|
|
|
Reviews
On Sacred Ground: The Spirit of Place in Pacific Northwest Literature
|
By Nicholas O'Connell
|
University of Washington Press, Seattle, 2003. Bibliography, index. 224 pages. $24.95 paper.
|
Reviewed by Albert Furtwangler
Salem, Oregon
|
|
|
| From its title, this book may seem to be a study of works about particular sacred settings in the Northwest. In fact, it is a once-over-lightly literary history, with brief biographies and plot-summary discussions of writers from across a large region. |
1
|
|
On Sacred Ground surveys seven stages of Northwest literature: oral tales of the original peoples, explorers' and settlers' journals, works inspired by Romantic and Transcendentalist idealism, realist works about hardships and survival, writings by the Northwest School of poets influenced by Theodore Roethke, and the work of contemporary writers, chiefly Gary Snyder, Ursula K. LeGuin, Marilynne Robinson, and Barry Lopez. Secondary works and author interviews are used to support general assessments of writers who have won national prizes or wide publication. Jack London, Betty MacDonald, and Frederick Homer Balch get several pages each, while Raymond Carver, Frank Herbert, Denise Levertov, Tobias Wolff, and Tom Robbins are crammed together in a single paragraph. |
2
|
|
The general thesis is "that a distinctive Northwest literature does exist, that its primary subject is the relationship between people and place, and that its most important contribution to American literature lies in articulating a more spiritual relationship with landscape" (p. xix). These words go flat, however, at several turns. O'Connell keeps shifting the boundaries of this region. Sometimes he includes eastern Montana, Alaska, parts of California, and the Arctic north, yet he excludes British Columbia unless he wants to discuss Roderick Haig Brown or insist that Roethke had a "mystical illumination" on Vancouver Island (p. 109). The "relationship between people and place" is also vague: sometimes that means mystical illumination, sometimes stock-response awe, sometimes bitter reflections on hostile deserts or urban scenes, sometimes frank plans for exploitation. As for fostering "a more spiritual relationship," the final line of the book sums up a mushy, feel-good, environmentalist outlook: "Northwest literature provides a promising vision of the unity of nature and culture, encouraging people to realize that wherever they go on this miraculous planet, they are walking on sacred ground" (p. 180). |
3
|
|
But is the Northwest especially sacred, in fact, or merely described that way by dreamy writers? Did Indians here meet with guardian spirits, or did they just swap instructive tales about them? Are some places set apart by revelations and human sacrifices, or will one place do as well as another — crumby West Marginal Way in the industrial part of Seattle as well as a sanctuary of old-growth forest? If Northwest scenes lead to immanence, how do they square with the moral disciplines of Christianity, Judaism, Islam, or Buddhism? Why, indeed, should one read about sacred ground, if standing on it is more likely to produce personal revelations? |
4
|
|
O'Connell does not face these questions very well. He also leaves out a great countervailing force. The enduring treatment of landscape in this region may not be the work of poets or artists, but of engineers. Punching holes through the Cascades, harnessing the Columbia with huge dams, mowing down forests, rising over mountaintops with long-range bombers, tinkering with nuclear, electronic, and biochemical inventions — this has been the work of thousands of prosperous Northwest residents, a massive effort to obliterate any tutelary spirit of place. To adapt a line from Shakespeare: "How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea, whose action is no stronger than a flower?" |
5
|
|
|
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.
|