i think if you care about writing/writing (verb/noun) today, you need to be reading proulx. doesn’t matter if you think you’re interested in the subject or not: the ability with which she shapes her stories at every level of focus is nuts. one of a few really doing it.

in some ways, a completely atypical book, with its huge scope,  utterly clear, labyrinthine structure, and fundamental thematic point: this is about wood, the woods, the world. however, also reminded me how much i like historical novels, because it has so much of what makes the best of them great: bursts with history, detail, sprawl, complicated family relations, business dealings, insane deaths. in many ways, in fact, this is just a reeling off of ways to die in the wild, but the flip side of that is a lot of lives are lived first.

am fascinated with the emergence, growth, of familiarity throughout the novel: known place names, in-text repetitions (like the promethean appearance of fires as a major risk part way through) create a world which becomes increasingly familiar, whilst clearly emerging in sequence with what came before; saying, these pasts are today’s inheritance, they are not separate, alien, they bleed directly into their future which is our past and present. there is so much wood around me right now. what is to be done?