From time to time, I like to use my space here in your family newspaper to recommend that you either purchase or make a trip to the library so that you can peruse especially fine pieces of literature.
As a member of the Kentucky population who shiver and stay indoors as much as possible when the temperature dips below 50 degrees, I like to stock up on good reading material so that I can stay heartedly entertained when it becomes too cold to do anything meaningful outdoors.
I knew that the winter weather was going to be especially miserable this season because I have untold confidence in my friends at the National Association of Wooly Worm Winter Weather Watchers (NAWWWWW), who have been remarkably on target with the forecast issued early last November. But I digress.
For the life of me, I can’t recall who it was, sometime early in December, who called, e-mailed or mentioned in casual conversation that I should read a book entitled “On Kingdom Mountain” by Vermont fiction writer Howard Frank Mosher.
I am a firm believer in the notion that any book that makes the New York Times bestseller list is almost assured to be soap opera-simple, shallow, commercially over-blown and reviewed by people who would not recognize a good piece of writing if it hit them between the eyes. The first thing I did was to determine that the title had never made that list and that no other of Mosher’s work had appealed to the crowd who videotape daily episodes of “Days of Our Lives.”
I found the title on half.com and paid a dollar plus shipping for it and, shortly before Christmas, it arrived in the mail. After being banned from the bedroom by Loretta because I was laughing so hard I was keeping her awake, I sat down at the computer and proceeded to order every title listed by Mosher by the folks who sell books on the internet.
At this writing, I have relished and devoured six of Mosher’s books and have four to go of the 10 that he has published. I am here to suggest to you that you make an effort to read Howard Frank Mosher.
Mark Twain comes to mind and, as you read and compare, you will discover that his sense of place and his ability to place the reader in it compares to Willa Cather’s ability to put you in rural Nebraska.
Mosher’s work, however, is largely set in or tied to ultra-rural Kingdom County, Vermont, there on the Canadian border.
]The sense of place certainly rivals that of Cather but the dozens of eccentric characters who people Mosher’s novels outdo anything Mark Twain ever imagined. And I will admit that some are just plain unbelievable because the push beyond the edge.
I don’t have space here to do a complete review but, let me say that Mosher has won many awards including two New England Awards for best in fiction, The American Civil Liberties Award for Excellence (for A Stranger in the Kingdom), and Guggenheim and National Endowment for the Arts fellowships.
You can find any amount of critical review of Howard Frank Mosher’s work on the internet simply by doing a Google search.
In the meantime, let me assure you that discovering him is easily the best literary surprise I’ve had in at least 10 years. The man should already be held as a national treasure!
You will thank me when you finally get around to reading this wonderful work.
Viewpoints
Mosher a literary surprise
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