Passion in the Desert Books

Both a piece of literary artistry and passionate activism, "Red"'s audience appeal is the broadest of any book I've ever read. The book's structure, both wild and bounded by cadences of space, conforms strategically to Ms. Williams' conceptual take on the color red - red represents heat, anger, unpredictability, the lifeblood of the earth that runs through human beings and all earth's creatures, and is concentrated in the searing deserts of the American West where Ms. Williams lives. A thematic tapestry though it is, it is, at its core, a living breathing message presented selflessly and succinctly by a woman who I believe understands the need for a lifelong journey down the parallel rails of human and non-human nature until these rails converge. I recommend this book highly.

When Terry Tempest Williams starts this book with her simple equation place + people = politics, you know you've started reading a book meant to have political impact. But as the equation states, and as any TTW reader knows, you will be reading about place and about people, and you will be reading about these things as seen through the honest open heart of Terry Tempest Williams.

Red is a collection of stories, poems, journal entries and thoughts centered in one place, the redrock desert of southern Utah. While reading Red I found myself feeling similarities with it and Steinbeck's The Long Valley and The Pastures of Heaven. Like both of those books, Red tells the different stories of separate people and the one place that connects them. But unlike those books, the stories in Red span hundreds of years. The place remains relatively unchanged through time. But the people and civilizations pass through this unchanging landscape living, making their mark on the land, and dying. TTW tells these stories in geologic time-desert time. The people stay connected.

Hands connect the people. Hands appear everywhere in the book. Hands are the link between past, present and future. Hands come from the past in geologic forms with Anasazi handprints on clay pots and redrock walls, and a sharp obsidian chip "worked by ancient hands". They are in the present in biologic forms with a hand sliced open by the same sharp obsidian chip; one hand on the belly of a petroglyph while the other rests on a human belly in the present; and the story of children holding out hands to catch the desert's tears that drip from ferns. Then in the final paragraph hands are formed in prayer: "The eyes of the future are looking back at us and they are praying for us to see beyond our own time. They are kneeling with hands clasped that we might act with restraint....Wild mercy is in our hands."

I enjoy reading Terry Tempest Williams. Her writing seems to always reach out and touch me. She's done it again, and this time with Red hands.

Terry Tempest Williams created this book to fight for Wilderness with the best tool she has, her writing. The beauty of her words hang in the air and cut like a knife. When asked by a friend why she writes, Williams responds: "I write as an exercise in pure joy. I write as one who walks on the surface of a frozen river beginning to melt. I write out of my anger and into my passion. I write from the stillness of night anticipating - always anticipating. I write to listen. I write out of silence. ...I write because it is the way I talk long walks. I write as a bow to wilderness. I write because I believe it can create a path in darkness."

Terry Tempest Williams is without a doubt one of the finest writers to tackle the intricacies of the American West in literature of any sort. Carrying her own torch is impressive enough, but Williams also evokes the activism and urgent motivation that calls us to appreciate, respect and save our remaining western wilderness that was so powerfully put into words by Edward Abbey. I have reviewed a portion of "Red" before (see "Desert Quartet"), so I will limit this review to the remainder of "Red".

Williams carries on the great and ancient tradition of storytelling to raise consciousness about uniquely Western, and specifically Colorado Plateau, issues. From the Hopi and Navajo peoples, down through the early American explorers, the proverbial cowboys and the present activist community, storytelling has been a central method of encapsulating emotion, opinion and experience into messages that have wide appeal. Williams, in stories such as "Coyote's Canyon" here in "Red", presents her powerful vision of an environmental movement wrapped in the spiritual connection with the stark, often harsh, always awe inspiring desert and given wings by action. Like Abbey, Williams does not shy away from controversy, and her opening to the title essay is a list of places that strangely grows longer each time I contemplate the names set forth. Williams gets personal here, and the blunt approach of listing over a hundred places brings to my mind the fact that I have walked on much of that ground... and that I have seen the critical need to protect these remaining places from the industrious uses and agricultural manipulation that has occured on the infinitely vaster balance of the Colorado Plateau. In this way, "Red" has demonstrated its effectiveness. Some may say that as a resident of California I might have no reason to comment on Utah... and I would, as Williams exhorts in "Red", flatly disagree. Every one of us has a responsibility to work toward a better world, and Williams manages to say this without preaching it or patronizing the reader. (Besides, my mother lives in southern Utah, and I have walked hundreds of miles of that beautiful land...).

