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A Strong West Wind: A Memoir
In this exquisitely rendered memoir set on the high plains of Texas, Pulitzer Prize winner Gail Caldwell transforms into art what it is like to come of age in a particular time and place. A Strong West Wind begins in the 1950s in the wilds of the Texas Panhandle–a place of both boredom and beauty, its flat horizons broken only by oil derricks, grain elevators, and church s...more
Paperback, 256 pages
Published
January 9th 2007
by Random House Trade Paperbacks
(first published 2006)
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There are very few books about Austin, Texas in existence. I try to read all of them. One notable is Waterloo by the Texas Monthly journalist Karen Olsson; it's a mystery that captures the late twentieth century Austin political landscape and also embraces the anti-change sentimentalism that permeates the former town. Amanda Ward has two books that take place in Austin. I don't think I've seen any others. Let me know if you know of any.
So, I've moved to try to find books that take place in Texa...more
So, I've moved to try to find books that take place in Texa...more
Jul 19, 2011
Ratalouie
added it
Highly recommend, am giving for a #60 birthday gift next month for someone who was also born in 1951 as was Caldwell. I did not relate to the Texas themes exactly, but being from the MidWest farm country, I could tap into my childhood memobires there. Particularly good read for a "book lover" with a graduate degree in English lit. Favorite quote page 201 about being caught with Lady Chatterley's Lover at age 11: However protective in most arenas, my mother was intuitively libertarian when it cam...more
I've become a Gail Caldwell fan. She really knows how to write. This memoir of growing up in Amarillo, Texas and ending up in Cambridge, MA is fascinating. I just relished her sentences and being taken to places I've never been. She is a book critic and well versed in literature and brings in other authors in a subtle and unassuming way that makes you want to read them, if you haven't yet, or go back to them,and understand them in new ways, if you have.
Here are two quotes I liked so much when I...more
Here are two quotes I liked so much when I...more
Where and when we are formed shapes us - whether we fight it, attempt to outrun it, or succumb - time and place is who we are. Our stories begin and end at home. Move from country to city, windswept plains to wet mountains, our bones are hardened in the time and place we are born. Caldwell puts the flesh on the bones. Strong, sere and melodic the words in this book sweep us from the panhandle of Texas to the bricks of Cambridge. Quiet and powerful, just as she describes the wind against the rock...more
I first read "Let's Take the Long Way Home," Caldwell's beautiful memoir about her friendship with author Caroline Knapp. Caldwell writes so beautifully, and that is what kept me reading this. However, she seems to have fallen into the same trap as many other first-time authors - she gets so wrapped up in her lavish descriptions and tangents that she forgets to tell her story. "Let's Take the Long Way Home" tells a compelling story beautifully. However, "A Strong West Wind" was more of a descrip...more
Gail Caldwell is a very strong writer. I was first introduced to her through her more recent book Let's Take the Long Way Home. While the whole book is well written, I enjoyed the second half of this book more than first because here Caldwell gets into her family's history and we start to understand her relationship with both parents more clearly. Caldwell makes multiple literary references throughout, and because I was unfamiliar with most of them, I felt I was missing a certain depth or messag...more
An intelligent and deeply moving memoir of a friendship between two women who chose to forgo marriage and children and instead focus on their literary careers. Both author Gail Caldwell and Caroline Knapp (the friend who is diagnosed with stage four lung cancer) spent years taking their dogs on daily hikes through the woods and sharing in each others successes and failures (both are recovering alcoholics). When illness brings their lives to a screeching halt the author tries to rebuild her life...more
Interesting sort of memoir, as Caldwell is just a few years older than I am, but lived in a vastly different part of the country. The images of life in Texas were interesting, though I did get a little impatient with her coming of age years. (It's only fair. Those coming of age are usually pretty impatient with their world, too.) Reading of her parents, the word that comes to mind is hardscrabble, but by the time Caldwell came into the picture, they were probably more middle class. She tells the...more
May 14, 2009
Bucket
rated it
3 of 5 stars
Shelves:
reviewed,
american-dream,
bio-auto-bio,
books-about-books,
culture,
women,
non-fiction,
politics,
religion
This was a quick read and a memoir. Gail tells her story - emphasizing her relationships with both her parents, her experiences with politics and feminism in the 60s, and, more than anything, her relationship with books and literature. Gail's life lessons seemed to come from these three sources/experiences and they were continuously interwoven throughout the book. Some experiences include - reading voraciously as a child, polio as an infant leaving her with a limp, being anti-war and getting hig...more
From a book review I wrote for the Charlotte Observer:
Part literary memoir, part coming-of-age through landscape metaphor, Caldwell tells the story of her youth in the Texas panhandle and then beyond, complete with smoking, skipping journalism, writing bad poetry, dropping out of school, getting arrested, protesting war, and circling back around to the life she seemed destined for as a child when she retreated into books. A mild, bookish child, she grew into the unlikely, a Vietnam War protesto...more
Part literary memoir, part coming-of-age through landscape metaphor, Caldwell tells the story of her youth in the Texas panhandle and then beyond, complete with smoking, skipping journalism, writing bad poetry, dropping out of school, getting arrested, protesting war, and circling back around to the life she seemed destined for as a child when she retreated into books. A mild, bookish child, she grew into the unlikely, a Vietnam War protesto...more
I don't usually read memoirs, but when I do, I am continually struck by the similarity of the human condition across the spectrum, between people as different as Caldwell, who grew up in the Texas panhandle, and myself, good Midwestern girl that I am. Her story is well-told and poignant, especially the parts about her relationship with her father, and what she saw in him that he never spoke about. All of a sudden, I missed my own father more than ever. (This in itself may be enough motivation fo...more
This book was given to me by a friend who knew I grew up in the Texas Panhandle. I loved this book because of the the amazing writing. It is a little slow at first as she details the many books she escaped into to avoid the stifling (my word, not hers) constraints of the culture during the late 60's and early 70's. She details the relationships and characteristics of her family and friends and does it so precisely, I almost felt I knew them too.
