The Lonely Other: A Woman Watching America

Like Annie Dillard and Kathleen Norris, George explores self and place and the connections between the two. But instead of focused reflections (her growing up in Pittsburgh, living on the Great Plains), George grounds her writing in rootlessness. Combining natural, cultural and personal history, these previously published essays are infused with a sense of being on the road (words such as gazing and yearning appear often). George, who refers to herself both as a ""busy traveler"" and a ""story catcher"" rambles across the American map, recording both the sacredness of giant redwoods and the ""despairing imitation of white middle-class values"" she finds on an Indian reservation. A Freudian, feminist, critic, poet and academic (Oedipus Anne: The Poetry of Anne Sexton), George is spurred on by unknowns around the next curve. Immersing herself in big physical topographies (Mammoth Cave, Ky.; White Sands, N.Mex.) and smaller views (dung beetles in Big Bend National Park; peep shows in New York City--""research in urban combat zones""), she contemplates the ""igneous privacies"" of her broken relationships, epileptic seizures and maternal musings and of her father's suicide, which ""runs like a red line through my life and through most of the words I have written."" When her stance as trained interpreter overshadows the textures of the journey, her writing teeters near self-indulgence. But when the landscape prevails and George unrehearsedly (""Bless horseshit"") reaches outside herself to embrace her fears and wounds in a quest for ""mindful living,"" the essays transcend solipsistic memoir. (July)