Customer Reviews

How the Canyon Became Grand: A Short History

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This book like others on the Grand Canyon's history as national monument discusses various visits by European and US explorers. Dr. Pyne's book approaches the topic from a different slant. By focusing on the effect of cultural and psychological filters he explains why the geologic phenomenon has been valued differently through time. Especially in this book as unlike others, the author shows why the canyon was "seen" or not and why parts were included in an individual's perspective or not. This was something new to me, something that is apparent once voiced but not necessarily obvious until pointed out.

I once took a speech-communications class called "persuasion" in the course of which it became obvious that 1. context contributes a great deal to message, and 2. not all communication is intended. At the time it struck me that the dead communicate, namely the most salient point about themselves, ie. that they are dead, however few would say that they "intended" to do so. Likewise, a canyon or other environmental configuration can communicate to an observer, but the message sent and received is determined by the filters of the recipient, his/her cultural, social, and psychological context. Pyne's book makes it evident that the message of the Grand Canyon is different for each age and for each person, and is shaped as much by our expectations and cultural orientations as by anything else. He does an excellant job of showing how the canyon and the Colorado River have changed their cultural identity through time, even in our own time.

For those looking for something of a biography of the discoverers of the Canyon and explorers of the Colorado River system, this is probably a less detailed book than you might like. A more thorough account is available in The Grand Canyon: Solving Earth's Grandest Puzzle by James Lawrence Powell. It does include a bibliography of works, however, including some of the original publications by the 19th century explorers themselves. These might provide you with more of what you're looking for, particularly accounts by John Westly Powell. For those looking for a brief overview, however, this will certainly provide you with a good start. Although I've studied geology, the geology and history of the Colorado was not familiar to me, so I found the book helpful.

I was not entirely certain I agreed with the author's rather vaunted sense of "elite" and "intellectual," and his negative attitude toward popular-that is middle class-culture. I agree that we are given to commercialism and mass consumerism, but that pretty much cuts across the social boundaries. There are reasons why the 19th century wealthy could endow entire museums with their private art collections and furnish their homes in wall to wall Tiffanies. The difference between middle class and upper class consumerism appears to be the expense of the items purchased. I see no difference in the desire of a middle class individual to investigate the unique in his/her environment than in that of a wealthy, educated individual pursuing his or hers. If anything, it would appear to have been the spread of education throughout society during the latter part of the 19th century and earlier portion of the 20ieth that gave more people access to the information and orientation that allowed more people to appreciate something like the Grand Canyon.

I also disagreed with the author's by-the-by negative attitude toward the "Democrates" at whose doorstep he laid the building of dams and other projects. I do agree that doing so damaged a scenic environment of great value emotionally to the nation, I even agree that it was environmentally an unsound decision. But given the information at the time, the needs and social issues of the time, the decisions made may have appeared acceptable to those who made them at the time. Twenty-twenty hind-sight and values based on modern perspectives is a waste of time. It's usefulness is questionable, like exhuming Attila the Hun and trying him posthumously for crimes against humanity; what's the point? We too will be judged in our turn by the future, and who knows what "crimes" we will be determined to have committed?

This book is a great intellectual history of a subject that tends to be considered so trite as to be mundane. In the course of the 20th Century the wonders of the Grand Canyon have been so often noted that they have become a cliche of commercialism. Pyne takes us back to the Spanish explorers and helps us to understand why their intellectual powers were inadequate to interpret the meaning of the Canyon when they first encountered it. Pyne describes 3 great ages of exploration, and devotes considerable space to the explanation of the geology of the canyon, first discovered in the late 1800's by John Wesley Powell and his associates. He also makes frequent reference to the human representation of the Canyon in art; he considers this, it would appear, to be as significant as its geology. He relates this art to the modernistic movements in Europe. He describes the advent of commercialism and of the ecology movement by men like Joseph Wood Krutch, who wanted the Canyon maintained in its pristine state for the enjoyment of all. He describes how the Canyon has become less important in scientific circles with the advent of the theory of plate tectonics and of crater impact zones, of space exploration.

This is the second book of Stephen Pyne's that I have labored through. Living and working at the bottom of the Grand Canyon for ten years I have read many titles that concern itself with the area. This reads just as it was created, a college thesis. I am sorry that Mr. Pyne bemoans the lack of intellectual approaches to interpreting the Grand Canyon. But this gets a bit stuffy if not pompous as I turned the pages. To call Zane Grey a literary hack is a bit of a stretch to say the least. As I gazed out my window last week to one magnificent snowstorm I was reminded how Mr. Pyne had written that Thomas Moran exaggerated the mists of the Canyon. I think not. It's on the shelf and over now. The subtitle is what salvaged the book for me - a SHORT history.

