The Review of Contemporary Fiction

Collected Works, Volume III: 1987-1997 by Paul Metcalf
Karl Gartung

Paul Metcalf. Collected Works, Volume III: 1987-1997. Coffee House, 1997. 524 pp. $35.00.

This volume completes our opportunity to read one of the most original minds of the century in his own preferred manner, to read his works in the order they were composed, to read a life. Volume III begins with Where Do You Put the Horse?, a collection of critical and autobiographical essays reaching back to 1973 and forward nearly to the present. In these writings, Metcalf is aware—as perhaps no other—of the middle ground that literature occupies: reading is at once visual and silent, but requires the ear and patience. He trusts his source materials, placing them against each other, making their colors vibrate in the manner of the abstract expressionist, but in the ear. For Metcalf, literature is a physical thing, a voice always heard like music (but through the eye!), “constructed of materials salvaged from the wreckage of previous constructions rather than materials designed specifically for the task at hand”—bricolage. Following the essays, the volume includes seven novels: Louis the Torch, Golden Delicious, Firebird, Three Plays, Mountaineers Are Always Free!, “. . . and nobody objected,” and Araminta and the Coyotes. Their subjects encompass a wide range: arson, the gold rush, apples, the Chicago fire, baseball, the Civil War, Columbus, the Underground Railroad, and coyotes (Mexican immigrant smugglers). These books prove Metcalf’s epic literary lineage, which extends from Homer to Whitman and Melville through Pound and Williams.
The novels are succeeded by the entirely wonderful new long poem “Huascarán,” a poetic rendering of the great Peruvian earthquake of 1970. It is a homage to the spiritual and familial attachment to a place that derives in opposition to disaster, religion, geography, government, and indifference. The structure of “Huascarán” is relatively simple and compressed, yet it remains very powerful as a cry for memory (“You must remember not to forget”).
The collection closes with a somewhat satirical essay, “The Wonderful White Whale of Kansas.” Here Metcalf speculates wistfully on fame, fortune and fate. Still, he celebrates Dorothy’s devotion to place and to common sense: “And yet, knowing him [the Wizard of Oz] for what he is, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Lion willingly comply with his ruses, accepting and believing in the brains, the heart, and the courage that he doles out. Dorothy is right: Better Kansas!”
Paul Metcalf has always been difficult to categorize, perhaps because he is one of only a few American writers who possess an imagination beyond the lyric. With these three volumes Coffee House gives us the epic of our time. [Karl Gartung]


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The Review of Contemporary Fiction Collected Works, Volume III: 1987-1997 by Paul Metcalf Karl Gartung Paul Metcalf. Collected Works, Volume III: 1987-1997. Coffee House, 1997. 524 pp. $35.00. This volume completes our opportunity to read one of the most original minds of the century in his own preferred manner, to read his works in the order they were composed, to read a life. Volume III begins with Where Do You Put the Horse?, a collection of critical and autobiographical essays reaching back to 1973 and forward nearly to the present. In these writings, Metcalf is aware—as perhaps no other—of the middle ground that literature occupies: reading is at once visual and silent, but requires the ear and patience. He trusts his source materials, placing them against each other, making their colors vibrate in the manner of the abstract expressionist, but in the ear. For Metcalf, literature is a physical thing, a voice always heard like music (but through the eye!), “constructed of materials salvaged from the wreckage of previous constructions rather than materials designed specifically for the task at hand”—bricolage. Following the essays, the volume includes seven novels: Louis the Torch, Golden Delicious, Firebird, Three Plays, Mountaineers Are Always Free!, “. . . and nobody objected,” and Araminta and the Coyotes. Their subjects encompass a wide range: arson, the gold rush, apples, the Chicago fire, baseball, the Civil War, Columbus, the Underground Railroad, and coyotes (Mexican immigrant smugglers). These books prove Metcalf’s epic literary lineage, which extends from Homer to Whitman and Melville through Pound and Williams. The novels are succeeded by the entirely wonderful new long poem “Huascarán,” a poetic rendering of the great Peruvian earthquake of 1970. It is a homage to the spiritual and familial attachment to a place that derives in opposition to disaster, religion, geography, government, and indifference. The structure of “Huascarán” is relatively simple and compressed, yet it remains very powerful as a cry for memory (“You must remember not to forget”). The collection closes with a somewhat satirical essay, “The Wonderful White Whale of Kansas.” Here Metcalf speculates wistfully on fame, fortune and fate. Still, he celebrates Dorothy’s devotion to place and to common sense: “And yet, knowing him [the Wizard of Oz] for what he is, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Lion willingly comply with his ruses, accepting and believing in the brains, the heart, and the courage that he doles out. Dorothy is right: Better Kansas!” Paul Metcalf has always been difficult to categorize, perhaps because he is one of only a few American writers who possess an imagination beyond the lyric. With these three volumes Coffee House gives us the epic of our time. [Karl Gartung]

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