Customer Reviews

Field Notes: The Grace Note of the Canyon Wren

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As another reviewer noted, Lopez's fiction is difficult to describe or summarize; I'd call it terse but imagistic. The stories in "Field Notes" are beautiful and poignant. The settings are wonderfully described, but many of his characters have some kind of barrier--real or imagined--that prevents them from getting the "big picture", and alienation abounds on every page. Don't let this discourage you, though; there is always a ray of hope. In short, I see this book as a lucid argument for living in a state of pure being, as humans on a vibrant planet. *Higly recommended.*

Addendum: This was the first Lopez book I read, before going on to "Desert Notes" and "River Notes." In my op, "Field Notes" is better than both of them, exemplary of a writer ever more fully matured in his craft.

Barry Lopez brings a unique voice to his work that is rich in observation of surroundings and living forms as well as a deeply sacred intellectual perspective. Each story in this book brings Lopez' voice to the ear of the reader as a deep intimation of experience. A writer who gives the reader a feeling of desire to listen to the storyteller as if he were speaking to you in the tradition of storytellers has transcended the special bridge from oral discourse or history to the written word. It makes me want to read all of Lopez books of which I now have four.

I found this book in a second hand bookstore without knowing anything about Barry Lopez and passed it over twice before buying it on the hint of finding something of meaning. Each story is a wonderful capsule of situation and mood and mystery leaving the reader with their own deep reflections on existence and being. It is the kind of writing that makes writers want to write. Deeply personal, but intellectually universal.

Barry Lopez's short stories are challenging in their simplicity. They are also challenging to describe to anyone who has never read any Lopez. Deceptively sparse, they are at the same time heavy with meaning, and rich with imagery from the natural world. This twelve-story collection opens with "the burbling call" (p. 10) of a cactus wren resonating through "the stony, cactus-strewn land" (p. 4) of desert arroyos, and ends with a run down the "really old trails, the Anasazi trails" (p. 154) of the Grand Canyon. In "Teal Creek," Lopez's narrator curiously witnesses a hermit living beside a creek in "complete stillness, a silence such as I had never heard out of another living thing, an unbbroken grace" (p. 22). In another story, a paleontologist discovers "phantoms" (p. 41), a black bear, a herd of deer, and a "tawny panther hunkered in the tawny grass" (p. 47) in an empty, city lot. I was even surprised to find a reference to my small hometown, Bisbee, Arizona in this collection.

Although some are stronger than others, each of these stories offers its protagonist a sacred encounter with the natural world we too often ignore. Each story has its own unique grace note that will leave you with a sense of wonder.

G. Merritt

With prose as spare as the landscape he inhabits, and distinctive description: "Breezes whisk scorched seeds toward me. The seeds, bits of brittle leaf and stem, corral my feet and lie still," Barry Lopez presents his final piece in a trilogy.

Perhaps a hint to the author's view of nature and mankind is found in lines from "Introduction Within Bird's Hearing", the first of the 12 story collection. "As with so much of what people leave behind, it's difficult to say what was meant. We can only surmise that they loved, that they were afraid."

Seldom has the physical world, stark though it may be, seemed so full of wonder as in these tales. And, seldom is the human condition described with such unreserved compassion as in these stories. "Field Notes" is purely and simply Barry Lopez at his best.

- Gail Cooke

Wow, I just read the review above and I totally agree that this book is a collection of short stories about worlds colliding! I feel like any of these could be expanded into an entire novel and I would just read and read and read! Especially the one about the flower expert. And the hermit-like man in the woods. It seems in some way that each story (unless I can't remember some) leaves the door open for future understanding. One of the things that originally drew me to this book are the vivid descriptions of locations that make me feel like Lopez knows everything about everything. His writing engages, then envelopes. Once I started getting into the stories, I would imagine the locations as he describes them. Mountains, streams, small towns, sand dunes and dirt roads floated around in my mind. It was easy to relate to to each main character, and easy to be curious about the other world view represented. The combination of these elements is why it was very easy to spend last Sunday afternoon just reading while occasionally looking outside at the beautiful day that it was. I would like to read more Barry Lopez books, I'll be looking him up here on amazon to find a few more and get my "discovering-a-great-author" fix.

We lack pieces like these in Australia. Lopez has a style that shows an intense fascination with the world around him. He's knowledgeable, courteous to nature and not overly preachy. He's sensational.

Having hiked canyons in Southern Utah and heard the canyon wren, like some magical voice floating through the dry air, "Introduction; Within Birds Hearing" really struck a note in me! I, too, have set vague hiking goals in the desert and so could relate to this story. But reading about the notes of the wren really brought back some memories for me. Excellent piece, as were Homecoming and Teal Creek. Barry Lopez seems to have an uncanny ability to write about physical things as though they were emotional things, or the juxtaposition between the two. It makes reading his stories a very personal experience!

In this book Barry Lopez uses a novel approach to many of his stories: the short story written in the form if nature essays. Other nature writers--Edward Abbey, for example--have been known to take liberties with the exact details of the stories they tell, but Lopez actually creates new worlds in this collection of short fiction pieces. At his best, in stories such as "Teal Creek" and "Sonora," Lopez lets the story itself convey whatever larger purposes he might have. In his less successful pieces ("Conversation"), he beats the reader over the head with political psychobabble, almost to the point of sounding like propaganda. However, his ability to tell a story is undeniable, and it would be hard to argue with his place-based approach to environmentalism. And Lopez himself would be the first to say that it is the story itself, and not the moral of the story, that mattters.