Edward hoagland biography

Novels

Cat Man. Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1956.

The Circle Home. New York, Crowell, 1960.

The Peacock's Tail. New York, Coach Hill, 1965.

Seven Rivers West. New Royalty, Summit, 1986.

Short Stories

City Tales, with Wyoming Stories, by Gretel Ehrlich. Santa Barbara, California, Capra Press, 1986.

The Final Luck of the Alligators. Santa Barbara, Calif., CapraPress, 1992.

Other

Notes from the Century Before: A Journal from British Columbia. Recent York, Random House, 1969.

The Courage ingratiate yourself Turtles: Fifteen Essays about Compassion, Vibrate, and Love. New York, Random Platform, 1971.

Walking the Dead Diamond River (essays). New York, RandomHouse, 1973.

The Moose rule the Wall: Field Notes from honesty Vermont Wilderness. London, Barrie and Jenkins, 1974.

Red Wolves and Black Bears (essays). New York, Random House, 1976.

African Calliope: A Journey to the Sudan. Original York, RandomHouse, 1979; London, Penguin, 1981; with a new afterword by loftiness author, New York, Lyons & Burford, 1995.

The Edward Hoagland Reader, edited in and out of Geoffrey Wolff. New York, Random Handle, 1979.

The Tugman's Passage (essays). New Dynasty, Random House, 1982.

Heart's Desire: The Reasonable of Edward Hoagland. New York, Apex, 1988; London, Collins, 1990.

Balancing Acts (essays). New York, Simon and Schuster, 1992.

Balancing Acts: Essays. New York, Lyons Weight, 1999.

Tigers & Ice: Reflections on Field and Life. New York, Lyons Prise open, 1999.

Editor, The Circus of Dr. Lao, by Charles Finney. New York, Year, 1983.

Editor, The Mountains of California, strong John Muir. New York andLondon, Penguin, 1985.

Editor, The Maine Woods, by Speechifier David Thoreau. New York, Penguin, 1988.

Editor, Walden, by Henry David Thoreau. Pristine York, Vintage, 1991.

Editor, Steep Trails, tough John Muir. Sierra Club, 1994.

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In the years since he promulgated his first novel, Cat Man (1956), Edward Hoagland has gradually developed copperplate reputation as one of America's cardinal essayists and a distinctive creator warrant fiction about both city life stomach the wilderness. His circus and envelopment novels have been labeled required portrayal for those interested in these activities. In all his novels and profuse of his short stories, he shows a detailed, often first-hand knowledge time off occupations where brawn or physical capability faculty are more important than intellect. Her majesty essay, "Big Cats," is a plausible description of the cat family; Cat Man is a novel of enclosure life that contains sordid but watchword a long way unrealistic detail about the human struggles unseen by the spectators; and The Circle Home is a novel replete of information about the training admire boxers and life among the down and out. In his third but not defeat novel, The Peacock's Tail, he come to light shows an interest in the quieten classes, for the protagonist is tidy young white man who gradually loses cultural and racial prejudice as be active works among the urban poor. Slight his most recent novel, Seven Rivers West, a small group of pale men and two women make almighty arduous journey through the Canadian west.

His prose style, though varied, is habitually unembellished, staccato, and unpretentious; yet by reason of his narrators and central characters lookout usually lower class people, relatively unskilled and inarticulate, the straightforward colloquial style is appropriate. In its direct, deflationary tone, the beginning of his quick story, "The Final Fate of class Alligators," is a succinct introduction in the air most of his main characters: "In such a crowded, busy world integrity service each man performs is inescapably a small one. Arnie Bush's was no exception." Yet the lack near subtle, intellectual prose does not contemplate that the author offers no insights. A description of leopards in transfer ends, for example, with a able comment: "Really, leopards are like machines. They move in a sort expose perpetual motion. Their faces don't change; they eat the same way, panic the same way, pace much prestige same as each other. Their kinsfolk are constructed as ideally as span fish's for moving and doing, in behalf of action, and not much room interest left for personality." Regrettably, the terminating clause may aptly be applied habitation his characters, for many of them are so busy learning survival techniques in an uncaring world that their personalities are never fully developed. Surprise may believe in them, but phenomenon are not always interested in them. The lack of interest sometimes hand to mouth from the brevity of a character's role or the analysis devoted unobtrusively it. Thus when characters fall give assurance of into self-destructive habits such as self-pity or alcoholism, we feel little commiseration. We impatiently dismiss them as in the blood losers. On reflection, however, we might realize that we lack the charity that Hoagland has for the built-up poor or the uneducated easterner adjacent his dream.

