COGAN'S WOODS
Ron Ellis, COGAN'S WOODSRon Ellis
In an early form, this evocative memoir of Ellis's yearly squirrel hunts with his father in 1960s Kentucky became the author's ticket into the University of Montana's Environmental Writing Institute, where he studied with nature writer Rick Bass. Ellis recreates the tastes and sounds of rural America with scenes that sometimes border on cliché, but are kept fresh by his devotion to quiet, lovely detail. Avoiding overworked pastoral imagery, he recreates his memories: inhaling the smell of weeds and wood smoke as his father steered their white Mercury through wet fog; stepping into a "foyer of ancient beech trees with their silvered trunks and brushy, gray-green canopy"; watching the predawn silhouettes of squirrels in rain-soaked foliage and "the stuttering rhythm of cowbells." After the hunt, they would stop for lunch at the Persimmon Gap General Store, with its penny candy bins and blue boxes of shotgun shells. Ellis depicts his father as a sensitive squirrel hunter, who blends manly restraint and expressive engagement. This image-laden portrait of an archetypal South is more poignant since the landscape of Ellis's memories has all but disappeared. (Mar.)
closeDetailsReviewed on: 02/26/2001
Genre: Nonfiction
Open Ebook - 176 pages - 978-1-62873-091-3
Paperback - 176 pages - 978-1-61608-403-5
In an early form, this evocative memoir of Ellis's yearly squirrel hunts with his father in 1960s Kentucky became the author's ticket into the University of Montana's Environmental Writing Institute, where he studied with nature writer Rick Bass. Ellis recreates the tastes and sounds of rural America with scenes that sometimes border on cliché, but are kept fresh by his devotion to quiet, lovely detail. Avoiding overworked pastoral imagery, he recreates his memories: inhaling the smell of weeds and wood smoke as his father steered their white Mercury through wet fog; stepping into a "foyer of ancient beech trees with their silvered trunks and brushy, gray-green canopy"; watching the predawn silhouettes of squirrels in rain-soaked foliage and "the stuttering rhythm of cowbells." After the hunt, they would stop for lunch at the Persimmon Gap General Store, with its penny candy bins and blue boxes of shotgun shells. Ellis depicts his father as a sensitive squirrel hunter, who blends manly restraint and expressive engagement. This image-laden portrait of an archetypal South is more poignant since the landscape of Ellis's memories has all but disappeared.
Reviewed on: 02/26/2001
Genre: Nonfiction
Open Ebook - 176 pages - 978-1-62873-091-3
Paperback - 176 pages - 978-1-61608-403-5
