Glassworks
  • home
  • about
    • history
    • masthead
    • staff bios
    • community outreach
    • affiliations
    • contact
  • current issue
    • read Issue 17
    • letter from the editor
    • looking glass fall 2018
    • interview with Melissa Wiley
    • new book reviews
    • new opinion editorials
  • submit
    • submission guidelines
  • looking glass
    • fall 2018
    • spring 2018
    • fall 2017
    • apprentice 2017
    • spring 2017
    • fall 2016
    • spring 2016
    • fall 2015
    • spring 2015
    • fall 2014
    • spring 2014
    • spring 2012
    • winter 2012
    • fall 2011
  • editorial content
    • opinion
    • book reviews
    • interviews >
      • Ed Briant
      • Eugene Cross
      • Christopher DeWan
      • Eric Dyer
      • Julie Enszer >
        • Avowed
      • Mitchell Fink
      • Olivia Gatwood
      • David Gerrold
      • Cynthia Graham
      • Ernest Hilbert
      • Paul Lisicky >
        • The Roofers
      • Scott McCloud
      • Jan Millsapps
      • Anis Mojgani
      • Pedram Navab
      • Michael Pagdon
      • Aimee Parkison >
        • The Petals of Your Eyes
      • Brad Parks
      • Chris Rakunas
      • Carlos Ramos
      • Mary Salvante
      • Jill Smolowe
      • Julie Marie Wade
      • Melissa Wiley
  • flash glass
    • flash glass 2019
    • flash glass 2018
    • flash glass 2017
    • flash glass 2016
    • flash glass 2015
  • media
    • art
    • photography
    • audio
    • video
    • new media
  • archive
    • past issues
    • order print issues
  • Master of Arts in Writing program
    • about Writing Arts at Rowan University
    • application and requirements
  • Newsletter

Word Shavings From the Whittled Stick of a Life

2/16/2015

1 Comment

 
Picture
Review: El Paso Days

Leslie Martinelli

El Paso Days
Elroy Bode
Nonfiction – Memoir
Wings Press, pp. 160
Cost: $16.00


If one were to look back on a life as collected memories, how would those memories be recalled?  Elroy Bode's memoir, El Paso Days, shows that life is relived not chronologically, but randomly, as recollections and experiences, joys and sorrows. The author takes the reader on a pinball ride, bouncing between his life as a teacher to the ennui of retirement. It is an anthology of moments, collected fragments of time and space.

The title leads the reader to anticipate a memoir about life in Texas, a literary landscape of arroyos and tumbleweeds. While El Paso is the backdrop, the book is a memoir of a piece of Bode's life, a nonlinear autobiography, seasoned liberally with the author's musings about life, death, and the cosmos.  The reader travels across the timeline of Bode's life, stopping to observe a remembered event here, a cherished vision there. He explains in the opening note that his book is "a journal of thoughts, scenes, happenings, sort of month by month: not a record of a specific year but a kind of recent generic year."  Through these scenes and thoughts we see a portrait of the author, somewhat abstract, with pieces missing, owing to the prevailing undercurrent of loss.


That Bode suffered a loss is evident from the beginning.  Early in the book Bode makes an oblique reference to his son Byron's suicide, without detail or further comment.  The reader is left to speculate – like a bystander at the edge of a crowd of onlookers at the scene of a terrible accident – on what has happened and who is to blame. Bode's silence feeds the suspense, yet, at the same time, the reader respects his privacy in this moment of grief.

Bode himself searches for meaning to life and death, at one moment giving in to despair – “It is as if I am a building and I am made up entirely of elevators. Each one is loaded with sadness, and they are all going down" – the next moment finding hope in the written word. Such is the nature of the seesaw, stream-of-consciousness pattern of the memoir.  Bode does favor the reader with moments of lightness, however. Most of these take place in his backyard sanctuary, "a background of spacious greenery: pomegranate tree, Banks' rose, almond tree, and – like a textured rug – the spread of well-watered grass." He recounts with humor the memory of a romantic rendezvous between Wilson and Ernie, two pet turtles; and of the indolent Mojo the cat, "settled for the day into her white-mat retirement home." 

