John Muir: Summering in the Sierra ed. by Robert Engberg, and: The Pathless Way: John Muir and the American Wilderness by Michael Cohen (review)

Reviews 69 interpretation of each, giving fuller attention to the major and especially fine ones. Also useful, the apparatus following the text includes an index to all characters in Cather’s short fiction. The space given to synopsis means that interpretations sometimes seem cut short. Even when only brief comments were possible, however, Arnold accomplishes what she set out to do: introduce the readers to topics. For example, she notes that three of the stories in Uncle Valentine are “business centered” and in an endnote on “Neighbor Rosicky” comments on the number of “bitter or violent deaths” in Cather’s fiction. Both remarks high­ light subjects for readers to explore. The major value of Willa Cather’s Short Fiction is not in providing interpretations, however — though they are often quite good — but in intro­ ducing a body of fiction worthy of attention. Part of the pleasure of the book is that Arnold has read the stories carefully — and she knows their literary merit. If there are excesses, they are of a writer’s enthusiasm for her subject. I do not agree, for example, that “Cather proved herself as an artist long before O Pioneers! appeared in 1913,” but that is not the point. Arnold poses the important question: what was Cather’s achievement as a short story writer in this period? Elsewhere Arnold directs her reader in other ways. By arguing for the merit of previously overlooked stories, Arnold leads him or her to read those stories — or to reread them with a keener eye (her discussion of “The Senti­ mentality of William Tavenor” had that effect upon me). By noting that often the stories are unlike the novels written in the same period, she evokes questions about the relationship of Cather’s short fiction to her other writing, then suggests that Cather may have used the stories to balance work in the novels. Most importantly, by demonstrating that the stories have a separate life from the novels, Arnold charges her readers to give the short fiction the attention it deserves. SUSAN J. ROSOWSKI University of Nebraska, Lincoln John Muir: Summering in the Sierra. Edited by Robert Engberg. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984. 160 pages, $12.95.) The Pathless Way: John Muir and the American Wilderness. By Michael Cohen. (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1984. $25.00.) In the summers of 1873 and 1874, John Muir wandered from the Sierra and Central Valley of California north to Mount Shasta. He was writing investigative stories for a San Francisco newspaper, beginning what was to be a forty-year-long career in “wilderness journalism.” He was trying to draw the attention of Americans to wild nature and the need to preserve wilderness for its own sake. He wrote essays on the giant Sequoia — even then threatened by loggers — on the beginnings of irrigation and agri-industry in the Central 70 Western American Literature Valley, on the first fish hatchery in California which was a pathetic attempt to replenish the great runs of wild fish destroyed by mining operations. He also wrote about Mt. Shasta and the mountain sheep which would be hunted almost to extinction during his lifetime. These essays, written in the field and sent to the newspaper unrevised, are remarkably fresh after a hundred years. It is to the credit of Robert Engberg to edit this new and handsomely packaged edition. This is a companion book to another anthology of Muir’s writings edited by Engberg and Donald Wesling, John .Muir: To Yosemite and Beyond: Writings from the Years 1863 to 1875 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1980). The continuing popularity of Muir’s writings is shown by these editions plus the continuing sales of older editions of his works. Furthermore, new biographies and studies of Muir continue to appear. The most important new book on Muir and one which will set the standard for interpretation of his work for many years to come is Michael Cohen’s The Pathless Way. This is the first book to explore Muir’s emerging ecological consciousness and his writings from a “deep ecology” perspective. Cohen explores the experiences which led Muir to his understanding of organic wholeness, his biocentric philosophy and the...