Fathers, Sons, and Brothers: The Men in My Family, and: Volcano: A Memoir of Hawai'i, and: The Meadow, and: Blue Pastures (review)

216Fourth Genre she? StiU the adoring daughter whose success as a writer owed everything to the fiction of her father's Ufe? "What I had trusted as a text to live by," she writes, became "the shedding of ülusion and the taking on of what might be another ülusion, but one ofmy own."A rich dual portrait offather and daughter. Robert L. Root Jr. Many ofthe writers in the fourth genre also work in one or more ofthe other three. These books, one by a noveUst and three by poets, bring narrative and lyrical elements to bear upon the nonfiction forms of essay and memoir. Fathers, Sons, and Brothers: The Men in My Family, by Bret Lott. Harcourt, Brace, 1997. 208 pages, cloth, $22.00. Bret Lott's remarkable memoir ofthree generations ofmen in his famüy makes unremarkable Uves resonate with emotion and insight. His subjects are deceptively commonplace; but Lott is the master of the perfectly observed moment, as when he watches his son furiously and joyfuUy pedaUng his bicycle with naive optimism that he wiU win a race he has already lost or when hisjoy in the speed and dexterity with which he runs his paper route leads him to discover the sound ofhis own blood. His prose is a marvel of restrained grace, deceptively plain and, at times, startUngly Uluminating about the broader meanings in routine events. The essays that make up this book are superb examples ofthe noveUst's means in service ofthe essayist 's ends. Volcano:A Memoir ofHawai'i, by Garrett Hongo. AlfredA. Knopf, 1995. 342 pages, cloth, $24.00 Garrett Hongo's memoir is a journey of discovery, from chUdhood in Hawai'i through adolescence and adulthood in the mainland United States, in which he seeks to reconstruct his own identity, to locate himself in his own history and his famüys history as Japanese Americans. His return to the fam- üy site ofVolcano, his exploration of the Hawai'ian landscape, his rediscovery of his grandfather's Ufe, his rebeUious confrontation with the tangled ethnic and cultural identities of contemporary America are powerfuUy rendered. Book Reviews217 Hongo interweaves segments ofpersonal, cultural, and natural history through canto-Uke chapters. His prose is compeUing and lyrical, his descriptions vivid, his stories moving. By the conclusion the reader wül be convinced, with Hongo, that there is "a beauty in belonging to this earth and to its past, even one locked in mystery and prohibition, unstoried, that exceeds aU the passion you can claim for it."This beautiful memoir sings aU the way through. The Meadow, byJames Galvin. Henry Holt, 1992. 240 pages, paper, $13.00. Earnesdy, even urgendy, writers teU other writers that they have to read The Meadow, not only for the stories it teUs but also for the ways it teUs them. No other book I know so demoUshes boundaries between genres: fictional renderings of historical moments, mini-essays of natural history, excerpts from diaries, passages ofmemoir, snippets a sentence or two long, segments that read Uke prose poems, dramatic monologues, narrative vignettes—aU these arranged to cumulatively reveal the life of a Colorado mountain meadow and its inhabitants over a hundred years of occupation. The stories of homesteaders and ranchers intimate with their environment are retold: AppWorster's forced march through a bUzzard with his sons; two men's quiet death by freezing in another snowstorm decades later; long-time rancher Lyle's knowledge of the last words of BfUy the Kid and the progress of Roman mortaring techniques toward Umbria; two men trying to outsmart a beaver they can't help but admire. With scenes as compact and powerful as poems, the book's untitled, unnumbered sections function Uke stanzas in a prose eclogue; the language that binds them together is lyrical, elegiac, and discipUned. Galvin brings a sense of compassion and grace to his stories and a Uberating awareness ofwhat it is possible to do in nonfiction. Blue Pastures, by Mary OUver. Harcourt, Brace, 1995. 136 pages, cloth, $22.00. Mary OUver writes both poetry and prose with the same precision and grace, blurring the Une between prose poetry and lyrical essay. Blue Pastures is a book about nature...