ATDDTA (6) 175 S 2

[rich]

perhaps echoes of melville's tarturus of maids--both this and the excerpt
below flip the much recognized sourness of an urban industrialized life onto
a rural setting

rich

bekah noted:
> >
> >
> > 175:4 "At the next convenient rise, he paused and regarded the
> > peaceful valley. Maybe he had not yet seen it all, but Lew would be
> > reluctant to wager more than a glass of beer that Chicago, for all
> > its urban frenzy, had much on this country out here. He guessed that
> > every cabin, outbuilding, saloon, and farmhouse in his field of sight
> > concealed stories that were anything but peaceful - horses of
> > immoderate beauty had gone crazy, turned like snakes and taken from
> > their riders chunks of body flesh that would never grow back, wives
> > had introduced husbands to the culinary delights of mushrooms that
> > would turn a silver coin to black, vegetable farmers had shot
> > sheepherders over some unguarded slide of the eye, sweet little girls
> > had turned overnight into whooping, hollering brides of the
> > multitude, obliging men in the family to take actions not always
> > conducive to public calm, and, as boilerplate to the contract with
> > its fate, the land held the forever unquiet spirits of generations of
> > Utes, Apaches, Anasazi, Navajo, Chirakawa, ignored, betrayed, raped,
> > robbed and murdered, bearing witness at the speed of the wind,
> > saturating the light, whispering over the faces and in and out the
> > lungs of the white trespassers in a music toneless as cicadas,
> > unforgiving as any graved marked or lost."
> >
> >
> > I just typed that out because it's so beautifully written in a
> > classic western style (only with long sentences) but briefly very
> > different from most of the book.
>
> i
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