Barbara Lloyd McMichael

"A River Without Banks" - William Johnson

Oregon State University Press - 160 pages - $18.95



I was looking for a change. The last few books I've reviewed have been by women and about women. It was time to read a book from a man's point of view, so I perused my bookshelf, picked up an essay collection by William Johnson and settled in.

"A River Without Banks: Place and Belonging in the Inland Northwest" is a meditative work about family, the natural world and the deep connections that can be formed between the two.

In Johnson's case, the landscape of central Idaho is his home and his muse. Thirty years ago, he and his wife packed up their young family and drove across the country from Florida, where they had lived for nine years, to his new job in Lewiston.

It was a homecoming of sorts - Johnson's wife had been raised on the Colville Reservation and he had grown up in Nampa. The skies, the rivers, the mountains and the seasons were familiar and resonant for them, and they taught their children about the pleasures of this corner of the world, as well.

They went fishing and river rafting, picked berries and split wood, camped and went to powwows. They grew up and they grew old.

Now a grandfather and professor emeritus at Lewis-Clark State College, Johnson takes stock of what the natural world has meant to him as a boy, a husband, a father and a teacher.

The author of three volumes of poetry, Johnson infuses his prose, too, with carefully crafted set-ups and nice turns of phrase. He writes about "waves of western settlers, or un-settlers, who couldn't stay in one place." When learning how to read animal tracks, he talks about the woods "as a scriptorium in which nature had written its many names."

But more than once, his assiduous wordsmithing pushed me to the brink of annoyance - and then over the edge. Here's an example: "Unseen, the river moved like wind. But there was something else, a deeper, intermittent downbeat, that mingled with, then countered, my pulse."

Now that's purple prose!

Sometimes Johnson's referential habits get in the way, too. As one who confesses lust for the printed page, the well-read Johnson quotes dozens of writers, from Lewis and Clark to Whitman to Rilke to Borges. The intention is generous: to share credit where it's due. And it's ambitious: to weave thinkers from different generations and cultures together on the page. For readers from outside academia, however, this may come across as a tedious exercise in name-dropping.

Nonetheless, there are treasures in this essay collection. My favorite, "The Parlors of Heaven," reflects on both berry picking and political enfranchisement in the electronic age. Johnson resists facile comparisons between the virtual world and the natural world, instead making careful observations about the qualitative differences between breadth and depth of communication. The piece merits dissemination and discussion. It also makes me want to quit what I'm doing right now and go in search of a blackberry thicket!



The Bookmonger is Barbara Lloyd McMichael, who writes this column focusing on the books, authors and publishers of the Pacific Northwest. Contact her at bkmonger@nwlink.com.