Gail Caldwell’s memoir of her childhood in Amarillo and early adult life. I didn’t love it as much as “Let’s Take the Long Way Home” but I liked it -- especially the parts about her father, who shares her traits of a big personality, big heart, and big ability to be obstinate; and her calm, diplomatic mother. The book also reminded me about some of the authors I need to read, such as William Faulkner and Sylvia Plath.
I picked this up at a $1/book sale, so I didn't even really know anything about the author or the book. I always like a good coming-of-age story, so I am enjoying this one. Caldwell pitches high in the vocabulary category. I love learning new words and dredging up known ones. Right now, at the half-way point, I'm finding that hyperbole kind of ruins a moving story. But it's so easy to criticize things, isn't it?
I was not crazy about this book. I liked the descriptions of the clash of the 1960 cultural revolution and the Texas panhandle but it did not strike a good memoir balance for me. The stories of her family where great but some parts read more like a journal listing books she had read and friendships she made. I felt like I had read it before but it a better format.
A dandy little memoir from a gal who grew up in the Texas Panhandle and ended up being a Pulitzer Prize winner. Though I wasn't alive during Vietnam, and I don't consider myself a feminist or a hippie, I still found I could relate to the small town, rebel, bookworm. Plus, I just get a kick out of reading about places I've lived.
It is surprising to discover that A Strong West Wind is Gail Caldwell's first book. Maybe her position as critic for the Boston Globe (a role for which she won the Pulitzer Prize in 2001 for Distinguished Criticism) forced her to consider her literary desires more closely. Her patience has paid off in a memoir that succeeds on all levels, from a contextual understanding of her times to her personal relationships. The same touch with metaphor that distinguishes Caldwell's critical writing shows u
...more
I really enjoyed her book "Take the Long Way Home", which I thought was beautifully written and I totally connected with the emotion of the friendship and loss. While this book was also well written it did no have the same connection for me. Given the emotion of Take the Long Way Home, I felt that this book was one step removed from the story. I connected most with the parts of the book that discussed her relationship with her father.
Pretty good, if a bit disconnected. The author is about five years my junior so I vividly recall the times she talks about. Though her teen experience is vastly different from my twenty something with kids experience, I enjoyed recalling the early days of women's rights and feminism, not so much the Vietnam controversies-- hard to think about that era, sometimes.
A very somber memoir. It would have been much more effective if it weren't so pedantic. The literary references were often beyond my range. But her description of the life she led, the emotional ties with her family, and the bleak area in which she grew up saved the book. So I would say good, moving at times, but not really a recommended read.
This book has become one of my favorite books, it merits being placed next to Kathleen Norris's Dakota. There's just something about life on the vast plains that distills a writer's voice into crystalline clarity. Caldwell's experiences of growing up in Amarillo in the late '60s and '70's are very much akin to my own.
Many of the literary references in this book went over my head. Nevertheless, it's a really nice memoir and she does a wonderful job situating her personal experience within the historical context of the 50s and 60s. You don't have to be a baby boomer from Texas to relate to and appreciate this book!
Beautiful writing. Caldwell choose a thematic rather than linear structure perhaps to make interesting the overtold story of the 60s and 70s rebellion of her generation. Her writing alone would have kept me reading and did despite the weird structure.
This was a wonder memoir about growing up in Armadillo Tx. Gail writes with a lot of visual imagery. Written after her friend Caroline Knapp has died as described in "Let's Take The Long Way Home". Pulitzer prize winner and a very gifted, poetic writer.
Beautifully written, thought provoking, and erudite memoir by the book critic for the Boston Globe. She evokes the Texas panhandle of her 1950's upbringing, the years spent in war protest, and her ever-present love of books.
Parts of this memoir were quite thoughtful. I enjoy reading about a writer's reading history, the books that meant something to them. Caldwell and I were born the same year, so her perspective on the Vietnam War and the women's movement was intriguing.
excellent memoir - perhaps it was just the time period of the sixties/seventies that was fun for me. Good combo of narrative and reflection. Look forward to reading more of her
I read this for book club and so enjoyed it. Unfortunately, I was the only member in the club who did enjoy it. It paralleld my own life in so many ways. I guess one has to be a boomer to enjoy it.
I read most of this book, but got annoyed at all the author name dropping and character comparisons. I love a lot of what she wrote, but not enough to finish the book.
Best book I've read in a while. Her writing is amazingly beautiful and erudite.
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Gail Caldwell is the former chief book critic for The Boston Globe, where she was a staff writer and critic for more than twenty years. In 2001, she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Criticism. She is also the author of A Strong West Wind, a memoir of her native Texas. Caldwell lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
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“in all the years i had blundered along in search of my own footing, she had never given me an inkling of this wish. unburdened by the demands of history or anyone else's dreams, i had wandered toward and finally reached a world far outside the plains i loved and loathed. my mother had neither begrudged me this journey nor expected it, certain that i had to make my own way. but she packed my toolbox with her great wit and forbearance before i went, and she stashed there, for long safekeeping, her desire.”
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