Customer Reviews

Great God Pan: Salt Desert Tales (Great God Pan Number Fourteen)

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"Great God Pan - Salt Desert Tales" sandblasts off layers of smog and grime that have been clotting up the West for the past hundred years. This is a history that has been abandoned or neglected, and when one delves into these tales a clear appreciation of this idiosyncratic region takes hold. These stories are not mere anecdotal tales, but stories with unlikely heroes, impossible eccentrics, and visionary madmen. The best part is that all of this is true. The writers of this book have gone to considerable lengths to find histories of the West that step outside of the traditional homage to the individualist, Western Expansionist prototype.

Salt Desert Tales is a bang-up collection of white hot adventure tales, history and culture. This time the Pan-Men have chosen the dusty burgs of Mormon Country to do their research, and friend the result is truiumphant! I read it cover to cover in one sitting. They capture the feel of the Western USA from the perspective of Western Americans. Reading the story about Nevada made me think of growing up in Yakima, Washington where high schools gyms are just as likely to have a quincinera happening, as they are a basketball game.

Now that Bob Ludlum's passed on you'll never have to look further than the Bluhm/Sundeen braintrust for highest quality, page-turnin' wild times.

Other recommendations include: Car Camping, all the back issues of Great God Pan, Cometbus, the WPA State books.. and any music by Oxes and Lightning Bolt you can find.