Letters to the Editor
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Another Canyon connoisseur
Thanks for demonstrating I'm not the only fan of "Over the Edge: Death in Grand Canyon"! The book is like a bag of salted peanuts, suitable for sustained and enjoyable nibbling and packed full of nutritious lessons. As Stephen Amidon points out, most fatalities in the Canyon have been the result of human stupidity rather than plain old bad luck. Reading these miniature life-and-death dramas brings back vivid memories of my own adventures in that awesome place. We must protect Arizona's spectacular beauty for future generations.
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"Since then, the state has continued to "develop" at an alarming rate."
Indeed. As an Arizona resident who was also born here, I am a rare creature.
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Such a downer
Arizona has lots of problems, but did nearly every book recommendation have to include a swipe at the state and its residents? What a downer.
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Zane Grey's Arizona
One can not explore the literature of Arizona with out delving into the writings of one of the American West's great stroy tellers, Zane Grey. Grey was an adventurer and explorer of the southwest, and was able to translate some of the campfire stories, legends, and heroes into exciting tales, full of grand descriptions of the Arizona landscape. Just a couple of the many titles I've enjoyed include Under the Tonto Rim, To the last Man, Heritage of the Desert, and The Vanishing American. A personal favorite is his true-life account of Roping Lions in the Grand Canyon. Do yourself a favor, pickup one of these books, and connect with that turn of centruy version of Arizona and the West.
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Cadillac Desert
The Literary Guide to the World is really a great idea. There is a great tradition of travel literature that most travelers know little about.
I'm glad that Cadillac Desert was mentioned by the author of the Arizona article. In my opinion, its one of the best non-fiction books of the last 30 years. Its very well-researched, interesting, and startling. Once you read it, it will change your view of the American west forever.
All of the Hillerman books are great too.
Monument Valley is located in Utah, not Arizona.
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Monument Valley
Monument Valley is located in Utah, not Arizona.
-- Mike_in_NM
Actually, Monument Valley is located in the Dine (Navajo) Nation. But also, about 90% of it is in Arizona.
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Another AZ Writer
Allow me to add Charles Bowden to your Arizona reading list. Very much in the tradition of Abbey, Stenger and Reisner with a little Hunter Thompson thrown in for good measure.
Check out Blue Desert, Mezcal, and Blues for Cannibals.
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Other Stegner works
Not specific to Arizona, but I'd also highly recommend Stegner's biography of John Wesley Powell: "Beyond the 100th Meridian". It's nominally a biography, but it's really more about the settlement of the West and how that played out against the scarcity of water.
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Unforgivable Omission
Writing about writers who write about Arizona and leaving out Charles Bowden is like writing about Beat writers and leaving out Kerouac. Mezcal, Killing the Hidden Waters, Blue Mountain, Desierto, Red Line, Blues for Cannibals, Blood Orchid: An Unatural History of America represent not only a detailed illustration of the state of Arizona but also the best writing on the state of mind of Arizona. In fact, its some of the best writing being done today.
Put his name in a search engine and read about what he called Alberto Gonzales to his face at the Texas Book Fair. It'll make you feel real good...
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Monument Valley
I am more than happy to be corrected, but it's been my understanding that, while Monument Valley straddles the state line, the iconic vista so popular in movie Westerns (in John Ford's Stagecoach they never seem to get past it!) is on the Utah side but is always photographed from the Arizona side. In other words, to see it you have to go to Arizona, not Utah.
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Arizona Past & Present
As another letter writer mentioned here it is a shock here when someone is actually from this state. Not only am I from here my descendents homesteaded here, so I'm around a 3rd generation Arizona native. People moving here have a barely disguised contempt for this land and the people in it. I live in the Phoenix area and all I hear is how much everyone hates it and it's not like back home (i.e Chicago, New York, whatever). The article and the books mentioned are correct about how developers and others try to create a slice of the mid-west in the middle of the desert which not only wastes water but in the long term probably cannot be maintained. And there is also no need for it. In the southern part of the state it is what is considered lush desert, plenty of plants and grass grow here naturally but it is usually ripped up and replaced with non native plants. I apologize for rambling but it is a great concern to me because I do love it here and I see so many people moving in, abusing it, resenting it, and then after they’ve trashed it returning in disgust to their home states. The whole Phoenix area is treated like everything is disposable. Oh well, maybe I’ll move further out into the desert and become a grumpy miser. It does run in the family.
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What About Indigenous Writers?
Arizona has one of the largest populations of Native American Nations and writers in the country-- second only to New Mexico. It would have been nice to see some of them mentioned.
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Two more Arizona books that shouldn't be missed...
For fans of magical realism, don't miss Alfredo Vea Jr.'s La Maravilla, set in the desert outskirts of Phoenix, and Terri Windling's The Wood Wife, set in the Rincon Mountains near Tucson. Both these novels evoke the desert beautifully, and are too often overlooked.
For nonfiction, I agree with other letter writers here that Charles Bowden's work is
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A Non-Native Landscape Without the Native Voice
Since Arizona also contains the Hopi's among many other native populations, I find at least some mention of their unique native voice rather disturbing when I peruse this book list.
As noted, the issue is popularly contemporary as to how modern people have failed to understand the landscape that holds them now in these places we have manufactured for our lives.
It should only take one visit to Phoenix tap water to understand that not only is the water being improperly mined, but deadened with chemicals at the same time. So quickly then the relationship of water in the modern desert is directly, intimately presented to us as out of balance.
Where can we then turn for the understanding we need to beat a path out of the manufactured desert into that real one ?
The contemporary failure to understand one's landscape is more rooted in the loss of the ancient language and images associated with inhabited space than we would like to acknowledge.
By dropping out whole sections of the native voice of the landscape from this list you only entice us down a meandering trail that dissipates much too soon.
While there are other books that don't so readily come to my mind with a non-bioregional Arizona centric focus, and are long missing from my bookshelf, or are quite unavailable; I would at least think that the books of Frank Waters: The Book of the Hopi, Masked Gods, etc. should have rated some mention here.