the canon, through the reasons the canon-makers accepted tourism, how commercial forces, through the automobile, fostered shallow experiences, and how modern writers have become so disgusted that some describe the parks as impediments to nature and its appreciation. Interspersed with the chapters are short autobiographical essays about the author's experiences working in Yellowstone National Park, which reinforce the message of the main text. Eleven paintings and photographs, including nine in color, are well integrated into the text and support Herring's thesis. A useful bibliography rounds out what is an erudite and enjoyable book. Anyone interested in the relationship between people and place in the national parks, or in the genesis of some management problems, will be rewarded by reading Lines on the Land. |
4
|
|
Lary M. Dilsaver teaches in the Department of Geology and Geography at the University of South Alabama. |
Content in the History Cooperative database is intended for personal, noncommercial use only. You may not reproduce, publish, distribute, transmit, participate in the transfer or sale of, modify, create derivative works from, display, or in any way exploit the History Cooperative database in whole or in part without the written permission of the copyright holder.
|