Hole in the Sky: A Memoir - Hardcover

Kittredge, William

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679411666 ISBN 13: 9780679411666

Publisher: Alfred a Knopf Inc, 1992

Synopsis

"William Kittredge writes about the West," Raymond Carver once wrote, "with pity and terror and love. His work is singular and unforgettable." And in this extraordinary, much-awaited memoir, he explores one of our primary national mythologies through the history of his own family.
The Great Basin is a sagebrush desert extending from Oregon into Nevada and California, ringed by mountains and crossed by oasis valleys--and, until white men arrived in the latter half of the nineteenth century, home to the Klamaths, the Modocs, and the northern Paiutes. By then their destruction was inevitable, as was a future of Manifest Destiny and massive ranches. One of these--the MC, later known as the Warner Valley Stock Company--was William Kittredge's birthright and curse.
He was born, in 1932, into a frontier childhood of natural beauty and cowboys all around; and for him, unlike the vast flocks of migrating waterfowl, this was a place to be rooted forever, among people who for three generations had owned it all. But gradually everything changed, as surely as horses gave way to the tractors that drained the swamps and transformed the land, and as the distances between fathers and sons and husbands and wives came to be measured in resentment and silence.
This is the story of a great pioneer family's decline and fall, and of a childhood dream that turned into an adulthood of dislocation and loss, the end of a way of life. But it is also Kittredge's account of coming to terms with this complex inheritance and to a new, deeper, understanding of both himself and the West. Based on his experience and our collective past, Hole in the Sky is an epic of American life.

About this title

Review:

Autobiography/Memoir
"A pleasure to read ... [Kittredge] has written a remarkably frank account of his own life, and at every stage it was interesting.... You will not have read another Western like this."
-- Washington Post Book World
"A grand and true story by one of our finest writers."
-- Annie Dillard

"The story of the Kittredges ... intersects mightily with the myth of American expansion and 'improvement' of the 'wilderness.'... a valuable memoir that should be read with care ... [Kittredge's] voice should be a prophetic one."
Chicago Tribune

Autobiography/Memoir
"A pleasure to read ... [Kittredge] has written a remarkably frank account of his own life, and at every stage it was interesting.... You will not have read another Western like this."
-- Washington Post Book World
"A grand and true story by one of our finest writers."
-- Annie Dillard

"The story of the Kittredges ... intersects mightily with the myth of American expansion and 'improvement' of the 'wilderness.'... a valuable memoir that should be read with care ... [Kittredge's] voice should be a prophetic one."
Chicago Tribune

Autobiography/Memoir

"A pleasure to read ... [Kittredge] has written a remarkably frank account of his own life, and at every stage it was interesting.... You will not have read another Western like this."

-- Washington Post Book World

"A grand and true story by one of our finest writers."

-- Annie Dillard
"The story of the Kittredges ... intersects mightily with the myth of American expansion and 'improvement' of the 'wilderness.'... a valuable memoir that should be read with care ... [Kittredge's] voice should be a prophetic one."

Chicago Tribune

Autobiography/Memoir
"A pleasure to read ... [Kittredge] has written a remarkably frank account of his own life, and at every stage it was interesting.... You will not have read another Western like this."
-- Washington Post Book World
"A grand and true story by one of our finest writers."
-- Annie Dillard

"The story of the Kittredges ... intersects mightily with the myth of American expansion and 'improvement' of the 'wilderness.'... a valuable memoir that should be read with care ... [Kittredge's] voice should be a prophetic one."
Chicago Tribune

Autobiography/Memoir

"A pleasure to read ... [Kittredge] has written a remarkably frank account of his own life, and at every stage it was interesting.... You will not have read another Western like this."

-- Washington Post Book World

"A grand and true story by one of our finest writers."

-- Annie Dillard

"The story of the Kittredges ... intersects mightily with the myth of American expansion and 'improvement' of the 'wilderness.'... a valuable memoir that should be read with care ... [Kittredge's] voice should be a prophetic one."

Chicago Tribune

About the Author:

William Kittredge is the author, The Willow Field, The Nature of Generosity, among others, and, with Annick Smith, he edited The Last Best Place: A Montana Anthology. He grew up in Oregon and now lives in Missoula, Montana, where for many years he taught at the University of Montana.

About this edition

• Publisher: Alfred a Knopf Inc
• Publication date: 1992
• ISBN 10: 0679411666
• ISBN 13: 9780679411666
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1