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Title: The Cadence of Grass by Thomas McGuane ISBN: 0-679-76745-2 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 13 May, 2003 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.62 (13 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: A Master of Description and Character
Comment: Mr. McGuane is a true American genius. He is in the category of Twain, Hemmingway, and Williams, to mention a few.
The setting is Montana. The characters are chiseled with a diamond cutter. The theme is human survival among adults who seem to eat their young. With the exception of Bill-a rugged kindness spreads across the pages. He accepts life at it comes.
Excellent read. Yep.
Rating: 4
Summary: More Fun in the New West
Comment: McGuane is my favorite novelist, mining territory that hits uncomfortably close to my own ranching, adulterous bones. Setting aside Larry McMurtry's dissipated and puzzling "review" of this book in a recent NY Review of Books, this is one of McGuane's more problematic novels. It is also his most interesting work in 12 years. It does not rival his best (Nobody's Angel) in either grim power or wit. Nevertheless, all the familiar ingredients are there - New West profiteers, doomed marriages, snowstorms on the Absarokas, suicides, revenge, the dead father figure with the endless shadow, and the tiring intra-family struggle for power with a capital "P." Maybe because these ingredients are ever-present we are starting to take McGuane's bleak elegance for granted.
The novel sputters a bit in the thoroughly rendered but self-indulgent hardcore cowboy scenes where the dignified old hand culls sick cows and tends to the calfing and generally displays a wealth of ranching motherwit that the average reader will find indecipherable. Hell, I run cattle and I found it distracting! What more than makes up for it are the razor-sharp exchanges between the characters and the sharply drawn quiet moments that fill the book.
My Uncle Wade loved this book. Not that my Uncle Wade is particularly well-read - and when I was a kid he took me to the Wyoming - Colorado State game and made me wet myself at the Circle K as a distraction to the clerk while he shoplifted beef jerky and tobacco. But my Uncle Wade knows Western Gothic. For my own self, I will just say that if you've ever spent a few fevered hours with your brother's wife at a Super 8, inoculated livestock on a Friday night, or hit someone with a pool cue, you will like this book.
Rating: 5
Summary: Becoming Unbottled
Comment: Becoming Unbottled
THE CADENCE OF GRASS moves through the lives of the Whitelaw family who own a bottling company in Montana. After the death of the patriarch, Sunny Jim (who never smiled), the lives of the rest of the family shift as unpredictably as prairie grass in the wind. The uneven beat of the action and the jarring, Kafkaesque characters contribute to the uniqueness of the book. The characters are both weirder than life yet touchingly real, and McGuane is often laugh-out-loud funny. Stuart, the disparaged and underestimated son-in-law is described as "simple enough to hide his own Easter eggs."
For a person who has been on a horse three times in her life and who has stood in a working barn once for five minutes (phew) the descriptions of such are a delight. I loved reading about draft horse stanchions, snaffles, Kelly Brothers grazers, offside billet straps and coppermouth John Israels, even though I have only the haziest idea as to what they are. And reading how Evelyn maneuvers her pony to work the cattle is as good as watching a gold medal figure skater.
McGuane is a first rate writer, a keen observer of humankind, and lover of the Montana country. THE CADENCE OF GRASS: a memorable read.
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Title: Some Horses : Essays by Thomas McGuane ISBN: 0375724524 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 14 November, 2000 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: The Longest Silence : A Life in Fishing by THOMAS MCGUANE ISBN: 0679454853 Publisher: Knopf Pub. Date: 26 October, 1999 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: Nothing but Blue Skies by Thomas McGuane ISBN: 0679747788 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 01 February, 1994 List Price(USD): $14.00 |
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Title: Panama by Thomas McGuane ISBN: 0679752919 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 30 May, 1995 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Keep the Change by Thomas McGuane ISBN: 0679730338 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 31 October, 1990 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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