Of Time and Change: A Memoir - Hardcover

Literate, entertaining notes toward a memoir by the late southwestern novelist. Waters (Flight from Siesta, 1987), who died in 1995 at the age of 93, had something of a charmed, if difficult, childhood. His father, part Native American, introduced young Frank to the ways of the Ute, Navajo, and Pueblo Indians of the Southwest, an education that would serve him well in later years. After his father died, Waters made his way west to Los Angeles and later east to New York, where he worked, unhappily, as an engineer and advertising writer. But none of my successive jobs and hectic marriages held any conviction of permanency, he writes. I felt I was playing roles in which I was miscast, and I had lost the thread of my inner life. That quest for his inner life occupies most of this series of autobiographical vignettes, written with Waterss trademark conversational ease. He describes affectingly the intellectual life of the pre-WWII Southwest, when Mabel Dodge and Mary Austin held sway over Taos and the likes of D.H. Lawrence, Georges Gurdjieff, C.G. Jung, and Andrew Dasburg were ones cocktail companions. Waterss sketches of such people are at once respectful and humorous, as with his description of the painter and professional liar Leon Gaspard, who claimed that he taught Marc Chagall to draw and helped Giacomo Puccini write his most famous opera. Elsewhere Waters devotes much time to discussing his understanding of Native American spirituality and his researches into the Otherworld. Although Waterss Book of the Hopi was a foundational document in the literature of the contemporary New Age movement, its clear from these pages that he had little patience for cafeteria-style faith; his own quest involved considerable hard work, rigorous reading, and long conversations with leading religious thinkers of many cultures. Of much interest to readers of Waterss novels and to students of Southwestern life and letters generally. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Waters's books are all about subjects close to his heart, like the Native Americans who inform the Book of the Hopi or The Man Who Killed the Deer, but his latest is about the subject closest to his heartAhis longtime home of Taos, N.M. Nestled in the jagged Sangre de Cristo mountains, Taos is surrounded by a harshly beautiful landscape that has long attracted artists, writers and philosophers. Waters recounts the wild times in the early part of the century, the characters he met and the deep friendships he made. He remembers the Russian painters Leon Gaspard and Nicolai Fechin, whose names are still found on streets and buildings in Taos. He writes of the eccentric English painter Dorothy Brett and the eccentric English writer D.H. Lawrence. But memories of his best friends, Mabel Dodge Luhan and her "blanketed Indian" husband, Tony Lujan [sic], make up the bulk of the essays. He writes of the quasi-salon gatherings she re-created in her 17-room house on the edge of the reservation and his deep connection with Tony. "Knowing herself incompetent to interpret Indian life, Mabel drew others to Taos. With them she hoped to instigate here a rebirth of the dying Western civilization from the body of Indian culture." It's a mission that Waters takes up and many of the essays emphasize how much Anglos can learn from the Native American culture, their connection to the land and the spiritual benefits of such a relationship. His earthy, straightforward style delves deep into the ancient heritage of this land and the fascinating characters who gave it its artistic and spiritual repute.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.