Nebraska Center for Writers

Chimney Rock What the Critics Say
About John T Price

NOT JUST ANY LAND: A PERSONAL AND LITERARY JOURNEY INTO THE AMERICAN GRASSLANDS



Not Just Any Land:
A Personal and Literary Journey
into the American Grasslands
Copyright © 2004
by John T Price
U of Nebraska P
How to Buy

Though he'd lived in Iowa all his life, the allure of the prairie had somehow eluded John Price — until, after a catastrophic flood, a brief glimpse of native wildlife suddenly brought his surroundings home to him. Not Just Any Land is a memoir of Price's rediscovery of his place in the American landscape and of his search for a new relationship to the life of the prairie — that once immense and beautiful wilderness of grass now so depleted and damaged as to test even the deepest faith. Price's journey toward a conscious commitment to place takes him to some of America's largest remaining grasslands and brings him face to face with a troubling, but also hopeful, personal and environmental legacy. It also leads him through the region's literature and into conversations with contemporary nature writers — Linda Hasselstrom, Dan O'Brien, William Least Heat-Moon, and Mary Swander — who have devoted themselves to living in, writing about, and restoring the grasslands. Among these authors Price observes how a commitment to the land can spring from diverse sources, for instance, the generational weight of a family ranch, the rites of wildlife preservation, the "deep maps" of ancestral memory, and the imperatives of a body inflicted with environmental illness. The resulting narrative is an innovative blend of memoir, nature writing, and literary criticism that bears witness to the essential bonds between spirit, art, and earth. — from the publisher

John Price finds his way to the heart of the grasslands that our ancestors called the great inland sea. Riding and listening and reading along with him, we learn not only about the prairie, we also learn how to be at home in our own place. — Scott Russell Sanders, author of Hunting for Hope

Price's considerable wisdom and poetic vision spring from both the prairie and great prairie books. With nature as his compass and literature as his map, he conducts us on a powerful journey not just in the American grasslands, but in understanding the relationship between our identity and the places that blood and history define for us as home. — Julene Bair, author of One Degree West: Reflections of a Plainsdaughter

What does a hot tub on a nature writer's ranch say about wildness? How does one begin to make a home in a ravaged ecosystem? French fries or bull fries? What can the prairie awaken in writers — including the author of this marvelous pilgrimage? These and other questions help John Price avoid the usual paeans and bromides that fill too much contemporary nature writing. Price puts himself on the line by showing us how he is trying to understand the place he's from — and where he wishes to live as an ecological citizen. Part of that process is visiting with writers who have made the grasslands their home. His dispatches from these encounters — literary and personal — can help all of us understand failings, desires, complications. And, despite Joyce Carol Oates's declaration that nature writers lack a sense of humor, John Price gives us moments of genuine, self-deprecating humor, which, in his hands, is also wisdom. — Christopher Cokinos, author of Hope Is the Thing with Feathers: A Personal Chronicle of Vanished Birds.

Price is a gifted writer. ... His journey leaves him transformed as it may well transform the reader. — Booklist

Price's insightful questions and sense of humor make the book's subject highly accessible and memorable. — Twyla Hansen, NCB Newsletter


redball.gif Bibliography
redball.gif Selection
redball.gif Interview
redball.gif Buy a Book
redball.gif John T Price's Page
redball.gif Writers On-Line



Return
to
The Rock

Nebraska Center for Writers