War to the Death - Raymond Rudorff

War to the Death is concerned primarily with the sieges of the Spanish city of Saragossa during the Napoleonic Wars. Rudorff starts with the state of Spain in the early 1800s, which is to say, a former world power that was now not even second-rate. Declining populations in the cities, along with dozens of villages simply abandoned or deserted (though he doesn't get into the why of decline. Immigration? Disease?) Largely culturally stagnant, with a strong religious presence that, at the higher levels of power, pushed back against science and the ideas of the Enlightenment as dangerous. Ruled by an ineffectual dullard of a king, whose wife was sleeping with his chief advisor.

Actually, in addition to repeatedly commenting how physically ugly Charles IV and his wife, Queen Maria Luisa, were, Rudorff keeps coming back to how Charles has no clue the guy he trusts so implicitly, Manuel Godoy, is schtupping his wife. Rudorff almost seems to take it personally, like it's an insult to the grand tradition of European royalty that these people rule a country. The book was published in 1974, and there's a petty part of me hoping subsequent scholarship revealed Charles knew all about the affair and was completely fine with it. Maybe that was even his thing.

Anyway, once Napoleon, who seemed to regard Spain largely as some place that needed securing so he could to get to Portugal, had the royal family ousted to put his brother in charge (over Joseph's objections, since he wanted to stay in Naples), the people of Spain, the working classes, got a little fired up. They didn't love their king by any stretch, and maybe they didn't understand how largely useless his son, Ferdinand VII, was, but he was at least Spanish. "They're idiots, but they're our idiots," that kind of thing. The French are invaders, usurpers, trampling upon the sovereignty of their land.

Saragossa is not the only city that supported Ferdinand as true ruler of Spain and refused to acknowledge Joseph Bonaparte. They might have been the most successful at resisting Napoleon's armies, even if they ultimately were forced to capitulate. They didn't lose easily. Rudorff discusses the civilian and military authorities that form, not just in Saragossa but elsewhere. How they try to decide on a course of action, or who gets to make which decisions. He gets into the rise of Jose Palafox, the closest thing to a supreme commander Saragossa had, even if he did flee the city early in the first siege. Which was kind of funny, Rudorff spent all these pages building Palafox up as an inspirational figure, and then he bails, only to return when the city proves more resistant than expected.

The thing about Saragossa, and to an extent the Spanish campaign in general, is how much it presages a type of warfare that would become more common in the next century. The siege is not a battle on open ground between two armies; it's a force of organized, highly trained soldiers against an entire city. Everyone in Saragossa is resisting. Children are delivering food and ammunition to gunnery crews. Women and monks make wadding for muskets and help erect barricades, when they aren't fighting the French army themselves.

When the French can actually get inside the city walls, they suffer, for the era, serious losses just trying to take one street. The Spanish turn every single house into a fortress the French either have to take or destroy if they want to advance. To take it, they have to clear every floor, because the defenders will retreat to an upper level and fire through holes they made in the floor. Or they'll cross the rooftops to get behind French lines and launch surprise attacks. If the French destroy the building, they still have to take the next one, with no cover from the attacks coming from every window on the street.

All those stories you read or hear about Stalingrad, the fighting from street to street, building to building? Dead stacked up everywhere because there's no time to dispose of bodies? Saragossa might just be the OG when it comes to that warfare. Based on the excerpts from memoirs and diaries of French soldiers Rudorff quotes - he notes that, at least when this was written, there didn't seem to be much scholarship or excerpts on the siege from Spain's perspective, even in the city itself - this kind of fighting wasn't something any of them were accustomed to.

This is something new, and no one is entirely ready for it or the toll it takes. The French aren't fighting a distinct army, but an entire country. No one will help them, their attempts to requisition or demand food or water are ignored. Their messengers are captured once they're out of sight of the main force. Rudorff mentions at one point soldiers couldn't risk getting 100 yards from their unit, or they'd likely be ambushed and killed. And it would likely be a brutal ugly death. Which in turn, made the French vengeful whenever they got the chance.

