 |  |
 |  |  |  |  |  |
| Books> | Detailed Book Information |
Tax-exempt? | Waist Deep in Black Water John Lane's writing has appeared in American Whitewater, Southern Review, Terra Nova, and Fourth Genre and in the anthologies The Heart of a Nation and A Year in Place. His books include several volumes of poetry; Weed Time, a gathering of his essays; and Chattooga: Descending the Myth of Deliverance River (Georgia). Lane is an associate professor of English at Wofford College in Spartanburg, South Carolina. April 2004 ISBN 0820326216 paper • $19.95 200 pp. • 5 1/2 x 8 1/2 in."Intriguing and well-wrought essays from a southern boy who is a collector of stories, each like a pretty rock gathered from some high place. John Lane's pockets are full. His informants are wind and sage, storms and dark water, a love of land, the strange muteness of history. This is a book of searching, traveling through the uncharted territory where the human psyche meets wildness, to glean what lies in the depths of life. Lane's adventures carry us down many unknown and beautiful roads; like the best of journeys, they bring us back to ourselves." —Kirkus Reviews"Let this author take you away from the cacophony of the modern world to the wild places-eons-old settings that remain unchanged. . . . John Lane's collection of eighteen outdoor essays features exquisite descriptions that recall the beauty and mystery of the earth as it must have been in raw and unfettered times. . . . For those seeking escape from the crush of contemporary times, this book leads to sanctuary." —Eric Chaney, Southern Living"In this engaging collection of narrative essays, John Lane has taken the notion of Southern story telling beyond its immediate boundaries, letting it roam to the cairns of Wyoming, the crocodile lairs of the Yucatan, the cypress swamps of Florida, even the jungles of Suriname. Reflective, attentive to both people and place, naturalist Lane carefully reveals the landscape-of outer geography and inner spirit-that helps define us."-Bill Belleville, author of Deep Cuba John Lane writes with equal measures of wit, wisdom, passion, and humor about natural places that matter to him-a medicine wheel in the Big Horns, a cypress swamp in Florida, a rain forest in Suriname, a barrier island off the coast of Georgia, not to mention the priceless woods and rivers near his home in South Carolina. Like all good nature writers, Lane explores himself as he explores the landscapes that inspire him, and this book is a wonderful account, written with clarity and depth, of his travels within and without. John Lane takes the land seriously. His essays matter.-Christopher Camuto, author of Another Country: Journeying Toward the Cherokee Mountains "John Lane's essays are each a gem: occurring naturally, apparently effortlessly, but revealing beauty beyond anything man-made. This is a wonderful collection, and John Lane is an important American author."-Brett Lott, author of Jewel "Waist Deep in Black Water is a trek into two realms: wild landscapes that are among the most mysterious and compelling on earth, and the tangled halls of human experience. John Lane's writing is casual and honest, but also full of insight. He gracefully accomplishes two of the essayist's most difficult tasks: building a sense of place and revealing the workings of his heart."-Jan DeBlieu, author of Hatteras Journal "Any life worth living is full of friction, contradiction, and errancy. John Lane has led a life worth living. He accepts its difficulties and open-endedness with remarkable equanimity. He does not dramatize, advertise, or accuse himself. His narratives are always excursions, which may be into the exotic outback of Suriname, up a local mountain road, or down a suburban creek. They produce knowledge that is never final, momentary illumination of what cannot be systematically elucidated. The stories have real drama and real grief, yet a musing and bemused detachment is their dominant tone. That, and a serenely implacable resistance to the psychological and ecological atrocities that are committed in the name of what is sold to us as the American Way of Life."-Franklin Burroughs, author of The River Home "A compelling book that draws readers into many worlds of Lane's rich life. His writing is infused with generosity, as his own lived experience is infused with a passion for all that he loves. I set aside the book with gratitude for having been included on so many and varied journeys. Life is an adventure for John Lane: his work, his travels, his everyday activities are of a piece. Passion and caring inform his life and his writing. Communities, landscapes, ecosystems, people, and all living things matter to John Lane. Waist Deep in Black Water is a gift to readers who are seeking ways to explore the good and the wondrous in the lives and passions of others."-Melissa Walker, author of Living on Wilderness Time "John Lane is a good snake man full of the kind of homesickness that snakes represent to the cognoscenti, and his writing will satisfy others afflicted with that homesickness."-Padgett Powell, author of Mrs. Hollingworth's Men "Even more impressive than Lane's engaging writing is his self-editing. The twenty-two pieces in Waist Deep in Black Water seem to span an eight-year period and have been arranged to reflect a very moving voyage-from a meditation on mountains to tales of remote adventure to a search for intensity back home and finally to a consideration of his family's history."-Rob Neufeld, Asheville Citizen-Times"John Lane finds stories in rocks or water or wind. He is a storyteller whose range is the outdoors, from the high peaks to the low swamps. His essays about his experiences, collected in this new book, shine with a sense of discovery about the world outside and within. . . . Lane writes with eloquence of a world, 'where time moves in more than one direction and no landscape holds steady for long.' His essays map both our geography and our soul with a questioning detachment and a willingness to accept the contradictions inherent in the answers."-William W. Starr, The State "In measured, thoughtful, often witty prose, Lane takes us along on a wide range of journeys: to a cottonmouth-infested Florida swamp; his ancestral cemetery in Greene County; a crocodile lair in the dark backwaters of the Yucatan; a woodland area within Spartanburg's city limits; the Suriname rain forest; the Pacolet River; am island off the Georgia coast. Wherever Lane ventures, however, his destination is ultimately internal- a spot deep within himself, where he hopes to find connection, meaning, truth. . . . Early on in this collection, Lane says he is hoping 'to find a language big enough to fit our landscape.' In Waist Deep in Black Water, he seems to have done that- to have come up with just the right words to describe the geographical and interior vistas he explores with such fervor and passion"-Polly Paddock, The Charlotte Observer "Some journeys are physical, others emotional. In Wasit Deep in Black Water, John Lane chronicles both with achingly vivid truth."-Beverly Knight, Herald-Journal "In eloquently natural prose, John Lane's essays draw us into a sense of intimacy with the world, from hidden domestic treasures to the darkly threatening backwaters of the Yucatán. Together the essays become what might be the most intriguing form of memoir: we leave the book feeling we've come to know the kind of observing, truth-telling, daring character we wait to hear more from."-Rosa Shand, author of The Gravity of Sunlight "[The] book is not political, but rather deeply personal, in the tradition of nature writers who feel that the noise and hustle of the urban landscape is the perfect place to get lost, while the undeveloped areas are the place to get found-or to find oneself. He records his discoveries in carefully crafted, almost poetic prose."-Augusta "Waist Deep in Black Water is the work of a deep soul . The many-sided graciousness of his prose reminds us that the past is not dead, and that 'we don't stand in a line. It's more like a circle, and anyone at anytime can be the center.'"-John P. O'Grady, ISLE |
|
|
| ©2003 The University of Georgia Press. All rights reserved. Read our privacy statement. |