The Mighty Mississippi

Despite my best intentions, I didn't get past the introduction to Henry Louis Gates' lit-crit book, The Signifying Monkey.  Perhaps another time I'll be up for reading it.  I decided to switch to another book that continues my river theme: Rising Tide: The Great Mississippi Flood of 1927 and How it Changed America, by John M. Barry, who wrote another book I have but haven't yet read, The Great Influenza. 

Before reading this book, I'd heard of the 1927 flood, but only from references to it over the years, the most compelling of which is the song, "Louisiana, 1927,"  by Randy Newman.  Here's a rendition of the song on YouTube, complete with pictures of the flood: Louisiana.

Rising Tide doesn't start at the time of the flood, though.  It starts back in the early 19th century, when people in power were trying to determine how to control the Mississippi's mighty course and its frequent inundations of the surrounding lands.  Their goal was to make the Mississippi more amenable to commercial river traffic so that goods could be transported more quickly and easily between the north and south and between east and west, to accomodate the rapid expansion of settlement to the newly acquired territories.

People of the early 19th century also knew that the land beside the river, because the river had flooded it for millennia, was particularly rich land, good for farming.  People in power wished to claim that land for farming and settlement and to bring more people, more workers, and more money to areas that were previously considered wasteland.  If only they could control the mighty Mississippi, they thought, they could make that wish a reality.  So they set about solving the flooding problem, thinking the combination of American ingenuity and American capital would be no match for even the strongest river.

Unfortunately, according to John Barry, American politics also got involved, and that's where things started to go wrong. I've read about a third of the book so far (it's a hefty 500+ pages), and I'm finding it quite informative but also suspenseful, knowing that all the bad decisions are going to result in the most devastating river flood in American history.

The book also includes a side story of civil rights and the terrible effects of Reconstruction.  Barry focuses in on the Mississippi Delta region and the efforts of some powerful families to shape it into a model of the New South, reborn with the help of better cotton and bigger plantations and streamlined river transport, with newly freed African Americans as key players, or some would say, pawns.

All the drama of greed and the machinations of powerful men make this book more of a tale than a history, which also makes it a good read. Though Barry does bring in quite a bit of evidence to back up his claims, I have to remember that this is one man's take on the events of that era.

In my next post, I'll let you know how things are going with the river and the men who seek to control it.

Reached the Pacific! On to the Next!

I finished River Horse this week, as predicted.  The last part was a bit anti-climactic, though, and perhaps deliberately so.  Once Heat-Moon and crew reached the Columbia River, there were few challenges other than to stick with it to the end, and that's kind of the way I felt about the book.

Curiously, Heat-Moon tells us more about himself at the end, especially his trouble with keeping a relationship going.  He even hints that he is emotionally reserved, possibly the reason he had two failed marriages.  It was an odd part of the book.  After reading through all those pages of physical description, I didn't really want to know all that personal information, especially because it puts him in a rather bad light. I wanted to go on thinking of him as a great adventurer, not as an emotional cripple running away from relationships.

Oh, well.  I may decide to read his Blue Highways at some point; it's the one of the four books by him that I don't own.  I have PrairyErth, but have not read beyond the first couple of chapters.  That one is also on my list.  I see from looking at Heat-Moon's Amazon.com page that he's written another travel book, published in 2008, Roads to Quoz, about looking for the peculiar in America.  He takes his wife (third?) along on that one, so maybe he got a clue about relationships after his river journey "flattened" (as he puts it) his second marriage.

When I finished River-Horse, I returned to the Dick Francis novel I was reading, Crossfire, co-authored by his son, Felix.  (I sometimes wonder how much Dick got involved with writing in the last few years of his life.) Felix is as talented as his father, it seems, and will surely continue the Francis tradition of writing compelling mysteries about the horsey set.  Crossfire was a very good read--a complex plot involving an Afghanistan veteran who lost his leg in an IED explosion.  When he returns to England to reluctantly begin his civilian life, he finds he must rescue his horse trainer mother, whether she wants him to or not.  I recommend it highly, especially to Francis fans.

But what to read next?  I think this time I'll take another turn to the scholarly, and read a book I've been meaning to read for many years: The Signifying Monkey, by Henry Louis Gates, first published in 1988.  It's a book that attempts to help readers understand African American literature through understanding African American mythology and cultural roots.

