This House of Sky: Landscapes of a Western Mind
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- ISBN13: 9780156899826
- Condition: New
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Product Description
This work introduced a major modern leader to the reading public. Doig’s life was formed among the sheepherders and additional denizens of tiny-town saloons and valley ranches as he wandered beside his restless father. New Preface by the Leader.
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The House of Sky was a excellent book because Ivan Doig talks about his experiences he went through in the town of White Sulfur Springs. He talks about his fathers experiences while he was growing up and how he dealed with them.
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
Ivan Doig is one of the leading writers of the modern American West. I have read, and painstakingly loved, at least four of his novels. THIS HOUSE OF SKY is a memoir of Doig’s youth in the hard-scrabble high-country of central Montana in the 1940s and ’50s. Despite the hardships Doig’s parents encounter, the book is a heart-warming tale of decent, hard-effective people who personify the lead the way spirt and work ethic so central to our myth of the American West. THIS HOUSE OF SKY shows that in large measure that myth is grounded in reality, although it also betokens some of the places where reality trumps the myth.
As grand as Doig’s tale is, the telling of it is less so. THIS HOUSE OF SKY was one or Doig’s first published works; so far as I can tell, it was his first book-part work additional than edited anthologies. For my taste, in THIS HOUSE OF SKY Doig is too idiosyncratic in language, style, and syntax; ultimately, the book seems overly contrived. Especially harsh is the frequent use of nouns in various verb forms: for example, “epitaphed”, “prowing”, “monumented”, “embered”, “croupiered”, and persons few are just the tip of the iceberg.
After reading THIS HOUSE OF SKY, I read “Heart Planet”, which Doig wrote 15 years later as a sort of continuation of his memoir, a kind of appendix to THIS HOUSE OF SKY. “Heart Planet”, too, has a distinctive style, but it is much more accomplished and less mannered. Likewise, Doig’s novels, for the most part, are better written than SKY. So, to demark SKY as a less mature work of Doig’s, I have agreed it but four stars, despite the fruitfulness and marvel of the tale itself. But having said that, if you like the West and treasure tales (especially right tales) of unadorned, straightforward, hard-effective folks who just lower their heads and do what has to be done, with wry humor and gumption, you undoubtedly will delight in THIS HOUSE OF SKY.
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
Simply one of the finest books I have ever read. Ivan Doig’s recounting of his family tree’s history and his growing up in mid-20th century Montana is incredibly rich and descriptive of people, places, and the hard everyday struggles, joys, and discoveries faced by his family tree of hired ranchers.
Reader’s Rating: 5 / 5
Brilliant look at growing up in Montana in and about the 1940s & 50s. Life gets tough but strong hearts prevail.
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5
Ivan Doig grew up in Montana. In this book, he talks about his experience growing up there. He tells about the severity of life there in all-purpose, and, more specifically, about the severity of his life growing up. I am familiar with the terminology, huge sky. His title — this house of sky — relates, I reflect, back to that.
I reflect Doig does a fantastic job capturing the Montana countryside and the lifestyle of a fantastic number of immigrants who settled Montana to live off the land by telling his tale. It’s about him and his parents — mostly his dad, because his biological mother died when he was just a boy — and his grandmother.
Of course, it gets cold in Montana and the land isn’t as productive or as fertile as it is in the Plains states or in the interior valley of California. Montana is a demanding place to grow up in, and Ivan had a demanding family tree situation.
Let me quote from the book to give some flavor of it:
“Persons first seasons of following the sheep, my parents kept with them in their daily sift through the forest a cat, an independent gray-and-white tom they had named Pete Olson. Somehow, amid the horses and dogs and sheep, and the coyotes and bobcats which ranged close to camp, Pete Olson rationed out his nine lives in nightly prowls of the mountain.”
Hopefully, the quote above captures to some degree the ambience of the place and the color of the people involved in his life.
There are descriptions and descriptions galore with such color and texture that exceeds my ability to clarify: “he smiles like a jackass eating thistles”, “parents behave down toward us as if they are clannish gods, as ancient and unarguable and almighty as thunder”, “persons sheep were so hungry they were eatin’ the wool off each additional”.
Mostly though, the tale is about the boy, Ivan Doig, growing up and learning to like his way of life, the land, and the people that sacrificed so much for his benefit: his grandmother and his father.Building Expression Less Taxing: A Freelancer’s Tax Resource
Reader’s Rating: 4 / 5