That said, I think Rudorff overplays the novelty of the fury French soldiers exert on Spanish towns when they take them. The pillaging, burning and raping. I don't think that was as unique an experience, historically, as he makes it seem. Also, it's odd to see him describe the as French officers horrified at the soldiers' actions, then three paragraphs later discuss the officers extorting churches or families for gold and jewels. Yeah, they were horrified. . .horrified they didn't get first dibs on some of that booty!

Rudorff covers each siege, one in the summer of 1808, the other the winter of 1808-1809, separately. He does his best to describe Saragossa's layout. Different bridges, gates, monasteries - there are a lot of monasteries - the relative position of the Ebro and Huerva Rivers and their importance for transport or restricting movement. As far as the siege, he tends to discuss in chronological order, focusing on a few days' of fighting in one area, typically until progress in either direction stalls, then switch to a different area. I didn't feel like flipping back to look at the handful of maps of the city he provided, so I couldn't necessarily tell you where the Trinitarian monastery was, relative to Calle Pabostre. That said, the writing makes clear which direction things are trending, as well as how rough the fighting is, which are the more important parts.

Rudorff also describes the quantities of men and material on both sides, the efforts the Spanish went to maintaining gunpowder supplies. Some of the notable figures on both sides, local commanders or civilians who showed great bravery at some critical moment. One thing that becomes crucial in the fighting I hadn't considered was tunneling. Trenches I expected, but especially as the French start simply destroying buildings, or even entire rows of buildings, tunneling underneath them to set mines or gunpowder is a major factor.

He doesn't necessarily go into detail about the experience, maybe because many of the people who took part didn't survive, but there's enough to grasp the dangers of digging and not knowing if you'll burst into someone else's tunnel and have to fight, pickax to shovel. Or finding an opposing tunnel group heard you coming and rigged an explosive in your path.

Early in the second siege, as the French are still getting things in place, Rudorff criticizes Palafox for not staging a massive attack of the city's forces against the French lines. Palafox did try a few attacks, but never more than 300 men in any particular group. Rudorff is sure, if Palafox had sent out thousands, be they soldiers or civilians, the Spanish could have overrun the French.

I don't know that I agree. For one, he mentions a page or two earlier how, with all the people who flooded into the city to help with its defense, soldiers were sleeping on the streets, in the winter, for lack of available space indoors. As a result, combined with the crowding, disease was running rampant. Maybe that's all the more reason to see if they can break the French forces. Set them running, get some breathing space. But a frontal assault seems like the sort of thing you want healthy people for.

More critically, Rudorff spends a fair amount of pages detailing how almost every time Spanish forces met French on open ground, the Spanish got their asses routed. Including a few times with Palafox or his brother in command. While I don't doubt Rudorff is right there would have been no shortage of civilian volunteers, I'm pretty sure it's a different thing to charge across open ground, with little likelihood you can withdraw to safety if things go bad, versus fighting when some invader busts his way through your living room wall. Again, militias of peasants had tried to defend villages against the French on open ground. A lot of those peasants ended up on the tip of a lancer's spear.

The city does fall, eventually, though I have to question if Napoleon wouldn't have been better off just leaving it be. Strategically, I'm not sure it netted him anything close to what it cost. I don't know how War to the Death is regarded among people more knowledgeable about Saragossa, but I found it very informative, and not too technical or difficult to follow. 

'In the Plaza, the squadron lost direction. Horsemen galloped wildly around the great square while the inhabitants poured out of their houses and rushed at them with knives, sticks and hatchets. Rider after rider was pulled down by screaming women and youths, hacked, stabbed and bludgeoned to death as their fellow-soldiers had been in Madrid's Puerto del Sol six weeks previously.' 

The Year of Living Dangerously (1982)

Guy Hamilton (Mel Gibson) is the new correspondent in Djakarta for an Australian news service. He knows no one and nothing, but that's not going to stop him. He's got ambition.

Which wouldn't count for much, but he's also got the aid of Billy Kwan (Linda Hunt), a Chinese-Australian cameraman who does know the area. Knows who to talk to, knows how to get Guy in the door, get him the scoops that earn headlines.

