Winter Count (First Edition)

Barry Holstun Lopez

ISBN 10: 0684168170 / ISBN 13: 9780684168173

Published by Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1981

About this Item

Scribner's, New York, 1981. First edition. First printing (with full number line including the 1). A near-fine copy in a near-fine jacket. A clean copy in a price-clipped jacket (not book club edition). Comes with archival-quality jacket protector. Note: Foxing on top edge. Prior owner's neat gift inscription on second front endpaper. Jacket has fading at extremities. F1700A.

Seller Inventory # FLAHIVE-3588

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Winter Count (First Edition)
• Publisher: Charles Scribner's Sons, New York
• Publication Date: 1981
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0684168170
• ISBN 13: 9780684168173
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition: 1st Edition
• Condition: Near Fine
• Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine

About this title

Synopsis

From the American Book Award-winning author of Arctic Dreams comes a timeless, intoxicating collection of evocative stories. In these exquisite tales, an explorer goes mad when faced with the disappearance of a river; blue herons descend upon Manhattan; a lonely desert hermit clears a path for a secret celestial wind; and more.

Review

If science seeks to demystify life, literature can restore a needed measure of wonder to it. Or, as one of the characters in Barry Lopez's collection of short stories Winter Count puts it, "If you are careful, I think there is probably nothing that cannot be retrieved."

Much indeed is retrieved in Lopez's pages, first published in 1981: lost species, lost memories, lost emotions. In one especially Borgesian story, a university professor seeks to puzzle out the facts behind 19th-century reports of a herd of white buffalo that, singing, pointed a way into heaven. In another, a young man catches a glimpse into the workings of the stars and planets in an unlikely corner of the Arizona desert. In still another, a traveler recapitulates the pain of lost love while contemplating the graceful flight of herons.

Lopez's marvelous stories are about many things. Underlying them is a shared precision of language and vision, a precision that characterizes the author's works of nonfiction (Of Wolves and Men, Arctic Dreams). Behind Lopez's stories as well is a quiet insistence on the centrality of nature--an awareness of which, he suggests, can make the busiest city livable, and the deepest wounds of the heart bearable. --Gregory McNamee