You may know Gates from his PBS specials about genealogy, African American Lives and Faces of America.  You may also remember his dispute with the Cambridge police when he was arrested for trying to break into his own house. (See report here: Gates' arrest.)  Later, he and the police officer had a "beer summit" with Obama.

Though The Signifying Monkey will not be an easy read, I'm looking forward to delving back into lit crit.  Since I am currently watching the Ken Burns miniseries Jazz, I think Gates' book will add to my enjoyment of it. 

So stay tuned!

The Rockies: All Downhill from Here!

At this point in River-Horse we're in the Rockies, boating or canoeing down mountain streams. It's a difficult way, since the water is unpredictable, and what's underneath the water even more so. But they're slowly heading toward the Continental Divide, where they will finally be going downstream, after weeks of traveling upstream on the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. 

The writer is an interesting fellow; his voice is quite distinctive.  He characterizes his crew and others he meets along the way as highly skeptical of his venture, and critical of him for trying it.  It seems in every chapter he needs to make it clear to the reader and his crew that he's the one true believer in their ability to make it to the Pacific.  Every day, it seems, he must convince them to stick with it. He keeps going despite the odds because to him it's a quest--they're just along for the ride.  I wonder if his crew would characterize it the same way.  It'd be interesting to see if their comments have been published anywhere.

Heat-Moon does seem an egotist, but he also seems very concerned about the environment and how industry and government are wrecking it.  He acknowledges the changes that are slowly taking place, though, in how waterways are treated and used.  (He gives a begrudging nod to the Corps of Engineers now and again.)  Sometimes he even seems conflicted about what is better--the improved waterway or the wild river.  The wild river is more scenic, more natural, but not very easy to navigate, and in those places where it has been made into a channel or a reservoir, Heat-Moon seems at times relieved to have a break from the natural river with all its twists and turns, variable depths, and unexpected hazards.  One can imagine that's how people in the 19th and early 20th centuries felt when the improvements were first made.

I'm still enjoying the book and the author's rich descriptions of each place with its flora and fauna and its bipedal inhabitants and their structures.  I think, though, that I too am going to be happy when we're on the downhill side of the journey, at the tail of the Snake, as it were.  The fact that I feel that way is a masterful stroke on the author's part, I think.  He is not just chronicling the journey; he's making the reader feel it as much as possible the way he felt it.  When we come to the end we will be as jubilant as he, I think.

There's an interesting part of the book that points to that effect in a way.  When he's traveling through the flat landscape of the Dakotas, instead of narrating the highlights day by day, as he has done throughout the book, he reproduces his journal entries covering several days at once.  In this way he shows us that it is so tedious, so unchanging from one day to the next, that summary is the best way to convey it.  What was most interesting to me, though, is realizing that he had been narrating one day at a time (a day per chapter)--he had purposely been going that slowly.

I hope to have River-Horse finished by next week.  I'm going to feel a little like Lewis and Clark, I think, by the time I reach the Pacific: "Ocean in view! O! the joy."

The Slow Route to the Sea

Nikawa is slowly crossing the country by waterway, and encountering many interesting people and places along the way. There have been challenges, mostly because the year they chose to make this journey was a year of exceptionally high water and flooding.  Both the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers were quite full and flooding in some places.  They've encountered people building sandbag levees to keep the water out, and they've dealt with the effects of fast moving, deep water.  One of the most nerve-wracking effects is the number of uprooted trees and the amount of other debris that ends up in the water, lurking just below or above the surface, nearly invisible until they're close to it.

They've almost run out of gas on more than one occasion, having to hike into town with gas cans to get enough to take them to the next town.  But they've had lots of unexpected help, too.  In many towns and even a few cities, people have been willing to give them rides to get gas or supplies and offer them tips on where to stay or get a good meal. A few people have even tagged along for a stretch, helping them negotiate a particular portion of the river, guiding them around its hidden dangers.  And in cafes and taverns along the way, people have provided conversation and cameraderie and interest in their project.

I'm past the middle now, as are Mr. Heat-Moon and his companions.  They're on the upper Missouri, where the river is still largely untamed.  (That has its advantages and disadvantages, apparently.)  Soon they'll have to switch to mountain streams and face all the challenges those waterways will bring.

Despite the slow pace of the narrative (which matches the slow pace of the journey), I find myself eager to see what waits for the intrepid travelers around the next bend of the river.  That to me is the mark of a good book!

See you in the Rockies!