Jon Halper

Gary Snyder is a multi-faceted person: poet, Buddhist, activist. This book is a collection of short essays about Snyder written by people who have known him. The first half of the book gives a biographical look at Snyder, covering different periods in his life. The second half of the book reviews his work under three headings: Poetics, Dharma, and Culture & Politics. Altogether we get a good review of Snyder's work. Many of the authors here are very well known, e.g. Wes Jackson, Wendell Berry, Jerome Rothenberg, Robert Aitken. Probably many others are also well-known but just not to me!

The tone of the essays is quite inconsistent, which is actually a virtue because it helps provide a better rounded picture of the man. There are informal personal sketches alongside some rather intricately argued academic pieces. The one consistent feature is that they are all highly adulatory. This book is a celebration of Snyder's life and nobody here is ready to sound a sour note. There are a few subtly raised eyebrows here and there, but nobody gives as much as a paragraph to a wart.

The book probably works best for a reader with some familiarity with Snyder's work... and really, it is almost a requirement to have read Kerouac's Dharma Bums. At least half the authors here first encountered Snyder there, as Japhy Ryder.

Snyder is one of my heroes so I didn't mind the glorification here, though it did get a bit tiring. I really enjoyed the variety of essays which did a wonderful job of illustrating the range of the subject's activity.… (more)