Mary Austin Notes

The Land of Little Rain (1903) http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Literature/Austin/LandOfLittleRain/

Lost Borders 1909

Austin Resources. http://www.wsu.edu/%7Ecampbelld/amlit/austin.htm

Mary Austin was born in the midwest but seemed to find Home in eastern California. She writes stylistically interesting pieces about the desert and semiarid regions either side of the Sierra Nevada -- the best description I know of.

For some reason, Robert Hass in his Introduction considers her sentences strange -- he makes no qualification or explanation. I don't find them so. She's terse. And she's clearly internalized an idea of her material surroundings that incorporates some conception of what's called spirituality: in other words, her coyote has perceptions and a soul; her rabbit has perceptions and a soul, and so forth.

The Land of Little Rain is quite well written for a locality-type book. Since her greater impressions derive from the physical descriptions, she thereby approaches an elemental description of Life. It's not trivial, though she accepts restricted means. I wonder about reading this against Jewett and Winesberg Ohio.