River of Shadows

[Richard Romeo]

Hi all--

reading a strange mess of a book--River of Shadows by
Rebecca Solnit.

musings on human perception and the annihilation of
time and space by technology, particularly railroads
and photography are memorable (think of those
cannonball studies). think much of what Solnit says
reverberates with some of Pynchons' musings about
technology, California, and the like. It's a nice
cultural review of the America that enmerged in the
late 19th century.

Rich 

a review below: 

Cultural historian Solnit, an original and penetrating
thinker with a gift for inventive metaphors and
syntactical grace whose previous books include
Wanderlust (2000), brings her fascination with the
American West, photography, and technology's impact on
the environment and culture to the story of the man
who made motion pictures possible, photographer
Eadweard Muybridge. An Englishman turned California
bookseller, superb landscape photographer, inventor,
murderer (he killed his wife's lover), and pioneer in
stop-action photography and the study of animals,
including humans, in motion, Muybridge is fascinating
and significant, as is his turbulent milieu. Solnit
recounts Muybridge's strange life and immensely
influential work within the context of the tragic war
against Native Americans, and ties his achievements to
the world-changing repercussions of photography and
the railroads in particular, and industrialization in
general. Her exhilarating argument leads her to
declare that California, home of Hollywood and Silicon
Valley, is the true capital of modernism, and to claim
that we haven't even begun to come to terms with its
legacy: our estrangement from nature and utter
immersion in the mesmerizing "river of shadows," the
endless stream of images generated via film, video,
and computer. Masterly and creative, Solnit's
far-roaming synthesis is as unsettling as it is
compelling. Donna Seaman
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