Tower: Faith, Vertigo, and Amateur Construction - Hardcover

Henderson, Bill

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0374278512 ISBN 13: 9780374278519

Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000

Synopsis

Inspiring meditations on the human drive to build skyward, from a man who did it himself

"There are hundreds, if not thousands, of tiny towers to appreciate. You remember how as a child you made them out of sand or blocks or tin cans . . . Two inches or 3,000 feet, the size of the tower is of no importance. All are mere pebbles on the earth's surface. It is the tall imagination that counts, in this book at least."

Tower is Bill Henderson's winning personal account of erecting, by hand and almost entirely on his own, a wooden tower on a plot of land in Maine. For Henderson, constructing the edifice--which he resolutely declares to have "no purpose," religious or utilitarian--is an exercise in faith and self-reliance. Henderson guides us through the details of design and construction with clear illustrations and with humor, often digressing to contemplate the various towers of Yeats, Joyce, Sam Rodia, and Gustave Eiffel. The finished result is not only Henderson's completed tower, in which we share an inspiring sense of accomplishment, but a revelatory insight into what motivates the builders and thinkers who precede our own efforts to gain a higher viewpoint.

About this title

About the Author

Bill Herson is the author of The Kid That Could, a novel, and two memoirs, His Son and Her Father. He is the founder and publisher of Pushcart Press and the editor of the acclaimed Pushcart Prize series. He lives on Long Island and in Maine.

From Publishers Weekly

This may be the quirkiest, most rambling and yet most charming self-help book that will appear this year, given that the advice is on raising one's own vertical sanctuary for the relief of stress, vertigo and a loss of the will to believe. Having recently built a Maine summer cottage, Henderson, founder and editor of the Pushcart Press, set out during a particularly stressful period to build a tower by hand, with mostly scavenged supplies and no power tools. Forging past his wife's protests, he purchased 1.78 acres of undeveloped land for the purpose near another Maine village. "Edifice complex" or no, Henderson rejects "the bogus phallic symbolism issue" and repeatedly states that he undertook the quixotic project "for no reason." Throughout, he examines and evaluates towers from various periods and places, like those of Pisa; of Joyce's Dublin (the tower of Ulysses still stands, and it remains ugly); and of Los Angeles, where Simon Rodia's Watt's Towers are now the centerpieces of a small urban state park. While the book sometimes seems patched together, and incorporates a few too many extended quotations from Henderson's earlier memoirs (His Son and Her Father), the stresses from which Henderson escapesAa "wobbly" period in his marriage; a struggle with the religious legacy of a God-fearing father and with his wintertime home's Easthampton church; a spate of cancer diagnoses in family and friends; the long-term effects of drinkingAare rendered with a winning earnestness and immediacy. Even Henderson's Luddite rants against technology (he is a founder of the Lead Pencil Club) are disarmingly straightforward. By the time his vertigo gently subsides and he nails the tar paper to the roof, readers will be cheering him on, and will know a lot more about hand tools, shims and catplates.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
• Publication date: 2000
• ISBN 10: 0374278512
• ISBN 13: 9780374278519
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 208