B6


EZ BD BookWorld MEMOIRREVIEWBYGREGORYMCNAMEE A novelist explores her desert habitat


THE TURQUOISE LEDGE By Leslie Marmon Silko Viking. 319 pp. $25.95


perhaps an arrowhead, a bit of flint washed down from the Appalachians, a Minié ball fromsome long-ago skirmish. Walk through a dry wash in the Sono-


W


ranDesert, as Leslie Silko has been doing daily for the last 30-odd years, and you’re likely to find legions of rattlesnakes guarding hidden seams of chrysocolla, gold and other precious metals — which inspire her memoir’s title, “Turquoise Ledge.”Likelieryouwill findlesser stones, “pieces of light gray and pale orange quartzitewith smooth surfaces and inter- estingrectangular shapes.”Youmayspota coyote, a javelina, a ghost or two.Youmay even see an extra-terrestrial — in which case, youmight be advised to head in the otherdirection. Silko, a Native American writer and


artist, came to her home in the gnarled, ancient TucsonMountains in 1978, when her now-classic novel “Ceremony” ap- peared. The city of Tucson was a minor meccaforwriters inthe’70s,populated,at least part-time, by Edward Abbey, Larry McMurtry, JoyWilliams, ScottMomaday and Richard Russo, among many other well-known authors, but it was also re- mote enough that a person could bolt from downtown to desert in 15 minutes. Silkofoundaplaceasfaroutontheedgeof town as itwas possible to get, a landscape ofwildhorsesandtoweringsaguarocacti, andmade herself at home in a desert that isdemanding oneventhe best ofdays. The best parts of her memoir recount


moments that many desert dwellers will instantly recognize: the near-ecstasy that comes when a cloud decides to open up and spatter a little rainonthe ground, the feel of shuddering summer heat on the skin, “how luxurious it feels to move throughthis yellowdawnlight.” The more offbeat parts are engaging,


too, if sometimes puzzling. Silko is certain that spirits inhabit her laundry roomand even the clouds that pass overhead. She is justas certainthat visitors fromafar called Star Beings — perhaps the ones Stephen Hawkinghas latelybeentellingusabout— haveselectedher tobeakindof interpreter for them: “They chose me to make their portraits because they want images that are accessible to ordinary people, to the masses,not tosome rarefiedaudience.” And she gives dozens of pages over to


chronicling the way of the local snakes, which she catalogues in careful detail: Here is Grandfather Rattler, there a tiny


NORMA JEAN GARGASZ/ALAMY The Sonoran Desert by the light of the full moon at SaguaroNational ParkWest, near Tucson, Ariz.


At dazzling moments, she pulls seemingly disconnected themes together: turquoise, rain, Aztec mythology and language, the otherworld and other worlds.


relative called Evo Atrox. Suffice it to say that if you have a fear of our slithering friends, thismaynot be the book for you. Stone and ghosts are timeless things,


but the desert is not, not while the busy descendants of Columbus are intent on chewing it up. In a dramatic turn, Silko writes of coming upon a piece of construc- tionequipmentdowninawash, thekindof yellow machine on which Abbey encour- aged desert dwellers to practice unauthor- ized maintenance, and of battling it by paintingwarding-offsymbolstaught toher bythoseStarBeings.Thesignsspookedthe machine’s owner, who read them as gang symbols—not a bad guess in Tucson and not far fromthemark, given Silko’s extra- terrestrialandotherworldlyallies. Silkowrites ofmany things,with affec-


tionateportraitsof friendsandfamilyand sharplyobservednotesonhistory,person- al and universal. She laments the poison- ing of her sisters by radioactive fallout fromatomic-bomb tests in the 1950s—a fate she avoided somehow. She voices occasional regrets, such as not having learned howto speak her ancestral Lagu- na language. (She is certain, too, that 500 years fromnow all North Americans will speakNahuatl, the languageof theAztecs, rather thanEnglishorSpanish,andsoshe has been studying that tongue.) At daz- zling moments, she pulls seemingly dis- connected themes together: turquoise, rain, Aztec mythology and language, the otherworld and other worlds (“It makes me happy to know that Nahuatl has a wordfor space ship”) and, yes, snakes.


But apart from dropping a tantalizing


hint or two—amemory, for instance, that asachildatLagunaPueblo, she toldapair of disbelieving Anglo tourists that she intended to become a playwright, for “I knewaplaywrightmadeupstories”—she avoids theone subject that studentsofher work have been wanting her to address: her development as a writer, one who is now considered among the best Native Americannovelists. That awaits another book.Meanwhile,


this one will do just fine, rattlesnakes, extra-terrestrials andall. bookworld@washpost.com


GregoryMcNameelives in Tucson, Ariz.His latest book is “OteroMesa: Preserving America’sWildestGrassland.”


alk through a field inMaryland or along a run in Northern Virgin- ia,andyou’relike- ly to find trea- sures in the grass and dark earth:


KLMNO


SUNDAY, DECEMBER 19, 2010


HISTORYREVIEWBYPAULINEMAIER


Partners in revolution T


here is an old adage that Thomas Jefferson’s reputation rises and falls according to how positive Americans feel about their country. If so, we


are in trouble. David McCullough’s “John Adams” (2001) began as a joint study of Jefferson and Adams, but Mc- Cullough decided that Jefferson could not stand up against his sometime friend from Braintree, Mass. Now An- drewBurstein andNancy Isenberg, both professors at Louisiana StateUniversity, argue thatMadison was the senior part- ner in his long and fruitful political partnershipwith Jefferson. That Madison and Jefferson worked


together creatively and productively over many decades is not news. In 1950, when Americans were feeling good about themselves, Adrienne Koch published “Jefferson and Madison: The Great Col- laboration,” giving Jefferson a titular edge. A half-century later, Joseph Ellis briefly described the Jefferson-Madison partnership in “Founding Brothers.” By then “The Republic ofLetters:The Corre- spondence between Thomas Jefferson and JamesMadison, 1776-1826” (1995), a three-volume collection edited by James Morton Smith, had pulled together the twomen’s delightfully literate letters and provided succinct summaries of their interactions from when they first met at the Virginia legislature in 1776 until Jef- ferson’s death a half-century later. Perhaps reflecting ourgloomy present,


