Blue Desert

by Charles Bowden

[jamiereadthis]

Bowden suits me so well because he’s an observer in the manner I tend to be. (“I am not a union man. I am not the man who joins things. I am not a company man. I am not the man who ever believes in the corporation. And I am not neutral.”) I can run my blood hot over a subject and yet still be cool water, still not take sides. I’d rather observe the river, I’d rather cross the river, I’d rather observe it again from the opposite side. I like, too much, the march of contradiction. (“This book is fat with contradictions,” Bowden promises, “but sounds one steady note: the land.”)

But observing the world in that way is wanting to experience it more than judge it. That’s what you find here. Experiences. Not judgements, occasionally opinions, occasionally strong opinions, but not conclusions, not solutions. Just experiences. Walk a hundred miles through the blue desert in order to understand. Etc.

Here is the test, I think, if Bowden will suit you so well too:

“I have been counseled at length by a friend who for decades has flourished as a freelance writer of nature stories. He warned me to avoid all colorful references to the casino (“none of those clinking ice cubes in glasses of whiskey,” he fumed) and play it straight and be rich in technical information. This is good advice that I find hard to follow. I have yet to meet the casino that cannot seduce me. The pits are so full of human greed and human hope and always there are these little touches— the men in the glass room packing sacks of money and wearing smocks that have no pockets— that make me glad to be a human being. There are few places as honest as the rampant fraud and fantasy of a casino. Here we let down our hair, our pants, our everything and confess to all our secret hungers.”