Books Briefly
Books Briefly Winter Gardening THE ESSENTIAL EARTHMAN by Henry Mitchell Indiana University Press. 244 pp. $12.95. Henry Mitchell, who grew up in Tennessee and later lived in Delta country,...
...In October 1978 Laurie Shepherd, then in her late twenties, bought eight acres of high, wooded land in northern Minnesota with 400 feet of frontage on the Mississippi...
...Shepherd came to the woods equipped with chain saw, axes, hatchet, plans, youthful strength, and the talent to write this fine, spare journal of her experience...
...She insists she doesn't want electricity, television, or indoor plumbing...
...Rabbit's complacency is disrupted by the return of his son, a dropout from Kent State, who is entangled with two young women...
...In this book he has assembled a collection of graceful short essays on the seasons, garden design, bulbs, iris and dahlias (he has special affection for both), trees, vines, and selected annuals...
...Despite poison ivy, mosquitoes, raccoons, and rain without end, she was faithful to her dream, and do-it-yourselfers (especially those who are feminists) will applaud her tenacity and practicality...
...He never reads a book, just the newspaper to have something to say to people...
...13.95...
...it is enough to call it a refreshing assertion of personal choice...
...Mitchell has strong personal preferences and shares them...
...467 pp...
...8.95 paperback...
...Six months later she moved into the log cabin she built with some friends and a few townspeople...
...175 pp...
...He and his wife Janice still live with her mother, belong to a second-rate country club, and associate with several dull couples...
...He broods about his mortality but more often he devotes himself to sexual fantasies...
...She has friends and "a supportive family" but prefers living alone with two aging cats and a husky...
...Shepherd has a telephone on a tree, a woodstove, a piano, kerosene lamps, and a cistern pump and grows most of what she eats...
...It would be pretentious to call this unpretentious journal "a women's Walden...
...As tension builds within the family and at the showroom, Rabbit and Janice speculate in gold and silver, accept a pregnant new daughter-in-law, buy their own house, and escape for a Caribbean vacation where they indulge in a wife-swapping binge...
...The book is illustrated with attractive woodcuts, and it is recommended for cold winter nights and for reference in future gardening seasons...
...In his preface Mitchell writes, "It is not enough to grow the most beautiful things...
...In this third Harry ("Rabbit") Angstrom novel, the time is 1979, and Rabbit, now forty-eight, is the prosperous head of a Toyota dealership founded by his late father-in-law...
...In April she set up a tent...
...As a city gardener he is conscious of the limitations imposed by a small lot, and he considers these with practicality and humor...
...Updike captures the times and a drab Pennsylvania town and its inhabitants with an all-encompassing eye...
...A Life Half Over RABBIT IS RICH by John Updike Alfred A. Knopf...
...Henry Mitchell, who grew up in Tennessee and later lived in Delta country, writes a weekly gardening column for The Washington Post...
...Another Way A DREAMER'S LOG CABIN by Laurie Shepherd Dembner Books...
...Illustrated...
...He loves Nature, though he can name almost nothing in it...
...Distributed by W.W...
...Norton...
...She had quit school teaching and built up a bankroll for the cabin by working almost around the clock as an insurance agent, dishwasher, bus driver, janitor, piano tuner, and chimney sweep—skills she later put to use when funds were low...
...During a quiet time in the Poconos, Rabbit wonders what he has done with "this life of his half over...
...He loves money, though he doesn't understand how it flows to him, or how it leaks away...
...It is even better to explore them, to identify with them, and to grow into a rather new consciousness of them...
...She admits that she finds books, news magazines, and a radio essential...
Vol. 46 • February 1982 • No. 2