Burstein and Isenberg distinguish their work from their predecessors’ by empha- sizing the “gritty” political world in which Madison and Jefferson operated; their “clannish” or “tribal” identity, which led them to act “out of an attach- ment to Virginia as much as a desire to defend the Union”; and Madison’s lead- ing role in their relationship. It was


MADISON AND JEFFERSON By Andrew Burstein and Nancy Isenberg Random House. 809 pp. $35


Madison, they note, who nudged Jeffer- son out of retirement after his wife’s death in 1782, initiated the criticisms of Hamilton that Jefferson continued in the early 1790s, was the “driving force” be- hind Jefferson’s candidacy for the presi- dency in 1796, and helped reverse Jeffer- son’s dangerously disunionist impulses three years later, after the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions had failed to rally the states against the Alien and Sedition Acts. Rather than focus closely on the two


men’s relationship, however, Burstein and Isenberg place it within a loose history of American politics that, in an effort to de-heroicizethefounders,makes a number of highly questionable asser- tions. They suggest, for example, that a consuming greed for western land — along with hatred of Indians and com- mitment to slavery — explains leading


CULTURE TABLET&PEN Literary Landscapes from the Modern Middle East Edited by Reza Aslan Norton. 654 pp. $35


Virginians’ support for independence. Jefferson’s complex “Summary View of the Rights of British America” (1774)—a plea for redress of grievances addressed to the king—becomesa simpleargument that the colonists’ land claims “supersed- ed their former ties to Britain.”The asser- tion that Jefferson “conceived of the Dec- laration [of Independence] as a kind of divorce petition” again ignores the docu- ment’s essential constitutional argu- ment. The book also insists — twice — thatGeorgeWashingtonhad“an intellect no better than average,” which confuses education with intellect and leaves unex- plained Washington’s achievements and his capacity to command the respect of very smart men, includingMadison. As the authors move beyond 1800,


and especially after 1809, the story gets lost in a bewildering maze of details. Curiously, this overlong book devotes only a fewpages to theVirginia ratifying convention of June 1788, where Madi- son’s performance was arguably more effective than at Philadelphia, and where he and other Federalists ex- plainedat lengththatVirginia’s vulnera- bility to invasion and slave insurrection meant it needed the Union more than the Union needed it. There, at least, devotion to Virginia and to the Union were not at odds. The Virginia debates also bring into question Burstein and Isenberg’s claim that Jefferson “sought to undermine the ratification” of the Constitution “to Madison’s severe em- barrassment.” To be sure, Patrick Henry claimed that Jefferson opposed ratifica- tion, which putMadison in an awkward position. Henry’s source was a letter of February 1788 that Burstein and Isen- berg do not quote. In it Jefferson said that he hoped the requisite nine states would ratify the Constitution to “secure to us the good it contains,” but that the


other four states would hold out until a bill of rightswas added to the document. As Edmund Pendleton observed, Henry had misread the letter, which actually supported ratification. Moreover, by May of 1788 Jefferson had changed his mind and recommended that subse- quent state conventions follow the ex- ample of Massachusetts and ratify the Constitution while recommending amendments for adoption once the new government began. That was precisely the positionMadison grudgingly adopt- ed at the Virginia convention in June. Far from being at odds, the two men ended up within whispering distance of each other. Kochendedherbookof fewerthan300


pages with a brief comparison of her subjects. Jefferson was more bold, charming and cosmopolitan, and had a talent for stirring language. Madison never left America, but he was the more consistent public servant, and his “strongly logical” mind could “cut deeper on certain kinds of issues than Jefferson did.” His political and personal style was more tempered — and he had a better sense of humor than Jefferson. They were, Koch concluded, “complementary in their talents.” In such a relationship, ranking one


man over the other makes little sense. Madison’s and Jefferson’s contrasting strengths explain their effectiveness over the 50 years they worked together, as Jefferson recalled in his will, for“whatwe have deemed . . . the greatest good of our country.” Their country — the United States, not just Virginia—was the better for their partnership.


bookworld@washpost.com


Pauline Maier is theWilliam R. Kenan Jr. Professor of American History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.


This strapping anthology gathers short


stories, poems and excerpts from longer works by 20th-century writers native to the Middle East—including Morocco, Turkey, Egypt, Iran and Pakistan. Editor Reza Aslan, who teaches creative writing at the University of California Riverside, has chosen some names that are, or ought to be, familiar to serious readers in theWest: Nobel Prize-winners Naguib Mahfouz and Orhan Pamuk, along with Khalil Gibran and Yasir Kemal. But among the finds (at least to this reader) is Ahmet Hamdi Tanpinar (1901-1962), a Turk represented by a smart, sensitive excerpt from one of his novels, “A Mind at Peace.” In a scene about a crowd


disembarking from a ferry, Tanpinar captures the dynamic of a marriage. Adile, the wife, “could walk only a short distance on the street without leaning on her husband. For her, in all probability, one of the sound ways of fully exploiting the resource known as a husband was to have him carry her, if only partially, while they were out and about.” Elsewhere in the same selection, a character grouses aboutWesterners who, in writing about Turks, remind them they are “wandering on the periphery of life. AWesterner only satisfies us when he happens to remind us that we’re citizens of the world.” —Dennis Drabelle


drabelled@washpost.com


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