These light elements painted on the dark canvas create a view of Bode’s existence as a chiaroscuro landscape. Bode observes his life through varying wide angle and telephoto lenses as he studies both microbes and galaxies in the hopes of understanding his existence. The narrative alternates between past and present tense, and the reader slides back and forth through time, stopping at seemingly random events.  The gravitational force holding Bode's universe together is the thread of sorrow and loss, and the unspoken promise that all will be revealed in the end.

Bode writes, "I've been like an old farmer-guy sitting alone on his front porch, whittling on his piece of pinewood day after day and staring out into the fading afternoons. The days pass, and the shavings from his whittled stick accumulate by his cane-bottomed chair."  As I read El Paso Days, rummaging through the "word-shavings," I came to know this "old farmer-guy." I felt his joys, and his pains. I saw his fragmented world become whole in the end, with the revelation of his real story.  By the last page, the farmer felt like a dear friend. 
1 Comment
Donald Mace Williams
5/20/2015 05:05:11 am

Leslie Martinelli--Congratulations on that perceptive and expertly written review of my friend Elroy Bode's book. He and I wonder how in the world the book got as far away as New Jersey, and I, because I am always interested in good writing, would appreciate knowing a little more about you. Would you tell me what else you've written, where you're from, and whether you're a student, a faculty member, or neither?

I'm a retired journalist and professor, author of two novels, two nonfiction books, and a pile of poems.

Thanks for your fine review, and I'll hope to hear from you. If you're a student, please show this message to one or more of your teachers.

Don Williams
Canyon, Texas

Reply



Leave a Reply.

    book reviews by glassworks editorial staff



    Archives

    February 2019
    January 2019
    November 2018
    August 2018
    June 2018
    May 2018
    April 2018
    February 2018
    November 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    February 2017
    November 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    October 2014
    April 2014
    January 2014
    March 2013
    December 2012


    Categories

    All
    Able Muse
    Agha Shahid Ali Prize
    Alfred A. Knopf
    Alternative Book Press
    Andrews McMeel Publishing
    Animals
    Anthea Bell
    Aqueous Books
    Art
    Ashland Creek Press
    Autumn House Press
    Bedazzled Ink Publishing
    Belleview Literary Press
    Berlin Wall
    Black Lawrence Press
    Book Review
    Bottom Dog Press
    Brassbones And Rainbows
    Cake Train Press
    Catholic Guilt
    Chapbook
    Chris-rakunas
    Chronic Illness
    Cold War
    Collection
    Copper Canyon Press
    Divertir Publishing
    Drama
    Elroy Bode
    Ernest Hilbert
    Essays
    Eugen Ruge
    Fading Light
    Fairy Tales
    Family
    Farm
    Feminism
    Fiction
    Flash
    Furniture Press Books
    Gdr
    Gender
    Glassworks Book Review
    Gospel
    Greywolf Press
    Haiti
    Harbor Mountain Press
    Haute Surveillance
    Hepner
    Historical Fiction
    Holocaust
    Howling Bird Press
    Humor
    Immigration
    Jacquline Doyle
    Jaded Ibis Press
    Johanne Goransson
    Journalism
    Jude Ezeilo
    Language
    Lee L. Krecklow
    Lewis Hine
    LGBT
    Literature
    Lori Ann Stephens
    Memoir
    Mental Health
    #MeToo
    Midsummer Night's Press
    Midwest
    Milkweed Editions
    Mixed Media
    Modern Poetry
    Multi Genre
    Multi-genre
    Nature
    Nonfiction
    Novalee And The Spider Secret
    Novel
    Other Press
    Painting
    Poetry
    Poetry Prize
    Poetry Review
    Politics
    Press 53
    Prose Poetry
    Race
    Red Bird Chapbooks
    Red Hen Press
    Richard Siken
    Sarah Caulfield
    Sexuality
    Shechem Press
    Shirley Bradley Leflore
    Short Story
    Sickness
    Social Issues
    Sonnet
    Spine
    Spoken Word
    Steve Royek
    Stories
    Surveillance
    Susanne Dyckman
    Suspense
    Tarpaulin Sky
    Tears For The Mountian
    Torrey House Press
    Tragedy
    University Of Utah Press
    University Press
    Unmitzer
    Violence
    Wings Press
    Winter Goose Publishing
    Women

    RSS Feed

Picture

260 Victoria Street • Glassboro, New Jersey 08028 
glassworksmagazine@rowan.edu

All Content on this Site
(C) 2019 glassworks
Photo used under Creative Commons from Pascal Volk