Billy has his own motives, of course. He's growing increasingly dissatisfied with the Indonesian president, with the poverty and starvation that the majority of the population are left to suffer through while the Westerners hang out in air-conditioned bars and hotels, having fancy parties. So in that regard, Guy is potentially useful to him. Someone eager and ambitious enough to pounce on any story or lead or interview Billy can dangle in front of him, with only vague concern for any ripple effects. Billy also seems to have plans for Guy's personal life, and they concern Jill (Sigourney Weaver), part of the British attache office. Billy proposed to her, and was turned down, but still loves her, in a certain way.

Billy tells Guy at one point that to understand the country, he needs to understand the significance of the puppet master in the society. That the stories and culture are not a binary of good/evil, black/white, but a shifting mixture, creating a balance between two sides. Billy also says the puppet master is a priest, but I wasn't clear if that was meant literally or figuratively, though I assume the latter. Especially as Billy clearly sees himself as a puppeteer, trying to move Guy and Jill around towards a happy ending he thinks they both need, watching unseen (or unnoticed) from somewhere nearby.

So Hunt spends most of the film playing Billy as jovial. Everyone's pal. Clever, but not cruel. Always helpful, but also keeping files on anyone he thinks could be useful or significant. It's only every so often he gets tired of the facade and snaps back at people. Asshole American journalist Curtis, mostly. Guy sometimes, for not living up to the version of himself Billy thinks he can be. Hunt has a very good gravely tone for expressing disappointment.

I haven't read the book, but I assume it doesn't end as happily as the film, if only because the arc of the movie doesn't feel like it's moving that way. For one, the attempted Communist uprising, which most of the people Guy knows are in favor of (if not actively assisting), is ultimately crushed. His coworkers, Kumar and Tiger Lily, which have to run for their lives to have any chance of survival.

Beyond that, Billy tried, the first night, to get Guy to give the people in the local market the money in his pockets. Guy declined, arguing it would be not even a drop in the ocean. He wouldn't make the small gesture. Billy can't save the child of the young woman he knows. Either she didn't actually go to a doctor with the money he provided, or it was too late. His big plan to hang a sign from a hotel window calling out the president for letting his people starve is never seen by said president, and Billy is killed by what I think were American security guys there to keep everything nice and friendly for Capitalism, sorry, I mean, Democracy's, allies. Billy tried the small gesture, and the grand gesture, and neither worked out.

Likewise, his efforts to push Jill and Guy together appear doomed because he's misjudged Guy. Guy put the scoop of a shipment of weapons being smuggled to the Communists above Jilly's career and trust. And then, when she somehow still gives him the time of day later, he promises to be on the flight out of the country with her. Until he hears the presidential palace has been seized. Then he had to get the scoop. It really feels like that was supposed to end with the soldier shooting him in the back as he boldly marched past, waving his press credentials. Instead, he gets a rifle butt to the eye and a detached retina, but ultimately escapes the country.

I think the significant scene is the one fairly early where Billy makes a comment about being a dwarf and Guy says he isn't. Billy says, "You really don't care, do you? Or maybe you just don't see." I think Billy hoped it was the former, but it was really the latter. It isn't about idealism, it's about self-interest. If Billy can help Guy, then nothing else matters. He has to find a source, has to get something newsworthy, or he'll be sent back to Sydney, which he describes as a graveyard for his career. Ignoring that staying Djakarta, growing increasingly hostile to Westerners, could easily become his literal graveyard.

Guy just doesn't strike me as a character who learns a lesson until it's too late. He insisted on them driving along with the protest march that ended with people throwing rocks at the U.S. embassy, and nearly got everyone inside the car killed, plus a machete cut to his leg for his trouble. He has a clumsy charm and quick temper that feels like it stems from some inferiority complex, both of which can get him into trouble. Gibson portrays those well, but those are things he usually played well. The young boy trying to be a rogue and not quite pulling it off, but still amusing for the attempt. Or the overly intense teenager that's always on the brink of an explosion. Young, headstrong, easily insulted, easily manipulated.

