In Our Nature: Stories of Wildness FROM THE PUBLISHER
Are we not nature?
Fourteen unforgettable short stories provoke, illuminate, and startle as they explore our perception of nature and the conflict between wildness and civilization within each of us.
In a time of increasing recognition of the consequences of the destruction of forests and wetlands, the pillaging of the seas, and the toxicity of industry, we are experiencing profound uncertainty about our relationship with the earth. These stellar short stories by writers such as Barry Lopez, Margaret Atwood, E. L. Doctorow, Rick Bass, Chris Offutt, and others plumb the mystery-as only fiction can-of nature within us and the world of nature that surrounds us.
We are nature, in spite of our machines, our plastics, and our artificial ingredients. Yet what do we make of our own nature? Our own wildness? And how do we explain the paradox of our urge to both exploit and protect wilderness?
From E.L. Doctorow's shattering tale, "Willi," is which a young boy witnesses adults transformed into animals by the frenzy of sexual lust, to Rick Bass's "Swamp Boy," where his young hero is hounded by a pack of boys incensed by his solitary communion with the wild, to Margaret Atwood's wickedly funny story, "My Life as a Bat," or Kent Meyer's soulful ballad of love regained, "The Heart of the Sky," these memorable stories articulate our deep need for wilderness and the indelible role nature plays in our psychological and spiritual well-being.
Whether set in the jungles of Guyana or a vacant city lot, these compelling short works...remind us how important it is to go where the wild things are. (O Magazine)
"In spite of our machines, our plastics, and our artificial ingredients, we are as much a part of nature as any other animal," editor Donna Seaman writes in the thoughtful introduction to her new anthology of short stories, "In Our Nature." Contemporary life, with its emphasis on technology, illuminates how we are moving away from the natural world at the speed of light. Our modern lives are conducted primarily in dense urban living conditions, traffic jams and windowless offices. Day-to-day contact with the wild is not an option for many. According to Seaman, such deprivation causes emotional and spiritual malaise in men and women. Our big brains may have gifted us with advanced technology, but the wellspring of what makes us human is much more than intelligence. We are animals — pure and simple — despite our preference for tall, decaf, nonfat lattes over water, or leisurely grocery shopping over hunting. "We need to feed our senses with sunshine and wind, night and rain, hills, trees, and flowing water," Seaman writes.
"In Our Nature" is a remarkable collection of stories about wildness, consistently strong and fascinating, with great variety in the voices represented. Writers anthologized include E.L. Doctorow, Rick DeMarinis, Lorrie Moore, Margaret Atwood, Rick Bass and Linda Hogan, among many gifted others. The 14 contributors are not famous for being overtly environmental writers. "They write about wildness because they write about human nature," Seaman explains. "Their stories . . . share an intensity of feeling and implicit questioning of our perception of ourselves as the planet's dominant species." Seaman's attraction to these stories rests in her personal interest in the "[i]ndelible moments of pure sensuous awareness," those times when the conscious intellect is able to shut itself down, and the human being is permitted a glimpse of the world as perhaps experienced by animals, or by our earliest ancestors who didn't have the words or books or abstract theories to respond to the mysteries of nature.
"One spring day I walked in the meadow . . . and I imagined the earth's soul lifting to the warmth of the sun and mingling me in some divine embrace," Doctorow writes in his story "Willi." His child narrator continues, caught momentarily in the cradle of a near-religious experience: "I was resonant with the hum of the universe, I was made indistinguishable from the world in a great bonding of natural revelation."
But the same comforting, sunny day will expose young Willi to a more raw side of nature: procreation at its most impersonal — pure sex drive. The youngster catches sight of his mother making love with his tutor. The betrayal and the brute spectacle of the adults engaged in sex horrifies and angers Willi. The boy knows that telling his father what he has seen will destroy the arranged marriage between his young mother and far older father, a figure who represents for Willi all of the order in the world.
Bass' splendid story "Swamp Boy" offers its own rendition of a wilding. The victim this time is a school boy, hunted down and tormented by a group of his classmates. Swamp Boy, friendless, fat, wearing thick spectacles, loves to wander through the woods down to a pond called Hidden Lake, where he catches frogs and tadpoles with his little net and jar. The boys follow him into the woods, hogtie him in the trees, spy on him at home. Swamp Boy's knowledge of the woods, his innocent and passionate connection to animals and plants, drives his tormenters crazy, our narrator — one of the gang — tells us:
"I was convinced that he was absorbing all of our strength with his goodness, his sweetness. . . .
