Wilderness: A Journal of Quiet Adventure in Alaska--Including Extensive Hitherto Unpublished Passages from the Original Journal [Paperback]

Rockwell Kent (Author), Doug Capra (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 15, 1996

In August 1918 Rockwell Kent and his 9-year-old son settled into a primitive cabin on an island near Seward, Alaska. Kent, who during the next three decades became America's premier graphic artist, printmaker, and illustrator, was seeking time, peace, and solitude to work on his art and strengthen ties with his son. This reissue of the journal chronicling their 7-month odyssey describes what Kent called "an adventure of the spirit." He soon discovers how deeply he is "stirred by simple happenings in a quiet world" as man and boy face both the mundane and the magnificent: satisfaction in simple chores like woodchopping or baking; the appalling gloom of long and lonely winter nights; hours of silence while each works at his drawings; crystalline moonlight glancing off a frozen lake; killer whales cavorting in their bay. Richly illustrated by Kent's drawings, the journal vividly re-creates that sense of great height and space -- both external and internal -- at the same time that it celebrates a wilderness now nearly lost to us.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Twenty-nine years after his death, [Rockwell] Kent has returned with a vengeance. Not since the height of his pre-McCarthyism popularity has so much of his work been available to the public." --Smithsonian

"Conservationists and ecologists should rejoice at the reappearance of this splendid diary telling of the winter of 1918 - 1919, during which the late Rockwell Kent and his 9-year-old son exulted in the beauties of Alaska's remote Fox Island. Kent's strong woodcuts and sketches perfectly complement an unaffected text that tells in an authentic and most effective way of unspoiled nature in all its glory . . . This book has considerable merit as an account of rugged life in Alaska, as a paean to the glories of nature, and as a record of Kent's graphic work." --Library Journal

From the Publisher

7 x 10 trim. 102 drawings. 5 photos. End-paper map. LC 95-45450

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Product Details

• Paperback: 237 pages
• Publisher: Wesleyan (May 15, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0819552933
• ISBN-13: 978-0819552938
• Product Dimensions: 9.9 x 6.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #918,915 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Joys and difficulties of a gifted artist and son in Alaska., November 2, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Wilderness: A Journal of Quiet Adventure in Alaska--Including Extensive Hitherto Unpublished Passages from the Original Journal (Paperback)

Of the many wilderness adventures that flood our view on the television or in movies, with dramatic, life-risking events, we can become weary of the slick presentations. Rockwell Kent tells of us of another type of adventure, the day to day living on remote Fox Island off Seward, in Alaska. The small pleasures, the difficult trips in an open boat to get supplies, the child's sweetness in his friendship with a magpie, all these and more stories are told in a daily journal. And illustrated as Kent always does, with insight and style. Kent as a writer is equal to Kent as an artist, intellectual and candid in his telling a story and sharing impressions. If this is your first reading of a Kent book, you have a long list of other books ahead for this was his first book done as a "first person" storyteller. His desire for remote and wild landscapes to paint took him, and then takes us, through his work, to many other places over many decades. But none are any more delightful and majestic than this trip to Alaska. To check out the validity of this remote place, I took a trip to Fox Island several years ago, and though I didn't see it in the winter as Rockwell and his son did, it was dramatic, beautiful and matched the feeling I'd gotten when I first read the book years ago. The nice touch of this edition is that the editor, Doug Capra, has a very fine introduction to the book and Capra knows his subject. He has been researching Kent for years, but more than that, he has something to say and says it well. Few Kent editors do. But the book--it makes a wonderful Christmas gift because it has a really fine description of what a meaningful Christmas celebration can be in a remote place, shared with a hermit on the island, the father and little boy. There are some delightful details in this story: the food taken for the trip; the books for father and son; the rigerous baths when the bay freezes and the ice cold waters no longer are available. Kent is no ordinary artist, writer or father. And this is no ordinary adventure. It makes you wish, even yearn, for that place, that time, those people. I knew Rockwell Kent in the final few years of his life and he still carried that energtic view of life, that love of beauty and nature that comes alive in this small work. And three cheers to Doug Capra for bringing this new edition to life for it is of the quality for which Kent was famous in his published books. (A wretched edition of this treasure of a story was published a few years before and this edition puts to rest a Kent lover's dispair about having a bad edition of a Kent work on the shelves, any shelves. I almost never throw books away but this earlier paperback with bad design from cover to cover merits polluting a garbage pail.) So, invest in some good reading, some laughs and some wistful thoughts about what a wilderness adventure could be. And for those who have courage, still can be.

9 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ah! Peace and Quiet, January 25, 2000

By 

Allen A. Long "Allen A Long" (Arlington, VA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Wilderness: A Journal of Quiet Adventure in Alaska--Including Extensive Hitherto Unpublished Passages from the Original Journal (Paperback)

You can pick this book off your library shelf any time, open it to any page, start at any paragraph and begin to feel a mantle of peace settle over your jangled nerves. "Wilderness" is the record of artist Rockwell Kent and his 9-year-old son spending a winter in Alaska on Fox Island in Resurrection Bay, near Seward, with only one elderly Swede as a neighbor. This "journal of quiet adventure" nonetheless is exciting in the relationships between father and son and old Olson and between the Kents and the harsh winter weather. Beautifuly and profusely illustrated by Rockwell and Rockwell, Jr.

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Bohemian Artist, January 19, 2007

By 

B. Holland (Pacific Northwest) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Wilderness: A Journal of Quiet Adventure in Alaska--Including Extensive Hitherto Unpublished Passages from the Original Journal (Paperback)

Unlike the true frontiersmen (ie; Dick Proenneke, One Man's WIlderness or James Huntington, On The Edge of Nowhere), this man is a typical anti-establishment artist who escaped to the outdoors in search of himself. His work reveals his own state of depression. It would be interesting to know what became of his son.