Customer Reviews

America, New Mexico

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I was looking for a book that got into the heart and soul of New Mexico and discovered America, New Mexico at my local bookstore. It had a great title, a great cover, a writer who could write...and unfortunetly enough new age retoric that at one point I wanted to send the book back to the University of Arizona and ask why tax dollars were being spent on such endevours. So read at your own risk. At one point the author claims that the only reason Europe developed instead of Native Americans in North America was that gunpowder had accidently made its way to Europe first. Humm. Want a good book about the heart and soul of New Mexico try the Toby Smith's "Stay Awhile."

... is one of the attractions of living in what is patronizingly referred to as "the fly over zone." One that natives, and even some semi-natives, do not want broadcast widely, hoping still to avoid becoming another Phoenix, content with a humble two million in the entire state. So, it is fitting that Robert Leonard Reid should start his wonderful book on New Mexico with an epigraph from Thomas Hardy's classic book.

Reid possesses a solid erudition which is reflected in this tour of the highs and lows of life in the "Land of Enchantment." There are epigraphs from Rainer Maria Rilke, Jules Verne, Walt Whitman, and a spectrum of others, as well as references from the wider sphere of literature that are embedded in his stories and observations. I particularly liked his analogy with Antoine de Saint-Exupéry's words concerning the hardening of clay, in reference to youth losing its potential. It is in his chapter where he describes how Benny Esquivel, age 14, becomes a quadriplegic in a gun fight, here in Albuquerque. Reid's prose burns: "Indeed, it's a rare street where one feels entirely safe walking after dark. The population swells. Competition for jobs and decent housing intensifies. Cultures clash. The value of becoming rich and acquiring products proves unequal to the challenge of lifting the city's sights--and the nation's. Rather the opposite occurs; it poisons the spirit. Families disintegrate, education collapses, hatred intensifies. Suddenly ten-year-olds are carrying guns. This strikes me as an entirely understandable response to the bitterness and disillusionment young people must feel when they come face-to-face with the fact that we have failed to provide them with meaningful goals and not only the hope but the means of reaching them. The sky-shattering potential of these wondrous creatures evanesces..." Paul Goodman could not have said it better. And in the 11 years since Reid has written these words the problem has only intensified. Such passages ensure that "America, New Mexico" never makes the "Must Read" list of the Chamber of Commerce nor the Tourism Board.

But Reid does not simply report from the state's largest city; he ranges throughout America's fifth largest state, visiting Antelope Wells in the boot heel, as well as Clayton, in the far northeast corner. He also visits the Ghost Ranch, and covers the Georgia O'Keefe legend; Bosque Redondo, where the Navojos were interned, and all too many died; Santa Fe, and thoughtfully reports on the bumper sticker that reflects much of the sentiment of the rest of the state: "I don't care how they do it in Santa Fe"; and Truchas, deep in the Sangre de Cristos (Blood of Christ) mountains, where the "fierce Catholicism" of the Penitente Brotherhood is practiced. In each he captures essential aspects in telling vignettes, and they range from Andy Rooney's reported racism towards the Indians, to the fact that the US Air Force once dropped an atomic bomb on Albuquerque, which, sure enough, did not go off, but was a "secret" for 30 some years, since we would want you to "worry your pretty little head about it."

Reid spears the cant and hypocrisy time and again. Consider: "Success here and in all the West, as each of our millionaires can attest, consists of outfitting oneself in a buckskin jacket, braying impressively about self-reliance and free enterprise, then meeting the fellow from Washington in a dark alley to collect a suitcase full of money." In another section he takes on one of the apostles of this sentiment, former Representative Phil Gramm, and details his own reliance on the government.

Others reviewers have knocked Reid for his alleged "New-Ageism." I saw very little, and would quote the following as a rebuttal: "White New Age prophets ignore Indian political struggles but rip off Indian religious practices--drumming, dancing, sweat ceremonies, spirit quests, visions, talking circles--and then in glossy, no-effort-required packages hawk pale-faced imitations of these ancient rites to dispirited whites at get-rich-quick prices." But lawdy, I do wish he had chosen another cover, which is clearly responsible for so much of the rap.

Reid's glass is less than half-full. However, he does see the quality of the light, and has good admonitions, as he quotes both Thomas Merton and Annie Dillard. "In the mountains and deserts of New Mexico, however, it is possible to see a world no photography can ever depict (leave your camera at home.)... To the much-informed, New Mexico proclaims, unplug your computers, toss out your guidebooks, and retune your antennae for some truly eye-opening information."

Reid's book is a thoughtful antidote to the many glossy (in words, as well as pictures) guides to the Land of Enchantment, and it the one essential guide I would recommend to anyone, native, or visitor, who seeks a deeper understanding of the complexities and variegations that compose the one state that is "missing," as a column is our state magazine proclaims, where it chronicles the cases, as Reid does, in which our fellow compatriots from the other 49 do not consider New Mexico part of the USA, which is why we have to place it on our license plates!

This is a lyrical treatment of New Mexico, for the most part well-written and enjoyable. But it was marred for me by the gullibility of the writer, who says about the alleged UFO landing at Roswell that he "can testify without reservation that, yes, the extraordinary visitation took place". Unfortunately the Roswell "visitation" has long since been debunked as a weather balloon.

Reid says about the lack of photographs of Crazy Horse, "Perhaps the science of photography is inadequate for capturing certain images", as if the laws of physics and chemistry would magically have certain exceptions. Does Reid really doubt that a functioning camera would have succeeded in taking a picture of Crazy Horse? This is mysticism at the expense of believability.

Reid describes a friend who claims that certain Native Americans can really take to the sky and fly like birds. He is my friend, Reid says, and I believe him. But why? If this event has never been captured on film, if humans simply lack the muscle power and lift necessary to fly, if Native Americans continue to take jets like everyone else to get around, isn't it far more plausible that Reid's friend was lying, or pulling his leg? We *know* with certainty that people lie and indulge in practical jokes. We *don't* know with certainty that they can fly like birds. Reid needs to get his Occam's razor sharpened up a bit.

Nevertheless, if you can overlook this New Age silliness, the book is enjoyable, even beautiful in places.

Open your heart, your mind, and your ears to this almost lyrical work by Robert Leonard Reid as you explore beautiful and quite possibly unique New Mexico either firsthand or vicariously. Not as thoroughly exploratory, meticulous, and encyclopedic as Timothy Egan's Pacific Northwest book(s), not as critical and pessimistic as Robert Kaplan, and not as negative as Paul Theroux---Mr. Reid is of a different writing caliber. It is delightfully insightful, at times painfully verbose and overdescriptive, but his book on this different part of America is a pleasurable experience nonetheless for resident, visitor, or armchair traveler.