"I . . . would not become his friend, for then the other boys would treat me as they treated him.
"But I wanted to watch."
He describes a magical place he visits where a herd of buffalo a century earlier left a circular scar in the earth as the animals fought off wolves:
"The trees, before they were cut down, told this story.
"Swamp Boy could feel these things as he moved across the prairie. . . ."
The woods that Swamp Boy haunted were long ago subdivided into developments, the now-adult narrator tells us. We learn that the narrator works in a city skyscraper but knows a few things about the woods. "[T]he beat of the earth's heart" filled him with pain, he confesses, for failing to stand up for Swamp Boy.
Margaret Atwood's "My Life As a Bat" is a brilliant and witty meditation on an animal that reveals itself to be highly intelligent, civilized, family oriented and spiritual. Tess Gallagher's "I Got a Guy Once" tells about a gentle soul's physical act of vengeance. "I had been a sheep a long time, had gotten comfortable in my woolly ways," he tells us. But he has never forgotten the words of a fellow logger: " 'Better to be a tiger for one day, than a sheep for a thousand.' "
Chris Offutt's "Barred Owl," Percival Everett's "Wolf at the Door" and Linda Hogan's "Amen" all examine characters who identify with wild creatures.
The hard-living, self-destructive narrator of "Barred Owl" hails from the hill country of Kentucky. He has aimlessly wandered west and stayed in the small Colorado town where his car broke down years earlier. Now he's an unmarried alcoholic with few friends and lousy job prospects. He recognizes himself in the eponymous barred owl his fellow Kentuckian and friend Tarvis finds dead on the road. " 'A barred owl getting this far west ain't right,' " Tarvis tells the narrator, who knows that he is also too far from home for his own good.
Hogan's story about Jack, the one-eyed man bigger, bolder, meaner and older than everyone else in his Indian tribe, reads with the inevitability of a tall tale. The relationship between the one-eyed ancient fish and one-eyed Jack is rather obvious, but Hogan's storytelling gifts allow for the obvious with grace and humor.
Everett's fine story "Wolf at the Door" concerns Hiram, an aging, disgruntled veterinarian trapped in an apparently passionless marriage. He vehemently opposes the local hunting down of a mountain lion that had been allegedly threatening livestock. The reasons behind Hiram's strong feelings about the lion are revealed in a powerful subplot woven into the tale. Stopping by a neighbor's place to care for her injured horse, Hiram can't help but notice the comely Marjorie, a woman abandoned by her husband. Later that night, Hiram dreams that he is the stalked mountain lion, and then is suddenly himself again, facing a half-naked Marjorie. Hiram awakens, hungry as a mountain lion on the prowl, and lonely as only a human can be. He tentatively reaches across the cold bed for his wife.
The strength of this anthology lies in Seaman's consistently excellent choices. The voices and tones differ from story to story — from Moore's restrained, dry humor to Simon J. Ortiz's subtle irony in "Men on the Moon." Seaman has clearly read far and wide to find such memorable and strong stories. You need not be a weekend hiker, camping enthusiast or mountain climber to appreciate these tales about country vets, loggers and macho hunters because you'll also find stories about a quiet museum employee, a remorseless female murderer and a yuppie cat lover.
All of these tales circle around the wordless moment the lucky few of us might know when the chains of consciousness are snapped and something far beyond our understanding reveals itself. In "The Heart of the Sky," the final story in the collection, Kent Meyer's character Lennis Wagner beautifully describes such an experience. Holding in his arms a wild goose he has just freed from some vines, and with his head pressed against its breast, Lennis hears "for a moment an eternal thing. . . . 'The heart of the sky.' "
(Chicago Tribune)
Author Biography: Donna Seaman is an editor for Booklist, where she has made reviewing books about environmental issues a focus, highlighting fiction that explores the psychological and spiritual impact of the changes technology brings. Her reviews and essays have appeared in the Chicago Tribune, the Boston Review, the Los Angeles Times, and the Ruminator Review (formerly The Hungry Mind Review). A love for nature and a passion for books led to this anthology. Seaman lives in Chicago.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
In a departure for DK Publishing, Booklist editor Donna Seaman collects 14 diverse and intriguing short works of fiction under the title Our Nature: Stories of Wildness. Contributors include popular nature writers like Linda Hogan and Diane Ackerman, who provides the foreword, and general fiction writers like Margaret Atwood, who suggests, fancifully, that she was a bat in a previous life. Recognizing that one need not write directly about nature to appreciate it, Rick Bass, Barry Lopez and E.L. Doctorow each explore how thin the line is that separates supposedly civilized beings from wild (or animalistic) behavior. With the freedom and expansiveness that fiction allows, each contributor shows how undeniably a part of nature we all are. Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.
