The Void, the Grid & the Sign: Traversing the Great Basin - Softcover

Fox, William L.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0874176182 ISBN 13: 9780874176186

Publisher: University of Nevada Press, 2005

Synopsis

This is a story that few know, but those who do are its disciples. The story, of the highest and driest of all American deserts, the Great Basin, has no finer voice than that of William Fox. Fox’s book is divided into the three sections of the title. In \u201cThe Void,\u201d he leads us through the Great Basin landscape, investigating our visual response to it―a pattern of mountains and valleys on a scale of such magnitude and emptiness and undifferentiated by shape, form, and color that the visual and cognitive expectations of the human mind are confounded and impaired. \u201cThe Grid\u201d leads us on a journey through the evolution of cartography in the nineteenth century and the explorations of John Charles Fr\u00e9mont to the net of maps, section markers, railroads, telegraph lines, and highways that humans have thrown across the void throughout history. \u201cThe Sign\u201d wends us through the metaphors and language we continue to place around and over the void, revealing the Great Basin as a palimpsest where, for example, the neon boulevards of Las Vegas interplay with ancient petroglyphs. In this one-of-a-kind travel book that allows us to travel within our own neurophysiological processes as well as out into the arresting void of the Great Basin, Fox has created a dazzling new standard at the frontier of writing about the American West. His stunning and broad insight draws from the fields of natural history, cognitive psychology, art history, western history, archaeology, and anthropology, and will be of value to scholars and readers in all these subjects.

About this title

About the Author

An independent scholar, a cultural geographer, an essayist, a poet, a travel writer, William Fox consistently brings together unexpected fields of knowledge in order to illuminate the subjects at hand. He has been an arts consultant, curator, and visiting scholar at the Getty Research Institute. He has written widely on the nature of deserts and the role of the arts in American culture. He is the author of numerous articles and books. He lives in Burbank.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Nevada Press
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0874176182
• ISBN 13: 9780874176186
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 240