In summary, "Red" is another jewel of a book from Terry Tempest Williams. I am glad to see "Desert Quartet" back in print, though I sorely miss Mary Frank's wonderful illustrations that were in the original. This is a book which is not a difficult read, nor a scholarly treatise... rather, it is a frank, realistic look at a serious challenge facing the United States right now.

This book made me feel very guilty that I am not out there taking a stand on conservation, supporting a cause, or putting my land into a conservation easement. Her passion as well as commonsense about wild areas is contagious! She clearly defines the political and social situations surrounding land use through a variety of short stories ranging from disagreements within her family to lyrical myth. Even though Red is about the Southwest US, it is about land use everywhere. As with all Williams's books, the writing is marvelous.
This should be required reading for everyone who deals with land use (yes, developers included), is passionate about conservation regardless of what part of the world they live in, and all who recognize the need for wild places to sooth our souls and give us some perspective on life.

Thomas E. Kennedy has written yet another brilliant novel. Ostensibly , A Passion in the Desert is about a college creative writing teacher , Fred Twomey , a name perfectly suggestive of dichotomy , struggling with normal mezzo del cammin issues: marital fidelity , alcohol dependence , a senescent mother , an alienated teenage son. Kennedy's novel , a feast of language like all of his oeuvre , is , in fact , questioning the idea of paternity. He's a Joycean running with the concept proposed in the National Library scene by Stephen Dedalus viz., paternity might be legal fiction. Like Joyce , Kennedy is not afraid to take us through the muddy terrain of his protagonist's consciousness. And if there's a father , there must be a son. Kennedy gives us a '' nullius filius'' to correspond with a father deaf to a son's pater ,ait , and until the penultimate scene , a terrifying Ithaca , if you will , in a tour de force second person narrative. A Passion in the Desert is powerful storytelling. A veritable masterpiece.

After reading Kenney's Copenhagen Quartet, I couldn't imagine where he would go next to mine his seemingly endless supply of fascinating characters and stories. But "A Passion in the Desert," shows no fall-off from the brilliance of the Copenhagen Quartet. This book is, by turns, creepy, funny, amazingly insightful, and as personal as it gets within the ruminations of a character's mind, in this case, one Fred Twomey. And the great trick of Kennedy's writing is that no matter how surreal or fantastical his plots sometimes become, it always seems that they could happen to us. Everything remains plausible and personal. "A Passion in the Desert" is to be savored. Read the newspaper on the train or on a bus, but save Kennedy's latest for your armchair, with a chilled martini on a table next to you. And then begin reading and you'll know you are in the hands of legitimate master storyteller. Kennedy's work is as good as it gets.

An extremely imaginative story. The exoticism and mystery of the setting and characters (one of the main protagonists is a large feline) will fascinate long after you've finished the book. Haunting.

This was a story that I read in school and was so impressed that I purchased a book of short stories that this appeared in. The author's use of emotion and imagery is outstanding and this is probably the best short story that I have ever read.

I read this story in Junior High as part of a reading study for class and was truely fascinated by the imagery of De Balzac. I always remembered it as a favorite and where that book is today i don't know, but i was completely surprised when i recently rented a movie and saw "Passion in the Desert" as one of the previews! I don't remember the story being long enough for a movie, but that's never stopped a movie from being filmed and produced before. If someone could please help me locate this story, i would be much obliged!

The now Archbishop Chrysostomos of Etna does a wonderful service to world Orthodoxy and those interested in the sayings of the desert fathers by producing this wonderful translation and selection of sayings of the desert fathers. His use of English is fluid and his work is not stilted as other translations of the desert fathers tend to be. It is a very enjoyable text. Hopefully, Holy Cross Press in Brookline will choose to reprint this classic.