The Lost Upland: Stories of Southwestern France [Paperback]

W. S. Merwin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 30, 2004

In The Lost Upland, award-winning poet W. S. Merwin explores his intimate knowledge of the people and the countryside in what is the home of the Lascaux caves, an ancient part of southwestern France. In three narratives of small-town life, Merwin shows with unmatched poetic and narrative power how the past is still palpably present. These stories offer the reader a brilliantly evocative and loving portrayal of the French country people and their way of life.

Product Details

• Paperback: 320 pages
• Publisher: Counterpoint (November 30, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1593760337
• ISBN-13: 978-1593760335
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #220,720 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

W.S. Merwin is the 17th Poet Laureate Consultant in Poetry of the United States. He is the author of over fifty books of poetry, prose, and translations. He has earned every major literary prize, most recently the National Book Award for 'Migration: New and Selected Poems' and the 2009 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry for 'The Shadow of Sirius.' He lives in Hawaii where he raises endangered palm trees.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a great, unknown work, April 21, 2009

By 

Randy Cobb "local" (San Francisco) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Lost Upland: Stories of Southwestern France (Paperback)

I don't know why no one seems to have heard of this book; it is one of my top ten. It's a little slow starting, but that's part of its pleasure; it's quirky, and sometimes seems to wander, but it's not, really; the narrative seems to stroll off in new and sometimes disconcerting directions, but it always comes home to this fascinating place Merwin is writing about ... when I finished this book, I felt like I knew this part of France in a way that's possible only through great literature.

I would recommend this book to anyone willing to "listen" to its unusual style and subject. A great book!

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Beautiful - but bleak, March 30, 2010

By 

Philip S. Griffey (Bainbridge I. WA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Lost Upland: Stories of Southwestern France (Paperback)

This book, by one of America's great poets, contains three written pieces which are difficult to place into any particular genre. The inside flap refers to them as "narratives", but they don't tell a story - unless one reads them in a rather oblique manner. Jane Kramer calls them "stories" in her blurb, but they seem to be somewhere between fiction and memoirs. The first and third are written in the third person; the second in the first person.

While they have extraordinarily lengthy and detailed descriptions of the physical settings, it is the characters' actions, rather than their external appearances, which are observed closely. The actions are described in a detached and impassionate manner; any character judgements are implicit in the descriptions of their behavior and depend upon the reader's sensibilities. They are further nuanced by the character's age and social status and the morés of the geographic location (which is in an area of France between Bordeaux and the Rhone river - rich in history, but poor in natural resources).

I think I would classify the pieces as meditations on the depopulation of a rural area of marginal productivity, and its peoples' resistance to the harshness and waste inherent in the efficiencies of more modern techniques being imported by the corporate interests of the cities. The overall themes would be poverty (both material and spiritual), inertia, decay and mortality. Needless to say, there are not a lot of laughs.

The pace of the writing is as slow and as nuanced as the life of the rather insular inhabitants. It is also subtle, complex and beautiful in an austere way. However, when you are finished, you feel rather drained by the bleak existence to which you have been exposed - rather similar in feeling to studying a book of the photos Dorothea Lange took during The Great Depression.

Highly recommended for those not susceptible to dark moods.