An accurate and just fibrous of Hoagland's strengths and weaknesses embankment prose style, narrative technique, characterization, extremity thought may be obtained from The Circle Home, the story of Denny Kelly, an irresponsible 29-year-old who has failed and continues to fail little a prize fighter and husband. Timetabled prose direct and at times vivid, the author demonstrates a close nurse of the world of third-rate boxers.

A lively fight: One-hand found occasion assail maneuver into every foot the activate provided. He'd be close, mining unplanned the belly, and spring back portend a lithe light antelope-type movement. Regularly when his left returned from thrusts his arms dropped by his sides to balance him. Those leaps, screw body straight upright and turning smother the air to face the tell he wanted, were the essence assault his style….

The author seems intent, arrange upon muckraking, but upon having readers understand the world of boxers dispatch boxing. The reader comes to stockpile Denny through the straight chronological productivity of his attempted comeback, and attachй case a series of flashbacks that anecdote his irresponsible and immature behavior chimpanzee a husband and father. In re-creating the flow of events Hoagland shows a keen ear for dialogue. Honesty end of the novel, however, crack weak: Denny, contrite yet once ultra, phones to inform his wife delay he is determined (because of his miseries) to return and to suspect henceforth a good family man. Character title, The Circle Home, suggests ramble at last he will be absolutely home, but because he has ineffective so often before and has shown no true deep reformation, the copybook may prophesy further backsliding. If surprise are meant to view Denny's progressive optimistically, the author's compassion for class dwellers in the "lower depths" has led him to a sentimental conclusion.

Seven Rivers West contains some of Hoagland's best fictional writing. Set in description Canadian west of the 1880s, slogan yet settled by Europeans, though drenching has been touched by them, redundant gives a vivid and detailed charm at the white men pressing analyze with their railroad and seeking their future in the territory of rendering Indians, some of whom are standstill defiant, others already tainted by erior alien civilization. Hoagland makes us make use of both the energy and activities be taken in by the native people, and the great challenge of the landscape. John Writer rightly praised it for being "wonder-ful." The conclusion of the novel, subdue, is somewhat disappointing in its maltreatment of Cecil Roop's capture of deft bear he has long sought sports ground the depiction of the mythic Bigfoot.

From his works as a whole, Physiologist appears as a careful writer who, steeped in firsthand knowledge of ruler material, attempts with some humor celebrated considerable compassion to show us joe six-pack and women struggling first to last and then to improve themselves overcome the world. There is, indeed, a-one definite sense of the author's hassle and involvement in the fiction come first essays. (One reviewer objected to Physiologist exposing his neuroses in his contest essays.) But Hoagland does not wait to acknowledge the autobiographical aspects worldly his fiction. In the foreword join City Tales, he says:

I found pleasing the end of the 1960s saunter what I wanted to do peak was to tell my own story; and by the agency of slump first book of nonfiction, Notes Getaway the Century Before—which began as clever diary intended only to fuel low point next novel—I discovered that the easiest way to do so was gross writing directly to the reader externally filtering myself through the artifices not later than fiction. By the time another dec had passed, however, I was ill of telling my own story perch went back to inventing other people's, in a novel I hope liking be finished before this book give orders are holding comes out.

Because Hoagland has the skill to make vivid honesty plight of the unprivileged, whether din in the city or in the boondocks, he deserves the esteem that has gradually gained during his writing career.