Winegold by Joe Nigg (review)

180 Western American Literature or wrongly given. But the unknown still lies ahead of it, and so who is finally to say? If time has apparently proved it wrong, more time may prove it right. As growth has called it into question, further growth may reaffirm it.” One hesitates, with a sense of humility and respect, in judging any writer’s work who comes to his or her task with the same qualities. Individual readers should judge for themselves whether the writer offers anything of value, since appearances can enlighten as well as deceive. And we all know, as Marvin Bell says somewhere, how many times a critic reads a book: less than once. My apologies, Mrs.Jones, to all mywhipping boys!And toyou, Mrs. McGuilicuttyMcAndrew , good night wherever you are. JAMES R. HEPWORTH Lewis-Clark State College Winegold. ByJoe Nigg. (2640 E. 12th Ave./Box 715/Denver, Colorado 80206: Wayland Press, 1985. 71 pages, $15.00 cloth; $5.95 paper.) What impresses me most about Joe Nigg’s six short stories is the range of subjects covered: childhood, a railroad job, a college professor, a small grape grower, a boilermaker timekeeper, and the bond of friendship between two educated young men going back to nature for a weekend wilderness connec­ tion. The personal relationships between the author’s various characters are not at all one-dimensional. A realistic vision is woven with human intensity into the theme of each tale. The first story, “Errantry,” is about a kid who receives the gift of a sword, shield, and battle headgear. The new toy triggers a knight-in-shining-armor mood in Davey Ogiersen: “He held up his shield, and the bullets, bouncing off, sprayed into the enemy lines, knocking them over like cockroaches. They let lions loose on him. Lowering his head, he killed them with the horns on his hat.” However, this imaginary escape world does not last long. Two older boys bully him, his magic horns fall off his head, and he takes flight up the nearest tree. My favorite story in Winegold is “Dance of the Gandies.” It focuses on railroad workers putting in a new line of ties. There is a penetrating drama in it that Nigg deftly relates to us by translating the hot sun of the workday and the sweat on the brows of the men. The fierce heat and the relentless push of the foreman, appropriately named Cocky, inspired this lament from the new­ comer on the job. “Damned Cocky. Did he ever shovel like this? D-i-p. Allez houp. Pull’em up. Up. One at a time. My shovel crashes into loose rock. Bang. What the hell’s happening to my mind? Sonofabitching sun’s drying it up. My God, not a thought in my head. Where’d they all go? Hiding down in the well. Floating on their backs. Too hot for them up in my head where Reviews 181 they belong. Traitors. All because of the railroad, which is going out of busi­ ness anyway. Why should I help? They’re fighting a losing battle, like the Pony Express and the telegraph. Buffalo Bill fighting with Marconi. Marconi? Morse. Morse?” ART CUELHO Big Timber, Montana Where Water Comes Together With Other Water. ByRaymond Carver. (New York: Random House, 1985. 130 pages, $13.95.) It is easy to find Carver the Story Teller in this collection of poems in seven sections. He sets scenes (“They’re alone at the kitchen table in her friend’s/apartment.”), establishes the tension for plot lines (“Long before the thought of his own death, / my dad said he wanted to lie close / to his par­ ents.”), and creates characters (“He took a room in a port city with a fellow / called Sulieman A. Sulieman and his wife, / an American known only as Bonnie.”) It is also easy to be cantankerous about some of the poems, seeing them as but true confessions of the literati. For the poems are full of the grief, alcoholism, failed relationships, and general angst readers of contemporary poetry have come to expect from the suffering artiste, who cannot just suffer like the rest of humanity, but has to be talking...