Sonata / / Charles Bowden.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter University of Texas Press Complete eBook-Package 2020
• VerfasserIn: Bowden, Charles,
• MitwirkendeR: Corchado, Alfredo,
• Place / Publishing House: Austin : : University of Texas Press, , [2020]; ©2020
• Year of Publication: 2020
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (200 p.)

"I believe every sunrise and I remember the smell of wet grass, the color of robins, and rustle of leaves on the big oaks that outlive nations, all this comes with each sunrise." Sonata marks the sixth and final installment of Charles Bowden’s towering “Unnatural History of America” series. While his earlier volumes were suffused with violence and war, Bowden offers here a celebration of rebirth and regrowth. Rendered in Bowden's inimitable style, more prose poetry than reportage, he evokes panoramas that contain the potential for respite and offer a state of grace all but lost in the endless wars of man. Bowden travels back in time to the worlds of artists Francisco Goya and Vincent van Gogh, the latter painting furiously against encroaching madness. “Van Gogh tries to dream a life of color,” writes Bowden. “Powder blue sheds, yellow stubble, pink skies—but the fears and dark things drag him down.” As Bowden’s vivid prose wrestles with the madness of the world, van Gogh’s paintings represent an act of resistance, ultimately unsuccessful, against depression and suicide. Moving from the vibrant hues of van Gogh’s painted gardens to America’s southern border, Bowden returns once more to the Mexican asylum run by "El Pastor," Jose Antonio Galvan, who was first introduced to readers of the sextet in Jericho. Here, too, is the dream of a garden that will be planted in the desert, a promise of regeneration in a world gone mad. Poetic, elegiac, and elliptical, Sonata is the final, captivating book of Bowden’s monumental career.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Fronterizos -- PART I Love among the Bloods -- Mother -- Crossing the Line -- The Tall Grass -- Hush -- The Asylum -- The Asylum -- The Box -- Crossing the Line -- Crossing the Line -- PART II Music and Silence -- Do Nothing -- Silence -- Love -- Do good Things -- God -- Goya -- The Asylum -- The Fifth Sun -- Crossing the Line -- Mother -- Crossing the Line -- The Cranes -- Crossing the Line -- The Asylum -- Crossing the Line -- Cortes -- The Agents -- PART III The Beauty Part -- Vincent van Gogh -- The Beauty Part -- The Garden -- Vincent van Gogh -- The Garden -- The Song of Solomon -- Vincent van Gogh -- The Garden -- Vincent van Gogh -- The Garden -- Vincent van Gogh -- A Hole in the Sky -- Vincent van Gogh -- The Killing Ground -- The Cranes -- The Beauty Part -- The Garden -- Vincent van Gogh -- The Garden -- Notes -- About the Author