i think i just slept for around eleven hours! i can’t remember the last occurance of such sleep for my little brain. i have recently returned from a nice little excursion into canada to ski and recreate. we went up around roger’s pass and found the nice snowy medium in the backcountry. i towed my old airstream up there and got it rigged with propane heat (catalytic) for the evenings and it was like high living in there at night. prociutto and brie cracker hors d’oeuvres, tea, music, reading…
i finished my long started project of a book called, “where the sea used to be.” i ended up starting it over again in the airstream and reading it in totality.
it is the story of the latest leviathan of the planet. well, actually the leviathan as it occurrs here is around 500 million years old… but has only recently surfaced: OIL.
a character of ahab dimension, dudley, is like an alchemical, bacchic, egotistical pursuant of the greatest element on earth for exploitation, for the service of man and confirmation that man is greatest. he lives in the book mostly by heresay as well as his journals, which a young geologist reads in a snow encrusted cabin as he tries to map new oil prospects for the old man, even in the middle of a winter more severe than any i have known… and probably many have known. this is where the book takes place: in a small snow-bound community (i think mirrored from a deep north western community the author, Rick Bass, lives(ed) in), where transport in is limited to one crazed group of sledders who come in stinking like gas, selling crap near the end of the season, and snow travel out of the valley is very close to impossible. the extremes of this climate are so thoroughly thought out and evinced and beautifully written in this book, that, well, winter becomes a beautiful character as well. it seems to me a story that silently contends with one of the deepest seated issues of modern civilization, the horror and complete vile nature of what we do to this planet… yet seats it very quietly–without the klaxon clamor of an author declaiming his issue–and in the midst of a deep human beauty, posing CHOICE as one of the great possible ancestors of our coming generations.
since i’m not that into book reports, i’ll just say that i highly recommend this book. i believe actually, that it holds an important place in the history of american literature.