He always looks sweaty and unkempt, which only makes Weaver look even more out of his league than you'd expect. Weaver plays Jill as cool and composed. I assume Jill's supposed to be several years Guy's senior. Certainly in emotional age. Though in the end, they both try to keep their distance from what's happening in the country. Jill describes Guy's report on the famine on Lombok Island as being overly melodramatic. She doesn't dispute the facts, she just thinks he's overdoing it. Guy's only retort is to ask what it takes to make her cry. The facts don't really matter, not in the sense of the suffering. They're just something to hype, to get people talking about him.

In that sense, I can't decide if the reason Guy pulls back from the worst excesses of his fellow journalist Curtis is because he sees too much of himself in the man, or because Curtis' exploitation of the locals and the power he thinks he has makes Guy conscious of things he'd rather not inspect too closely. 

Time for a Close Encounter

Let's kick the tires and light the fires, big daddy.

Volume 12 of Precarious Woman Executive Miss Black General focuses entirely an alien invasion, as all the different parts of the cast work to repel the invaders. Jin starts right off with a renegade alien, Lien, trying to warn the planet of its impending doom. By standing on a piece of playground equipment with a megaphone. But she picked the park where the General and Braveman regularly tussle, so it works out.

OK, it works out after some insults and low kicks. Lien reveals that not only are her people planning to exterminate humanity, they are responsible for all the people with weird powers on Earth. To see what would happen, basically. After Earthlings chose violence, the aliens decided it was better to not give them time to get off the planet. Hard to argue with that logic, really. Lien took her sweet time getting here, so Earth has about 90 minutes. Oh, and the aliens have decided to collect some samples before they depart.

As tactical blunders go, that's on par with Napoleon invading the USSR. Or Hitler invading the USSR. Or anyone invading Afghanistan. Or, you know, let's just move on. The General breaks containment and runs amok through the mothership, dropping the ship's cloak in the process. At which point it comes under fire from RX, the Monster Benefits Society and Mother Justice, who ultimately punches the ship into the sea. Jin made sure to establish the alien's leader has full control of the ship as an extension of itself. Mostly to keep making this particular joke.

And it was hilarious, I loved it. While Omega recuperates in a healing tube, the aliens plot a counterattack. Which the General 95% sabotages, as only 5 of the 100 assault capsules actually hit their targets. The rest zoom out of the Solar System. Good thing, because the powers the aliens gave Earthlings were derived from their own, so even just a handful of their elite are a serious problem.

Jin moves between at least 4 different battles where the advantage seesaws, including the alien's ill-fated attempt to release villains from prison as an added distraction for Earth's defenders. The main focus is RX's assault of the downed mothership to rescue the General. The big moment here comes after the alien's Vice-Admiral, a psychokinetic like Boss, takes down the entire group in one brutal whirlwind of an attack, Boss picks himself up, and puts the alien into the ground. More importantly, he finally ditches his mask. How will Secretary-san react to finally seeing his face?!

That tracks. Even when Boss is easily beating one of the elite aliens - who has both stretching powers and the same explosion power as Secretary-san - he's still acting like a dork. Doing silly little dances as the alien grows increasingly pissed off. Jin is very good at not letting any character go too long without making a fool of themselves, or becoming the butt of a joke.

Sunday Splash Page #451

"Annual Cannon Fodder," in Black Cat Annual (2021) #1, by Jed MacKay (writer), Joey Vazquez (artist), Brian Reber (color artist), Ferran Delgado (letterer)

Despite the two volumes lasting only a combined 22 issues, MacKay's Black Cat run got two Annuals. I prefer the first, also by MacKay, Vazquez, and Reber, where Felicia gets Spider-Man to help her swipe $2 million - or is it 3? - from the Maggia by posing as a bride and groom from rival branches, who are supposed to enter a sealed room after the vows are exchanged, and fight to the death. That one-sentence description doesn't do it justice, but it didn't have a splash page, so I went with the other option.

Set after the conclusion of the arc with the Black Fox and the Gilded Saint, it's ostensibly tied into the thing about the Infinity Stones becoming people, or manifesting inside people, whatever. That's relegated (thankfully) to a few pages at the very end, where Nick Fury Jr. is chasing down someone hacking his database and runs afoul of Squadron Supreme Nighthawk.

Most of the comic involves Felicia and her guys trying to take a vacation, and Felicia getting press-ganged into helping the South Korean super-team Tiger Division (seen above), by White Fox injecting a small bomb in her neck. Look, we all want to be Amanda Waller, but it's just not likely you can be that complicated and cool. Good try, though.

