Description:
Linda Tatelbaum knows what happens when the words run out. She has hit "rock bottom" before: When is a writer not like a rock? When she is lying, inert, on the floor. What you see is, objectively, a body at rest, not unlike the rock except for one thing: her mind, which, doubts. Does a rock think, Will I ever move again? Rocks get the author to thinking. Her homestead in Maine is littered with them. For a while they don't mean much. Sure, they mark old boundaries and once impeded the progress of a vegetable garden, but not until a man in a pickup tries to make off with a few choice ones does Tatelbaum realize they're worth something. Working with rocks--moving them, using them--becomes her path back to words. In this sense, Writer on the Rocks is a book-length exercise in remembering how to write. Tatelbaum is a lyrical correspondent from the rock-strewn edges of the American landscape; and while her digressive ruminations on aging, death, and the value of physical work will strike some readers as overly self-conscious, these frank, playful essays should inspire anyone building a stone wall or relearning the leverage of language.
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