I wrote this toward the end of yesterday evening, but I was involved and couldn’t post.
This book by Alexandra Fuller, The Legend of Colton H. Bryant, is, a prose poem from start to finish. I cannot recommend it more. But I warn you, it is likely to break your heart. It has broken mine. It is rare to read the raves of reviewers, read the book, reread the raves and decide they didn't do the book justice.
The story reads like a novel but is a true story of Colton, how he grew, what he did, and how he died. It is also the story of those closest to him, how they loved him, and he them. It takes place in Wyoming, on the high plains, and because Colton made his living at the last on the gas and oil rigs, it is about that as well. It is about the wild horse he tamed, and in the end it is about life and death, beauty and loss. It is about cornflower blue eyes and mind over matter.
Most of all, it is about how we go on, no matter what, no matter freaking what. "Cowboy up, cupcake," Colton would say.
I apologize for not posting sooner. I was busy reading. I was also distracted by other things. And I cannot post right now either, because I am downloading the 89 meg Itunes player at 4.5 kbps, a 5 hour download. I rarely do that but it's in a good cause. I will then have a way to play for free the whole remastered Beatles set, 16 cds of Beatles which was saved off for me in .m4a format or whatever it is that Ipod and Itunes defaults to. I sniveled about it, but Windows does not play that format.
Cowboy up, cupcake. Or as we say in bar talk in Oregon, "Oh well." You have to say that with the right inflection. Heh.
Contraction
1 week ago
cowboy up, cupcake ♠ (i like it)
ReplyDeleteAh,I wanted to say that (referring to G.Dansing's comment)
ReplyDeleteAnyway, Christopher, you sometimes talk about your arrogancy, i have never been able to detect that in you. That is untill now.
When you say; I was involved. I find that the height of arrogance.
I laugh and say; "oh well" (hopefully with the right inflection, tell me)
Good book review by the way.
Causes me to wish I had a book in me that would cause a man like you to rave on. I should read it.
ReplyDeletexo
erin
i'm worried again.... he cannot take the rough and tumble world of blogging as well as he did in his younger years.
ReplyDeleteIndeed. I have been around, but I can't sit here so comfortably (or anywhere) and that makes it easy to put off much typing. It is oddly true that the flex of typing muscles in my left arm ties to the pain in my ass. What? Exactly. That wasn't true when this seige started but became true later. The first two weeks I could sit and do anything. Since then (this is the fifth week) the only thing I can do that is pain free is lay in a particular shape on the couch. Even that isn't really pain free. I am improving by the way, and my pain is a quarter what it was.
ReplyDeleteI just read at Dale Favier's blog "mole" that there is a condition involving the deep muscles of the hip that can create a false sciatica. I think that is what has happened. It hurts just as bad or worse. And I think it has happened as a years later consequence of an injury to that side of my body where I hyperextended my hamstring in a bicycle accident in 2002. That took about five years to heal.
Ouch. Love your writing...from whatever vantage point
ReplyDeleteLinda