Embrace Fearlessly the Burning World

April 11, 2022
Memoir and nature writing come together in this lyrical collection from National Book Award winner Lopez (Horizon). As Lopez (1945–2020) writes of his encounters with wildlife, he pulls back to comment on larger environmental and emotional concerns. “On Location” considers an unusual type of Pacific walrus that lives alone and hunts “other marine mammals smaller than itself,” and muses on climate disruption: “To survive what’s headed our way... we will need to trust each other, because today, it’s as if every safe place has melted into the sameness of water. We are searching for the boats we forgot to build.” “Residence,” meanwhile, is an ode to the flora and fauna of his home outside of Santa Fe. The most memorable sections deal with his victimization, beginning when he was six and continuing for more than five years, by a pedophile doctor and family friend; that torment was exacerbated by Lopez’s mother’s defenses of the man and a general refusal to believe a doctor could abuse his power. “I thought of myself as a man walking around with shrapnel sealed in his flesh, and I wanted to get the fragments out,” Lopez writes in “Sliver of Sky.” Fans and newcomers alike will be enlightened by these roving explorations.

Starred review from May 1, 2022
Collected essays from the 2000s by the eminent, late natural history writer. "Witness, not achievement, is what I was after." So writes Lopez (1945-2020), the indefatigable world traveler. He sought witness, to be sure: Many of the essays and articles gathered here, first published in such venues as Orion and Granta, center on exploring landscapes and the animals and people within them. "I would bring my binoculars, find a place out of the wind, and pick over the land, acre by acre, watching for movement," writes the author. The title of the book is suggestive of his concerns for a world being devoured by its human inhabitants. As he scanned the acres, Lopez was collecting images of and data on coal-fired power plants in the American West, linking anthropogenic destruction to natural beauty in order to raise big questions: "Why did you not prepare?" he imagines future generations asking the ancestors of today. "Why were you so profligate while we still had a chance? Where was your wisdom?" The wisdom Lopez sought, recorded here, was often that of Indigenous elders, whether in the Australian Outback, the Arctic, or the South African veldt. That wisdom, writes the author, so often comes in surprising forms, as when an Inuit elder describes how a young hunter learns to appreciate the ethical implications of taking an animal's life by invoking psychologist Abraham Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Well aware of his impending death to a cancer undetected until it was too late, Lopez gets deeply personal, writing with clear eyes of that death as well as of the horrific experience of sexual abuse as a child. Altogether, the pieces are honest and searching, engaging readers in the largest of questions: How do we live in the world? How do we see it? How do we protect it? The book features an introduction by Rebecca Solnit. A sterling valediction. Lopez's many followers will treasure this book.

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Starred review from May 1, 2022
"Perhaps the first rule of everything we endeavor to do is to pay attention," writes Lopez, a deeply ethical writer for whom paying attention was an article of faith and an art. Lopez (1945-2020) observed the world with ardent and inquisitive concentration and shared his findings and musings in works of tensile strength, lambent beauty, and descriptive and moral precision. He wanted, no, needed to know the world, traveling to nearly 80 countries, often participating in scientific field work and reveling most in places remote, extreme, and clarifying, from Antarctica to the Mojave Desert. In Horizon (2019), the last book he published during his lifetime, Lopez chronicled many of his extraordinary adventures. In this precious posthumous collection of recent and previously unpublished essays, he reveals many more dimensions of his quests and discoveries. His intimacy with place brings buried history to full life; his immersions in art deepen understanding of our species and our planet. Lopez remembers mentors and friends; recounts with courage, generosity, and artistry how nature helped him survive prolonged boyhood sexual abuse; and chronicles the tolls age and illness exacted. For all his journeys, Lopez cherished his longtime home beside Oregon's McKenzie River, and readers will treasure this hearth of a collection from a crucial and profound writer of spirit, commitment, benevolence, and reverence.

COPYRIGHT(2022) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.