Arboreal: A Collection of New Woodland Writing by Adrian Cooper

Abstract

behavior that many characterize as “inhuman ” or “inhumane.” The novelist’s mission embodies the ideal that the Roman playwright Terence enunciated when he had a character say, “Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto” (I am human, and nothing of that which is human is alien to me). A novelist is this kind of human, who is not alien even to the vilest acts of human beings. Ganguly has written an important book, a provocative book, a sensitive book. Perhaps, in the spirit of discourse, she won’t object to some corrections and some animadversions. She writes of the “five or six world languages—English, Mandarin, Arabic, Spanish, French, and Hindi. “Mandarin” is an oral dialect of Chinese: millions of people speak “Mandarin ,” but no one writes in “Mandarin”: the Nobel Prize winner Mo Yan, for example , comes from Shandong province and speaks Shandong dialect, not Mandarin; just as Mao Zedong spoke Hunan dialect, and Deng Xiaoping spoke Sichuan dialect; but they all wrote in Chinese. I question Ganguly’s emphasis on visual witnessing. Cognitive scientists have researched visual witnessing as distinctly unreliable (see The Invisible Gorilla), and perhaps Ganguly does not give sufficient weight to the numbing effect of so much human cruelty that appears in the media. Her prose may be more accessible to academics whose tolerance for jargon is greater than mine, but I had to cancel my normal understanding of “remedial” or “remediation” because Ganguly means by these words, specifically, “rendering in another form.” These animadversions aside, I do not begrudge the time reading this thoughtful analysis, not only of the post-1989 world novel, but a sensitive report on the temper of our times. EugeneEoyang Bloomington,Indiana Arboreal: A Collection of New Woodland Writing. Ed. Adrian Cooper. Toller Fratrum, UK. Little Toller Books. 2016. 326 pages. Arboreal: A Collection of New Woodland Writing focuses on the relationship between people and trees, between societies and forests. Each selection is subtitled with the name of a particular forest or woodland. While Arboreal is set in Britain, it would be of great interest to anyone interested in history or the environment, and the collection has something to offer readers of several genres: the prose selections range from creative nonfiction to short story, and poetry and photography are also included. It is a handsome book that would be a welcome addition to the library of anyone with an interest in traditional woodcraft, arboriculture , ecology, or natural history. The poetry in this collection is superb and varied in style. Take, for example, Adam Thorpe’s “Nine Oaks: Curridge, Berkshire.” Thorpe captures the tree’s essence in the opening stanza: “Every tree is an interlude between applauses / of air, an upside-down splash or that lone cloud’s image. / The limbs go everywhere there is a taste of light.” For a demonstration of range, consider Richard Skelton’s series of concrete poems entitled “Thwaite,” from the Old Norse word for “clearing.” The prose offerings are equally strong. Ali Smith’s story “The Green Stuff: Wandlebury Wood, Cambridge” makes an old allegory fresh through her description of a “green child” and a landowner’s son. It is a haunting, incomplete narrative. The landowner’s son must confront his notions of ownership and memory when the inexplicable happens. Will Ashon’s historical piece, “The Gypsy Stone,” gives a rambling (in the best sense of the word) history of Epping Forest and the role this place had on the fortunes of the transient people who lived there before the twentieth century. Nota Bene WORLDLIT.ORG 89 Valentin Rasputin Ivan’s Daughter Trans. Margaret Winchell Three String Books Ivan’s Daughter is a collection of shorter pieces capturing the experience of postSoviet Russia from Valentin Rasputin’s pointedly ruralist viewpoint. Though often controversial in his political views, Rasputin’s perspectives on the rapid change of the Perestroika period and beyond are vital to outsiders who might seek to understand the mind-set that drives contemporary Russian social and foreign policy. Oy, Caramba! Ed. Ilan Stavans University of New Mexico Press This reissue and expansion of 1994’s Tropical Synagogues samples the crosspollination of Jewish identity with magical realism in fiction and serves as a...