The author provides a detailed history of the Grand Canyon in a more poetic and spiritual sense. Thus, it may be more appropriate for someone that appreciates prose and an appreciation for language. If you are looking for a more straightforward history of the Grand Canyon, this book is probably not for you. I fell into the latter category and on my vacation to the Grand Canyon; I was looking more for an industrious quick read, which this book is not. I was amused that the author seemed so surprised that the Conquistadors did not write much at all about the Grand Canyon but where we today appreciate the beauty and uniqueness of the Canyon, the Conquistadors in their search for gold may have been more perplexed in how to get to the other side.

Pyne has discovered that the Grand Canyon has no objective reality, that historically speaking, it is less a physical object than a cultural icon. And the evolution of that icon is fascinating reading indeed. As a collector of Grand Canyon materials, I believe that this unassuming volume is the most original piece of Canyon thought since Krutch's discovery of the Canyon as Wilderness in "Grand Canyon: Today and All Its Yesterdays," and before that, Dutton's easthetic discovery of the Canyon in "The Tertiary History of the Grand Canyon District." The book has the additional virtue of being a premier introduction to the written source materials on the canyon. I've just logged on to buy my fifth copy.

Pyne puts the Grand Canyon in the context of world history with numerous references to the "First, Second, and Third Ages Of Discovery", the first represented by Coronado, the second represented by Powell, the third represented by space exploration, and with numerous references to geology, (somewhat surprisingly) to art, and to nature writing. This book details the extensive geologic exploration of the canyon in the late 1800's, the art it produced, and the effects of European trends in art on the Canyon art, and the changing view of the canyon as a result of space exploration and environmentalism. A lucid and compelling work.

As someone from the East Coast who fell in love with the Canyon at first sight and has returned a number of times and also hiked from rim to river and back (with an overnight in wonderful Phantom Ranch), I eagerly looked forward to reading this book. What a disappointment. It's turgid, confusing, and virtually impossible to read. Nearly every word appears to have been selected for its ponderousness. What a bore. I quit half way through. Better to visit the Canyon and see the grandeur for yourself than to struggle with this book.

Pyne himself admits that "How the Canyon Became Grand" was not intended as a book but rather as an essay. As a consequence, his effort is long in vision but short on facts. This is clearly a "big picture" story, much like his topic, but without the details that pull the pieces together. I wish Pyne had spent a little more time presenting facts, rather than pontificating his personal opinions.

Nevertheless, I would have been happy with the work if Pyne's prose wasn't so tedious. Big words are not really the problem- they're just too many words, period.

"How the Canyon became Grand" reads more like pompous art criticism than an in-depth historical analysis. If the latter is what you want, look elsewhere.

A Zen saying: "More Words Mean Less." When three words are adequate this author uses seven or eight or more. This book easily would have made a decent journal article. Skip this book if you can! A far more interesting read is Ann Zwinger's "Downcanyon; A Naturalist Explores the Colorado River Through the Grand Canyon."

As other reviewers say, Pyne's prose is unnecessarily tedious. There are many extraneous references to other cultural and scientific developments. But the first two parts contain useful information. I would give it a higher rating if the third part were as useful as the first two.

The text has three parts: Two New Worlds (Western civilizations finding the canyon, and reaction of the early explorers), Rim and River (development of a geological understanding and artistic appreciation of the canyon), Canyon and Cosmos (relation to 20th century ideas in other fields). The first two parts are worth reading, even if the prose is often pretentious. However, it helps to know something about the geological developments and the work of the artists who painted the canyon (there are a very few illustrations of their work).

The last part can be (likely should be) skipped. Pyne compares the lack of new knowledge about the canyon to progress in physics and mathematics (without specifying what he has in mind about mathematics) and new developments in art. Much of the prose is pretentious gobbledegook. It's not clear what new knowledge and cultural thinking he expects to be stimulated by work related to the canyon. Pyne denigrates ease of access to the canyon rim and popular appreciation of it. It's not clear what he expects; the canyon could hardly tolerate hundreds of thousands of river runners and backpackers each year. Pyne summarizes environmental matters (proposals to dam the Colorado) briefly, with less emphasis than the canyon's influence deservers. As a minor criticism, David Brower was executive director (not "head") of the Sierra Club.

The book does have 9 useful figures, including bar charts showing time trends of numbers of river runners and numbers of publications.