On location
The good folks at Coudal Partners were kind enough to invite me to contribute to this year's edition of Field-Tested Books.
Despite the inherent silence of author-to-reader interaction, literature is a creature of its surroundings. Books allow a reader to explore locations unfamiliar, while with a circular momentum, the reader's own environment shapes and intensifies the appearance of those distant places and the people and events that inhabit them.The Field-Tested Books project is our version of the Heisenberg principle: reading a certain book in a certain place uniquely affects a person's experience with both. The writing you'll find here is grounded in that idea. You won't find any book reviews here. You'll find reviews of experience.
My review is of Wallace Stegner's Angle of Repose on board the Amtrak Empire Builder from Chicago to Portland. You'll find lots of other familiar names on the list. And you can even buy the whole kit in book or poster form, if you like to hold and/or hang things.
Comments
Funny that you should be mentioning Coudal just now. It was only last night that I was pointed to this page, and the first thing written on the blackboard made me say "Hmmmmm... what does that remind me of?"
Posted by: Vance | June 8, 2006 10:11 PM
Vance -- That list is brilliant. But how could they forget The Adventures of Huckapoo Finn?
Posted by: radosh | June 9, 2006 10:15 AM