8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
History That Reads Like a Novel, November 3, 2001
This review is from: Deep River: A Memoir of a Missouri Farm (Hardcover)
DEEP RIVER is about much more than a Missouri bottom-land farm, although that farm and the author's family who worked it are central. Hamilton delves back in time to the days of Indian tribes and of slavery, and along the way spins some great stories about Frank and Jesse James, Blind Boone (a virtuouso pianist), and other colorful characters. He gives a memorable account of growing up in rural Missouri and of his school days. I found the book absorbing, and relished the author's shrewd insights and morsels of wisdom. It's the nearest thing to Thoreau's WALDEN I've seen in a long time, and it too deserves to last. Not incidentally, Hamilton, for many years the editor of THE IOWA REVIEW, writes like a dream.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Highly Recommended Read, January 9, 2002
This review is from: Deep River: A Memoir of a Missouri Farm (Hardcover)
I can't recall ever reading a memoir similar to David Hamilton's Deep River. I don't know if that's because I've just haven't read the whole range of this kind of literature or because his book is unique. What I do know is that I enjoyed it, that I found myself reading it again, that it is beautifully written and that it is still kicking around inside of me.
The book is not organized around any immediately recognizable principles. Yes, all right, there are sections where Hamilton leads us to believe that he is now going to concentrate on the issue of slavery in western Missouri, or on the movement of pioneers through western Missouri, or the Civil War as it affected western Missouri, as well as, of course, on his memories of growing up on a farm next to the Missouri River. But the problem is, or perhaps I should say, the delight for the reader is, that all these various themes keep slipping into one another, folding in and folding out, forming a kind of fabric. The reader starts with one thread and then is diverted to another, and then another, until he meets the first thread again, now somehow changed.
Contradictions abound. Hamilton's careful scholarship is hedged with cautions than none of these "facts" may be supported by careful scholarship. He floods us with handed-down stories of the region, but asks us the question: How is he to compose a readable book except by choosing the most readable stories -- whether they are true or not? His detailed, graphic and beautifully written accounts of how he learned to hammer a nail, dig a fence post hole or which objects his uncle carried in the back of his pick-up truck, are set against a sweeping historical and pre-historical panorama that takes us back past the Missouri Indians to possible evidence that this land was inhabited by humans 35,000 years ago.
And on and on. Although I have read nothing else of Hamilton's (he is a professor of English literature at The University of Iowa and the editor of THE IOWA REVIEW), I suggest that this book can most successfully be approached as poetry writ large, and in reading it, above and beyond its engaging parts, we are being offered Hamilton's very personal take on the nature of reality.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Highly Recommended Read, January 5, 2002
This review is from: Deep River: A Memoir of a Missouri Farm (Hardcover)
A very interesting book. Thoughtful and fun. Amazing sentence structure - I do not remember reading anything quite like it - it was rather refreshing. I note that the author is a Prof. of English at U of Iowa - I do wish I had had someone like him teaching fourty years ago. Hope we see more of his work.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