The team's Superman, Taegukgi, is being mind-controlled. The crime family responsible vows to unleash him on Seoul if not named leaders of the country. Except the guy doing the controlling - who looks like he escaped from that South Park World of Warcraft episode - has no interest in that. He'd rather turn the country into a wasteland of corpses. Even if they stop him, break his hold, Taegukgi will be shattered by the realization someone used his body to commit such an atrocity.

Felicia cuts that short, along with Mongdal's life, via some sleight of hand. She also does it dramatically enough to annoy White Fox, which seems fair considering the lady stuck a bomb in her neck. It's a decent little done-in-one adventure.

Despite the fact they're relegated to getting their asses kicked by the mind-controlled Taegukgi while the Cat and Fox sneak in and find the source of the mind control, I was intrigued enough by the character designs and brief blurbs to buy the Tiger Division mini-series that came out across 2022 and 2023. That was a mistake. It focused exclusively on Taegukgi, rather than splitting the focus between characters and diving into their backstories and personalities a bit.

Saturday Splash Page #253

"Spectator," in "Relief" from Short Game, by Mitsuru Adachi

I bought this collection of Adachi's various one-chapter baseball comics earlier this year. It consists of 5 stories, all revolving around baseball to varying degrees.

"Varying" is the load-bearing word here. "Relief" takes place during a game for the chance to go to Koshien, and revolves around Hama, the quiet, glasses-wearing benchwarmer, who takes abuse repeatedly from Masuyama, team ace and clean-up hitter. Masuyama even made Hama ask a particular pretty girl to attend the game (that's her up there), who turns out to be the head coach's niece. She turns out to have a crush on Hama, who we learn used to be team ace and cleanup hitter in junior high, but was a temperamental dick who attacked a teammate and walked away from baseball after an elbow injury, until his catcher (Masuyama) talked him into joining as a pinch-runner. Basically, the coach wants his niece to be happy, and Masuyama wants Hama to stop feeling so guilty about letting his temper slip and start playing ball again for real.

On the other hand, in "Full Count" Honma was tricked into embezzling from his company to help a friend who claimed to need money. The friend's lady is visiting Kitagawa to confirm she won a lottery, then calls the thief to come and rob Kitagawa. Except Honma got there when no one was home and hid in the closet, then called some Yakuza who previously visited him looking for the friend. Baseball is only involved in that Kitagawa has a game involving their old alma mater (playing for the chance to go to Koshien, natch) playing on TV.

In most stories there's a girl. Always with dark hair, sometimes hanging straight to her shoulders, other times in a pixie cut. She's got a crush on a ballplayer, or former ballplayer, usually an unassuming-looking guy. Shorter than his teammates, kind of skinny. Maybe he wears glasses and rides the bench. Maybe he was a good fielder who couldn't hit a lick. He's almost always oblivious to the girl's feelings.

Sometimes there's another girl. Lighter-colored hair, always down to her shoulders. Prominent lips, usually loud, conceited, or in the case of the lady in "Full Count," a criminal. Usually interested in attracting the attention of the star player, hoping his celebrity gives her a cushy life.

There's usually a star player who acts like a dick, but turns out to be OK. Masuyama seems abusive, but really just recognizes Hama's talent and doesn't want him to give up on baseball. In "Over the Fence", Hachijima is a star slugger and third baseman. He's not the focus of any romance - in fact, it's the one story in the collection where the boy, the team captain, pines after a girl oblivious to his interest - but Hachijima is incredibly contrary, doing the opposite of whatever anyone tells him. Tell him he's taken enough batting practice, he'll keep swinging. Tell him to get out there and take some grounders, he'll leave the field entirely. There's a nice twist I won't spoil, as it turns out, contrary or not, Hachijima is trying to do right by people in his own, infuriating, manner.

Even in stories that focus more heavily on baseball, the actual game is relegated to a few pages. Adachi takes his usual approach of smaller panels that break up the game into distinct actions and reactions. A batter trying to avoid a wild pitch. The pitcher's surprised expression. Two panels of runners on base. An intense coach. That sort of thing. The panels are usually trapezoidal or a triangle, leaning or pointing, offering a sense of motion, or maybe a shift in momentum.

