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Austinite John Pipkin’s ‘Woods Burner’ magnificent

By Michael Barnes | Tuesday, August 11, 2009, 12:05 PM

“Woods Burner” gathered dust on my bedside table for far too long.

Austinite John Pipkin’s novel had beckoned from the bottom of the book pile since last fall. Yet his putative subject daunted, dismayed.

I’ve never been a big fan of Henry David Thoreau, the accidental wildfire-starter of the title. More precisely, Thoreau’s latter-day followers are all to eager to take his sketchy reflections on nature and man as holy writ. They tend to ignore the larger Emersonian context of those few lines scribbled by Walden Pond.

I should not have worried. Pipkin adroitly tells the story of the historical fire through the senses and sensibilities of a half dozen distinct major characters. The book’s larger subject is world around Concord, Mass. in the 1840s. That encompasses the pantheists attached to Ralph Waldo Emerson; the dark side of Second Great Awakening religious revival; the spread of bookstores, coffeehouses, theatrical spectacles and pornography; New England insularity and entrepreneurism; and the peculiar tensions endemic on a retreating frontier.

Each sentence paints a dab of poetry. Yet Pipkin never lets the action — interior or exterior — flag. He’s kind to his flawed characters, which makes the end satisfying.

Can’t wait to meet him on the local literary circuit.

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By Slim

August 11, 2009 12:24 PM | Link to this

Interestingly, this book was highly touted on the "Aielli Unleashed" blog on KUTfm for a month or so...a couple months back. Now they've axed that resource, and book and arts reviews apparently won't be heard on that station. But we're glad you are here, Mr. Barnes!