Book Review: The Pine Barrens

The Pine Barrens, by John McPhee

Reading this 52-year-old book is not a step back in time. Rather, it's like reading Wendell Berry writing about his beloved Kentucky, showing how the land centers us in a place, and how that place helps to define us.

Joxer the Mighty says he could be a Piney, too

McPhee's 1967 book helped bring attention to the diverse environment of the Pine Barrens in southern New Jersey. Partly as a result, Congress designated more than one million acres as the Pinelands National Reserve, strictly limiting development in the fragile area.

The Pinelands is a forest of sandy land flanked by the populous East Coast and the Philadelphia metropolis. Its soil also is acidic and nutrient poor, so early settlers passed it over in favor of richer land in other directions. Small industries developed here and there, but by the time of the civil war, larger factories could do the work cheaper and closer to the markets. The Pinelands mostly reverted to its natural state.

Small crossroads towns popped up where a few independent families stayed on. The population shrunk to a few hardy settlers who remained.

McPhee captures them in a beautifully written narrative. His eye for detail, his ear for language, and his sense of culture is extraordinary. He wrote not as a native of the barrens, but as one who had taken the time to learn and understand the people who live there. He gained the trust and respect of a enigmatic people who, for good reason, are normally suspicious of outsiders.

Some of the gentlest of people -- botanists, canoemen, campers -- spend a great deal of time in the pines, but their influence has not been sufficient to correct an impression, vivid in some parts of the state for fifty years, that the pineys are weird and sometimes dangerous barefoot people who live in caves, marry their sisters, and eat snakes. Pineys are, for the most part, mild and shy, but their resentment is deep, and they will readily and forcefully express it.

Later, McPhee brings us to the largest crossroads town in the Pinelands, where the natives show disdain for the image outsiders have of them. The owner of the local grocery store shared her thoughts.

Live in caves and intermarry, hah. No one ever lived in caves that I heard of. I don't know anyone around here except one family that's intermarried, and I've lived here all my life. 

The book is full of little tidbits like that.  It's historical, folk-lorical, and metaphorical. It intersperses interviews with and descriptions of the Pineys with details of the Pinelands ecology, history, and geography. It's a little book -- barely 150 pages -- but it packs a lot of detail.

Book Review: The Singer's Gun

The Singer's Gun, by Emily St. John Mandel

First off, this is a good book. It's well written, and its story hits all the strong points -- family, love, crime, and travel.

Yet, it has a couple of failings. Some of the characters' actions make you wonder what they -- or their creator -- were thinking. Mandel's characters tend to be passive kettles for the actions of others. For instance, Anton Waker, the protagomist in this book, seems to go through life accepting that things just happen to him. He may not like them; he doesn't really want them to continue, but he seems unable or unwilling to do anything about them.

The book also contains gaping plots holes that make you look askance, twist your face into a quizzical grimace, and ask, "what the ???" Story arcs seem contrived to further a dilemma, but the easiest solution is ignored. Important decisions are pre-ordained, despite a character's disinclination to take that route. Even when the original problem is resolved, the character continues on the ill-chosen path, with severe consequences.

The novel tells the story of Waker, the Brooklyn-born son of an immigrant couple who traffic in stolen artifacts. The parents are minor characters in the tale, but their adoption of a niece left behind when her parents are deported give them a benevolent sheen over their criminality. 

The niece, Aria, starts out as a street-wise urchin, but turns into a woman who runs her own criminal enterprise, which involves Anton more or less against his will. Anton finds a temporary way out, but Aria wants to drag him back in, and he feels forced to go along. 

Thus we wind up in Ischia, a tiny tourist village on a small island off the coast of Naples. A good part of the story occurs here, and the setting is beautiful. We understand why Anton feels compelled to stay.

But we fail to understand his hemming and hawing, his refusal to make a decision, and his inclination to just wait until something happens. When it does, we are neither surprised nor sympathetic.

Book Review: The Incomplete Book of Running

The Incomplete Book of Running, by Peter Sagal

Reading this book is kinda like having a guy tap on you the shoulder and say, "let's go for a run." And while you run, he also talks. A lot. He talks like a runner, veering from topic to topic at random. He tells stories happy and sad, discusses his bowel movements, and relates tales from the numerous marathons he had run.

He keeps going on and on, as you pound out the miles. All the while, you're nodding your head, laughing or expressing sorrow at his predicaments.

He's faster than you, but that's OK. He challenges you, but knows instinctively when to slow down so you can catch your breath for a couple of seconds. If you need to walk for a bit, he's more than willing. 

Peter Sagal is the host of the NPR show, Wait, Wait. ... Don't Tell Me. He's also a marathoner, and a pretty good one at that. He has qualified for and ran the Boston Marathon several times, and his personal best time is ... well, I won't tell you that, because it's one of the better stories in the book, and I don't want to ruin it for you.

The book covers a year in Sagal's running life, along with enough personal information to put it all into perspective. He goes backward and forward in time, letting you know how he got into running, how it continued -- more or less  throughout his life -- and how it often kept him centered during the times of trouble.

In short, the book is just like running -- sometimes funny, sometimes heartbreaking, but always inspiring. Runners will see themselves. Non-runners will recognize their running friends.