The conversation portions are static in layout. Rectangles and squares, arranged in straightforward rows. Starting with a larger panel to establish which characters are talking (or arguing), then shifting to smaller panels focusing on individual faces. 

There are also 6 shorter gag strips. Here's Adachi finding ways to avoid work! Here's a gag about Detective Fivepages, trying to solve the mystery of the missing landmarks in just 5 pages! (It was the author's laziness.) One of Adachi's editors or assistants drugs his coffee and draws a goofy baseball strip of their own! I didn't laugh, but I guess they make a nice breather from teen melodrama.

Random Back Issues #177 - Moon Knight #11

I've said this before in regards to this tool, but it bears repeating: If you have to keep calling yourself a super-villain, you aren't. 

We're into the late stages of Zodiac's big "super-villain" plan to make Moon Knight cut loose and be the violent psycho he thinks Marc is. He abducted Dr. Sterman, Marc's therapist, but Moon Knight, Tigra, and another of Sterman's patients, a guy named Rutherford Winner, are going in to get her. Marc instructs them, the only thing that matters is rescuing Sterman. If Zodiac escapes, so be it.

But Zodiac's not there. He left Jigsaw to play jailkeeper, who was happy to do it, since Moon Knight laid a whuppin' on him recently. Except Tigra and Moon Knight "clever girl" him, and Sterman has to stop Marc from beating Jigsaw to death.

At which point Zodiac, calls? Radios? It looks like he's got a phone, but nobody picked up a phone. Whatever, he's standing in front of the Midnight Mission (recently revived as a demonic house), and he's there to kill Reese. He is, unfortunately, smart enough to not enter the Mission, and Moon Knight's backup, Hunter's Moon, is a little chained up. Zodiac used all the money he stole from Steven Grant to hire an entire gang of weirdos as backup. I refuse to dignify them with the phrase "Zodiac Cartel." These goobers are entirely lacking in personality. But only 3 died! *mumble voice* when the odds were 12-against-1. *exuberant voice* 75% survival rate!

Either Reese comes out, or Zodiac will kill everyone in the neighborhood. Just kidding, he's going to kill everyone either way. *jazz hands* Super-villain! Moon Knight's in New Jersey, with no resources for quick travel. Well, there's one way: Like any born-again (and again, and again) type, just ask the parishioners of your mega-church for donations. Oh, wait, sorry, Marc asks his God. Sure, Marc and Khonshu aren't on good terms these days, but if Khonshu doesn't help, his good son will die.

Tigra's going along, but feels she's gotta confess to spying on him for the Avengers. Which Marc figured out a while ago. Between this and Civil War, Tigra doesn't seem to do great playing mole for Black Panther. For that matter, why does she even keep taking jobs from T'Challa? He's not her king. She's connected to some kind of tiger-spirit-god-thing, from what I vaguely remember of that 2nd Defenders mini-series Al Ewing wrote. It probably doesn't appreciate her taking orders from the Panther God's lackey.

Anyway, time's up at the Mission, so Reese steps outside. With Mr. Knight?! No, Moon Knight has not experienced some bizarre, Silver Age contrivance where all his identities can now occupy separate physical forms.

{7th longbox, 48th comic. Moon Knight (vol. 8) #11, by Jed MacKay (writer), Alessandro Cappuccio (artist), Rachelle Rosenber (color artist), Cory Petit (letterer)}

Outposts of Eden - Page Stegner

This is a collection of pieces Stegner wrote about the American West for various outlets in the 1980s. They're grouped into three broad sections: desert, rivers, and trying to support oneself off what the land provides.

It's similar, in some regards, to Edward Abbey's work. There's even a pull-quote from Abbey on the back, though the quote is more about how much Abbey dislikes most other nature writers for being, variously, equivocating, insipid, low-bellied, and rhapsodical, among other insults. The only thing he ostensibly says about this is it's a, 'real book written by a real writer.'

