Wickerby : An Urban Pastoral

Rating:
Summary: Poet's Grasp of Language
Review: "Wickerby" might be the finest book of non-fiction you will read this year.
Siebert's notion of "nature" is unsentimental, free of eco-monk jargon, and
inclusive of the disordered city that is his corner of Brooklyn. Free of
the memoirist's whine and the poet's wheeze -- this generous and intelligent
philosophical essay is a keeper.

Rating:
Summary: fear from ignorance
Review: Contrary to other reviewers I found this book to be slightly overwritten. Siebert too often strung out so many dependent clauses that the original point of the sentence was lost and I had to go back and find the subject. I suppose that this is a metaphor for the central narrative point of the book, which seemed to be that life is worth reflecting upon once in a while. That's hard to argue with. I concede that one of the reasons I found Siebert's prose a bit hard to follow sometimes is that it was so thought-provoking.

I have lived in urban environments of one size or another (including Brooklyn) for most of my life. While I appreciate the pleasures of the country more than Mr. Siebert does, I don't have much interest in true wilderness and frankly don't understand people who do. Mr. Siebert's repeated assertion is that Nature is Nature where ever you find it and that we are an indivisible part of it, is a welcome rebuttal to all the tiresome whining from the likes of Barry Lopez et al. about how we are spiritually divorced from the Earth/earth etc. Mostly people are comfortable with what they deal with on a regular basis. In the case of Mr. Siebert, a Brooklyn native, that is the urban landscape, its inhabitants, pleasures and dangers. Although he makes a "good student" effort to get to know the names of the plants and animals around him at Wickerby, his knowledge of them is not bred in the bone and he therefore has no deeper connection to them. Since he represents a majority in modern American society, his honesty about his feelings on this subject are refreshing. I much prefer his candor to the silly Romantic musings of so many ex-urbanites and ex-suburbanites who whinge on about the aboriginal splendor of wilderness and pastoral settings and their inhabitants, pleasures and dangers.

Most rural residents are not as isolated and odd as Wickerby's "caretaker", Albert. No other local residents have more than a cameo appearance in the book, so this book should not be received as a rural versus urban community contrast.

Rating:
Summary: This was a fascinating view of the city and the country.
Review: I grew up, and still live, in Alaska. I've never been to New York - the biggest city I have experience with is Anchorage, 250,000 people. I have, however, a great deal of experience with the country and isolation. Mr. Seibert's comparison of the two was fascinating. I could empathize with his feelings while in the Canadian woods, while exploring New York City through his eyes. My only complaint is that I didn't get to find out what happened afterwards. I highly recommend this book!

Rating:
Summary: Thoreau of the City
Review: Siebert is a wonderful wordsmith. He gives you all the senses of the city. You can hear the gunshots. You can taste the grit. You can see the pigeons flying. You can smell the oil and decay. You can feel the concrete and metal. This book is very entertaining and enjoyable to read. If you want to feel the city, read this book.

Rating:
Summary: a loveletter to a city that's hard to love
Review: The best little book I've come across -- an antidote to the all too common nature, escape-from-the-city fairytales. True to its title, this urban pastoral takes Siebert and the reader far away from the Brooklyn neighborhood of the mumblers and Rudy the rhinoceros to a remote and dilapidated cabin and shows us through his adventures in the wild just how remarkable and appealing a place the big city can be. I read the last page and yearned to watch the rooftop exchanges, walk through Prospect Park, go to a street fair. Siebert is our city poet, Brooklyn is his muse, may he continue his loveletter to urban life.

Rating:
Summary: For the contemplative traveller in all of us
Review: What is most fascinating in this meditative, language enhancing book is Siebert's continual spiralling outward thoughts. He has an uncanny ability to make insightful associations from travel memories, letters, and chance meetings with the wildlife roommates of Wickerby. This urban pastoral is more than just a comparison between city living and country weekend getaways. We also get Siebert's reporting (via letters mostly) of Bex's extended stay in Africa, free associations on Siebert's own visits to the Amazon and a contemplation on the "fearless forests" of the city, the jungle and the countryside. Here is a spare volume - rich with observation, opinion and anecdote. One of the best books I've read in 1998.