It Is Not Now: Tales of Maine

From Publishers Weekly
By turns nostalgic, whimsical and cantankerous, Gould has entertained readers for half a century through his columns in the Christian Science Monitor. In this collection (his 27th book), he carps about senior-citizen status and drive-through banking. While chronicling the progress of Maine's publicity drive for tourism, Gould reminisces about the "real" Maine boiled dinner and the rite of preparing the wood stove for its summer in the shed. There is a piece about a carpenter who measured in plutts and pobbles, and others about the Maine Coon cat, the leash law (he's ag'in it), winter camping and "summerfolk." These brief essays view human nature under a strong regional light. Illustrations. Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.


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If the retired columnist of the "Brunswick Record" enjoyed the celebrity he deserves, "The latest accession to his oeuvre--'nuff said" would suffice as a review. For Gould is nothing if not a master of quality control. "It Is Not Now" is as observant and incisive and opinionated and good-natured and wise and deceptively digressive, as attuned to the vernacular and zeitgeist of Maine, as understated and lapidary in its prose as "Funny About That" before it. Perhaps this compilation's distinctive quality is the elegiac theme unifying its contents: the less alienating relations people had with other people and nature in a past that can't be recaptured. Yet the tough-minded, ironic Gould can be poignant and celebratory without sentimentality when he writes about the time before the phone company had eminent domain over his property, before pasteurization, before bank presidents were anonymous and license plates had numbers and outboards increased the number of loons per lake. "It Is Not Now" is as good an introduction to Gould as any of its 23 predecessors. 'Nuff said.


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