I cannot confirm Page Stegner is a real person, let alone a real writer - the picture on the inside flap of the back cover might be of anyone! - but I guess this is a real book, in the sense there are words, arranged into legible sentences on paper pages that you can hold and read.

Stegner's writing certainly has the cantankerous air of much of Abbey's writing, but is lacking when it comes to conveying what it is Stegner finds particularly appealing or beautiful about the places he's writing about. Because he's too busy griping about how everyone, save him and a couple of his buddies, are not appreciating the wilderness properly.

Guys on dirt bikes tearing around the desert? Scum. Environmental studies majors who get outraged about pollution from mining, but show little interest in the actual scenery? Dolts. People who regard the desert as an inhospitable expanse of greasewood to be hurried through at maximum speed to reach Vegas? Pitiable. Government agencies ostensibly tasked with protecting the land? Foot-draggers who are so incompetent or corrupt the wilderness would be best served by them doing nothing. People who go camping, but used wood fires instead of propane? Monsters who take it as an excuse to burn all their other trash while they're at it.

In a piece about a logging company town falling apart after the company was bought out by a bigger firm not operating on any notion of sustainable harvest or community, Stegner mentions the son of a friend is part of an Earth First! group that had set themselves up in redwoods to try and prevent their being cut down. The friend, knowing Stegner was headed that way, asked him to pass a message along. Stegner shows no interest in doing so and makes no attempt to find the kid. Another friend who came along is constantly miming they should leave and go fly-fishing. They both seem to think the best thing would be if the tree got cut down with the kid in it and he died.

Basically Stegner sneers at everyone who isn't him, until the final part of the book, which reveals Stegner as an incompetent dumbass. To be clear, this is a deliberate choice by Stegner, a series of descriptions of schemes to 'live off the fat of the land,' and failing utterly. Let's buy a couple of beef steers at auction and raise them on our friend's land, so we have our own steaks! Wait, what's the difference between a heifer and a steer? What do you mean, feed additives and inoculations cost money? There are wild boar on the friend's land, let's kill them and get cheap pork! Oops, the neighbor is a hog farm and we killed some of their sows. Let's get a boat and we'll fish! We don't know how to fix the engine, our anchor has no chain and the boat is too big for the trailer.

Reading those last 30 pages, I was left wondering who Stegner was to look down his nose at anyone else. He doesn't know anything. Not the geology, not the biology. Maybe a bit of history, in that he's clearly read Lewis and Clark's journals of their expedition (or at least the Cliff's Notes) but there's no sense he's an expert there, either. He gets lost enough to doubt he's got any idea where he's going, so it's nothing like an effective travelogue. And why would it be? If he described it in terms capturing the elements that appealed to him, the reader might want to go there. Then we might interact with it in some fashion he would consider unacceptable. Gasp! Horrors! 

It reminds me of some of Aldo Leopold's writing. That people should want to preserve nature and recognize its value, but, you know, from a distance. They shouldn't actually get close to it, or see it or anything. Just appreciate it as a theoretical thing they know exists, and that it's good it exists.

Except Leopold at least sometimes gushed over the beauty of his land when he did this. Stegner keeps talking about how so much of the West is owned by the government, and is therefore the People's Land. Shaking his head at the members of the public who don't recognize what they've got and consider it valueless. Yet he doesn't seem to want any of "The People" out there. Except him and his fishing buddies.

I can do "sneering condescension" in my sleep. I'm looking for an author to capture the mystique or appeal of lands that at first glance appear so uninviting. Which Stegner is either uninterested or incapable of doing.

'Three belligerent troglodytes in plastic goggles with plastic pots on their head. Spent a hard day out in the dunes churning up the burrows of kangaroo rats and kit foxes, no doubt. Observe the splayed feet for mashing brake and clutch pedals, the hairy forearms for strangling handlebars, the porcine, shock-absorbing buttocks, the opposable thumbs. Observe the havoc they wreak on the delicate soil, soil that in this climate takes a millennium to form. Good day to you, too, gentlemen. I hope that when you reach the interstate you may experience  what a famous outlaw biker once described as the ultimate in a two-cycle thrill - a high-torque, full-throttle, speedwobble across the highway divider into the oncoming grill of an eighteen-wheeler.'