Local Wonders: Seasons in the Bohemian Alps Book

"In the end, what makes life meaningful for Kooser are the ways in which his neighbors care for one another and how an afternoon walking with an old dog, or baking a pie, or decorating the house for Christmas can summon memories of his Iowa childhood."___University of Nebraska Press/Bison Books

These days my wife and I clean and clear out as much clutter as possible from our lives. I am still the biggest collector of the thousand or so books remaining in my possession. So, to read this memoir by Ted Kooser about Nebraska's Bohemian Alps and the flair and personalities of the inhabitants who never throw anything away in case they might someday need it, all their hoarding of artifacts, trinkets of glass, and buckets of nails and bolts and wire seems excessively a waste of space and time to me, and in truth, Kooser's book becomes in short order a bore. Through the course of these related rural histories and anecdotes about the good life, it is obvious to me that Kooser is a huge sentimentalist. His established literary rank provides an automatic forum for this type of work. In fact it was the jacket blurbs and glowing reviews that first drew me to him, not any previous knowledge of his work or his standing in the world of poetry and letters.

The novelist, essayist, wild-game-chef, and poet Jim Harrison's blurb about this book being "the quietest magnificent book" he's ever read is all over this production. It is on the front of the jacket, it is on the back, and it may even be found inside the cloth boards on the nice, clean pages as well. Being a university publication, the book itself is of the highest quality. It is obviously nice to be connected to the academics and one of the anointed ones. Ted Kooser is a two-time U. S. poet laureate and a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. I have read a couple of his poems, and they were OK, but not of the quality I would think worthy of what I believe a winning Pulitzer Prize should consist of. But that is just me talking. And it is not sour grapes at all as I am happy as a clam for him for any success he can garner, even if undeserved.

In this memoir Kooser takes us through all four seasons of the year and relates to us stories of his family and neighbors, as well as tales about the dogs and other critters that amble through the pages from time to time. There are some ideas or positions of his I should think need advancement such as his humor for the silliness of hunters or his disdain for the encroachment of land developers and their monstrous constructions of large homes for people who want to live twenty miles out from town and commute to work from the safe bucolic fields of Kooser's farm country. But that happens everywhere there is beautiful and pristine land that these greedy idiots care to uglify and destroy.

Ted Kooser is a very nice man. You can tell by looking at the photograph of him on the rear jacket flap. His skillful yarns weave gently through every relative and neighbor he has known. He is big on the past. Reading him is like taking an easy stroll through the park, never in a hurry to get anywhere, and willing to take in all the surroundings. But there is little heavy seriousness to this book. He is much too nice for any extreme depths of consciousness. There is no edge, and literally no jeopardy. There is little reason to read this book after being willfully subjected to the intense negotiations of writers such as D.H. Lawrence, Thomas Bernhard, or Robert Walser. And I would think the great French philosopher Gilles Deleuze would not have wasted his precious time reading this memoir. But the man of letters Jim Harrison thinks this book is great, and Harrison is a grizzled old burly fellow, and he writes poetry as well, so that makes him a sensitive guy too. I began the book with good feelings, I admit. I thought it was pretty nice. Of course, I was on my summer vacation with nothing pressing on my plate and plenty of time for a leisurely amble through the mind of Ted Kooser. But I found little there, especially when I unwittingly and concurrently began my study of D. H. Lawrence. Kooser had been divorced and still occasionally licked the wounds suffered from being an absent dad, but there was little in his life to compare to the freedom and courage of my new-found Lawrence. And it wasn't the sexy novels of Lawrence I was reading. Not Lady Chatterly's Lover, not Sons and Lovers, nothing so controversial as that. It was merely the Lawrence letters and memoirs that were finding their way into my consciousness. And the truest biography exists through ones collected letters. D.H. Lawrence was a serious man. Most likely too serious for most, with more questions hanging than agreements, more skepticism than belief, and his controversial opinions engaged always in looking for a wider argument.

I suppose the particularities of why I was most attracted at first to this Kooser book and why I most dislike it now is summed up best by these remarks by some of the his readers:

"The essays are sprinkled with Czech and Bohemian proverbs, reflecting the wry common-sense wisdom of the Old World that informs his point of view."

"I really enjoyed the anecdotes throughout, the pace of life, and the heartland stories."

"A church member loaned me this book by the former Poet Laureate. It is not a book of poems. It is gentle remarks on life in Nebraska hills."

"I recommend it for its care, its lack of anxiety, and its simplicity."

So here's the deal: I am much too serious for this type of literature, but obviously many of his readers are not when I am personally confronted by the sheer number of his admirers. I would say that people in general like to feel good, and this book does that for reasons stated previously regarding sentimentalism. Of course, for others, there is the almost obligatory life-changing story present near the end of the book where Kooser uses another parable, this time about losing a donkey, and relates the story of his fight with cancer and what became of it. Sort of like my own mantra of looking at problems as opportunities rather than something negative, but the notable difference being that my mantra is minus the god and personal savior element. And you probably already have guessed it, another reason here for me to cringe.