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Title: Edge of Taos Desert: An Escape to Reality by Mabel Dodge Luhan, Lois P. Rudnick, John Collier ISBN: 0-8263-0971-2 Publisher: University of New Mexico Press Pub. Date: June, 1987 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 5 (2 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Significant Historical Literature
Comment: In December of 1917, Mabel Dodge Sterne and her husband, artist Maurice Sterne, made their way up to Taos in an unforgettable journey up the rural road. Mabel immediately connected spiritually and emotionally with Taos and was drawn to find a place to stay. "Edge of Taos Desert" is the story of her personal transformation during her first year in Taos. In many ways, this book is an insightful commentary on Santa Fe and Taos in 1918. Mabel's description of the physical and cultural environment is vivid. She describes the Mexicans bringing in wood by burro to sell as well the first time she saw an Indian. Careful readers will discern the conflicts and prejudices between the Pueblo people, the Mexicans, and the more newly arrived Anglos. She provides many priceless early observations of the region that may best be understood by readers who have some knowledge of New Mexico history and culture. However, understanding Mabel's history may provide more information about the significance of this book.
Mabel Dodge Luhan grew up in a wealthy family that left her emotionally bankrupt. She spent years of her adult life looking for the fulfillment of her emptiness. She was a renaissance woman in Italy, and then a salon hostess in New York, hosting conversations with some of the brightest minds of her time. She was a radical modernist looking for a solution to the American ills brought on by the Industrial Revolution. "Edge of Taos Desert" is the most important autobiographical chapter in her life because, in the Pueblo people, she believed that she had found a solution to both her emotional emptiness and America's discontentment. Her role in the future became to draw artists to Taos to write about and paint the people, the place, and the culture in order that it might be saved and that, we, as Americans might also save ourselves with what we'd learned.
She had a messianic vision of utopia with the Victorian belief that a woman's role was to support others. She found her own voice, though, in writing her autobiographies and several other books. "Edge of Taos Desert" is a beautifully written literary piece. She journeys through with strong social and cultural observations and a bold confidence and irreverence that allows her to see what a white woman of her time would not have been allowed to see. By August of 1918, her third husband (Sterne) has returned to New York, and she enters the door of being one of the most infamous Taoseno's in that town's history with a poignant and personal tale to tell.
Rating: 5
Summary: A beautiful description of New Mexico in l9l7
Comment: This book is a rare jem. The writing is of unparralled beauty and perception. Mabel Dodge Lujan describes her arrival in Taos, New Mexico in l9l7. Lujan has come from New York city where she was a wealthy socialite involved in various art and political/psychological cicles (She was the former lover of John Reed who was portrayed by Warren Beatty in the movie Reds). She has come to Taos to reunite with her husband, the artist Maurice Stearn. However, almost imediately she finds that the town of Taos, and especially the Indians of the neighboring pueblo, are awakening the depths of her in a sublime and inevitable way. She describes how this process of conversion from a relatively shallow person (though an earnest seeker of truth), to one who begins to understand and feel the life beyond herself is catalyzed by the Indian Tony Lujan, whom she later marries. The story is really a spiritual one, but never described as such. Rather one only feels the utter humility of this women in the face of a way of life that increasingly draws her to it while also drawing her to the depth of herself. Her descriptions of the Indian life of the pueblo must be some of the finest ever crafted about native Americans.
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Title: Intimate Memories: The Autobiography of Mabel Dodge Luhan by Mabel Dodge Luhan, Lois Palken Rudnick ISBN: 0826321062 Publisher: University of New Mexico Press Pub. Date: October, 1999 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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Title: Utopian Vistas: The Mabel Dodge Luhan House and the American Counterculture by Lois Palken Rudnick ISBN: 0826319262 Publisher: University of New Mexico Press Pub. Date: June, 1998 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: New Mexico: An Interpretive History by Marc Simmons ISBN: 0826311105 Publisher: University of New Mexico Press Pub. Date: October, 1988 List Price(USD): $10.95 |
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Title: We Fed Them Cactus (Paso Por Aqui Series on Nuevomexicano Literature) by Fabiola Cabeza De Baca, Carlos De Baca, Dorothy L. Peters ISBN: 0826315038 Publisher: University of New Mexico Press Pub. Date: March, 1994 List Price(USD): $16.95 |
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Title: Mabel Dodge Luhan: New Woman, New Worlds by Lois Palken Rudnick ISBN: 082630995X Publisher: University of New Mexico Press Pub. Date: December, 1988 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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