Heart's Desire: The Best of Edward Hoagland : Essays from Twenty Years - Softcover

Hoagland gathers 35 pieces from The Courage of Turtles et al. in this witty and thoughtful literary potpourri. With insight, candor and courage, he delves into such subjects as country and city life, loneliness, sexual fantasy and deathand all of these just in the book's first essay. In the remaining works, Hoagland reflects on jury duty, Johnny Appleseed, taxidermy, boxing, Thoreau, trains, tugboats, suicide, circus people and more. He writes prose poems to the wilderness and pays homage to wildlife, both humble (turtles) and splendid (wolves), but is as at home on pavement as he is on dirt trails. True, Hoagland loves the country, the forest and the mountains, but he does not resort to idyllic distortions or to a whining contempt for the metropolis: "But to claim that the city is dying, never to 'turn the corner,' is not to announce that we should jump for the lifeboats. There are still no better people than New Yorkers . . . . And my mountain is dying too." Most of all, Hoagland revels in his memories, reconstructing perceptions from the past and exploring the meaning of his own thoughts of parents, home town, private school, summers in the country, lovers, marriages and divorces.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.

These 35 essays come mainly from earlier collections, and ultimately from magazines like The Atlantic and Harper's . It takes some tenacity to follow all their turns and digressions. They are dense, almost cluttered with history and anecdote, and the more journalistic essays (especially on American wildlife) often sag under the weight of factual detail. But others are more like jagged pieces of autobiography or restless meditationson love and solitude, on man's place in a swelling mass of humanity and in a dwindling animal world. Hoagland has many fine, if undeveloped, insights into living alternatives and escapes such as his summers in Vermont. Larger libraries should consider. Donald Ray, Manhattanville Coll. Lib., Purchase, N.Y.
Copyright 1988 Reed Business Information, Inc.