Name: The Telling Distance: Conversations with the American Desert
Author: Berger, Bruce
ISBN: 9780816516773

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The Telling Distance: Conversations with the American Desert

by Bruce Berger

University of Arizona Press, 1990
Paper: 978-0-8165-1677-3
Library of Congress Classification F787.B47 1997
Dewey Decimal Classification 917.90433

ABOUT THIS BOOK | AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY | REVIEWS | TOC

ABOUT THIS BOOK

Winner of the 1990 Western States Book Award for Creative Nonfiction,The Telling Distance evokes the yearning expanses of our southwestern deserts and finds them full of sensuous marvels, erratic life forms, eccentric fellow travelers, dry humor, and surprise. In prose that revels in paradox, it reveals desert distances to be doubly telling: they both magnify our spirit and have incomparable tales to tell.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Bruce Berger is also the author of There Was a River and Almost an Island. In addition to writing, he has also played the piano professionally both in this country and in Spain.

REVIEWS

"A contemplation of the beautiful and the belching, snorting, seething desert that sprawls across the American Southwest." —Los Angeles Times

"Berger shares a significant kinship with those early romantic individuals who, in looking into nature, found a greater sense of self and soul. . . . Here is the work not so much of a desert rat as a desert connoisseur." —Bloomsbury Review

"Berger takes his place with Annie Dillard and Barry Lopez." —Denver Post

"This volume belongs on the shelf with all great desert literature. Berger updates the traditional chronicle of the desert by admiring its vastness and mysteries while being acutely aware of its vulnerability. . . . Berger's prose is perfectly adapted to his thoughts as cacti are to the desert—readers will find quotables on every page." —Booklist

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Wild Interiors
Genius of the Canyons                        9
Wild Interiors                              25
The Metaphysical Tent                       34
Sidewinders Anonymous                       35
The Vibram Stomp                            38
The Fire Sermon                             41
Heat                                        46
Desert Moon Hotel                           47
The Silent Elite                            50
Dope in the Desert                          53
Wilderness Temperament                      58
Wilderness Camp                             62
Daphne of Dark Canyon                       68
Wilderness and the Buried Self              69
Of Will and the Desert                        75
The Dismantling                              83
The Assault of Squaw Peak                    92
The Designer Deserts of Greater Phoenix      100
An Architectural Ghost Story                 106
Pinions, Pifions, and Opinions
Birdwatching: An Initiation                  121
Beyond Full-throated Ease                    139
Bird's Eye View                              142
Fear in the Lower Sonoran                    145
Chimera                                      149
Corralling the Tumbleweed                    151
A Mist on Stilts                             154
The Mysterious Brotherhood                   157
Pursuit and Flight
Surviving the Breaks                         165
Decline of the Desert Dream                  174
Brush Fire                                   176
Books on My Back                             177
Cold Pastoral                                181
Slickrock and the Bach Chaconne              184
Science, Environmentalism, and Music         188
The Uses of Emptiness
Much Ado about Nothing                     197
Time Out                                   201
Borges Primitive Area                      202
The Stone Gallery                          204
Art Deco Mirage                            207
Back Country                               213
War of Curiosity                           215
As Above, So Below                         219
How to Look at a Desert Sunset             220
Among My Souvenirs                         222
The San Rafael Swell Motel                 227
Fernando and Marisela                      229
Desert Moon Hotel Revisited                232
The Christmas Agave                        235

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