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excerpts have appeared in: |
Waiting for the Earth to Turn Over: Identity and the Late-Twentieth-Century American West Salt
Lake City: University of Utah Press, ©1996 Waiting for the Earth to Turn Over is Philip Garrison's graceful account of his slow accumulation of identity in the North American west, and reveals how the dance we learn while we are waiting for the earth to turn over is inextricably connected to our experiences in (and memories of) the landscapes we inhabit. From childhood stories set on the banks of the Mississippi to adult experiences in such places as Honduras, Mexico City, and the Pacific Northwest, provides fresh perspectives on how the myths rooted in a specific landscape inform our thinking about the land and about ourselves. Enlightening us with fresh perspective on well-known elements of the mythic West, entertaining us with anecdotes of the post-Cold War West, Garrison reveals how history, memory and identity are interwoven as he shows us the remarkable landscape of the American West in a light both new to us and very, very old. Waiting for the Earth to Turn Over is an engaging, challenging, unusual, informative, insightful, thoughtful, reflective and one of the most memorable presentation. Highly recommended!"
I yearn for the days of E.B. White, the New Yorker magazine’s, and therefore the world’s, premier essayist of a half-century ago. But just when I fear I’ll have to be satisfied with Garry Wills and P.J. O’Rourke, along comes Philip Garrison with Waiting for the Earth to Turn Over... This is a lovely excursion into nooks and crannies of the American heartland’s past, and other distant reaches. Garrison recalls his college days, rock art, life in Honduras, reflections in a Missouri cemetery, and the days when buffalo wallowed on the prairie. Fine stuff this. The essay isn’t dead yet.
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| ©2006-07, Philip Garrison; web desigh: Patricia Garrison |