Children's Literature
"The force that through the green fuse drives the flower / Drives my green age..." "Dylan Thomas reminds readers that the life force that causes plants to bloom and the eyes of animals to glisten is the same vitality that charges our minds and sustains our souls." This theme runs through "In Our Nature" a collection of short stories by writers such as Barry Lopez, E. L. Doctorow, Rick Bass and Margaret Atwood. They vary from funny stories, such as "My Life As A Bat", to stories explaining the paradox of our urge as humans to both exploit and protect wildlife. Each story prompts reflection on our close relationship with the varied wildlife of our great planet. The contributors to this anthology are winners of many literary awards. Many are also authors of children's books on the topic of the endless beauty and mystery of nature. 2000, DK Ink, Ages 9 to Adult, $22.95. Reviewer: Sue Reichard
KLIATT - Sarah Applegate
This collection of fiction from some pretty terrific authors (Rick Bass, Tess Gallagher, Margaret Atwood, to name a few) offer up powerful, charming and at times disturbing looks at various interpretations of "wildness." Some of the stories focus on the connections people have to the wild and the outdoors, while others use nature as a setting for a broader story. Throughout the pieces, the authors create some wonderful images. Many contain strong messages about caring for nature. I was especially moved by the tale called "Barred Owl," by Chris Offutt. The story, about a Kentuckian transplanted to Colorado, really captures the complexities of the dangerous and calming side of the wild, and while some stories in the book are quite funny, this one was dark, despairing and finally, provocative. The stories in the book are generally wonderful, but I am not sure how it would work for a high school collection. Some of the pieces could easily be used in a writing course, some could be used in science classes, but it is likely students would not seek this book out. With an able librarian, this book could make its way into students' hands, but it will not find its way off the shelf otherwise. KLIATT Codes: SA�Recommended for senior high school students, advanced students, and adults. 2000, Univ. of Georgia Press, 259p.,
Library Journal
Seaman, an editor at Booklist, has compiled a superb collection of short stories that digs deep into the psyche to explore our wild nature our instincts, fears, and spiritual connections to nature. The impressive array of authors includes novelists E.L. Doctorow and Linda Hogan, as well as environmental writers Rick Bass and Barry Lopez. Several environmental issues, such as habitat destruction, logging, and chemical spills, provide a subtle backdrop upon which the stories unfold. In Kent Meyers's "The Heart of the Sky," a farmer restores a field to wetlands after an encounter with a Canadian goose. The old man in Simon J. Ortiz's "Men on the Moon" asks the simple yet profound question, Is it really important that men get to the moon? Stories range from tragic (Doctorow's "Willi") to whimsical (Margaret Atwood's "My Life as a Bat") to delightfully humorous (Lorrie Moore's "Four Calling Birds, Three French Hens"). Highly recommended for both academic and public libraries. Maureen J Delaney-Lehman, Lake Superior State Univ. Lib., Sault Ste. Marie, MI Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
In Seaman's debut anthology of 14 previously published stories by such literary lights as Margaret Atwood and E.L. Doctorow, Lorrie Moore and Barry Lopez, and with a foreword by Diane Ackerman, the theme of wildness gains a pleasing complexity. Atwood's "My Life as a Bat" looks sympathetically at wildness in a former life, while Moore takes a more ironic view of the loss of a cat in "Four Calling Birds, Three French Hens." More sobering considerations of the subject, in which affinity with nature gives rise to alienation, comes in Rick Bass's "Swamp Boy," as adolescent cruelty knows no bounds in pursuing a boy with a passion for the bayou, and in Lopez's "The Open Lot," in which a talented but misunderstood researcher at New York's Museum of Natural History is compensated by a persistent view of wildlife in an empty lot of Manhattan. Finally, in Kent Meyers's "The Heart of the Sky," wildness proves providential to a family in trouble who are redeemed when a farmer stops his combine to save a trapped Canada goose.
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