The Eye of the Mammoth: New and Selected Essays

by Stephen Harrigan, Nicholas Lemann (Introduction)

History—natural history, human history, and personal history—and place are the cornerstones of The Eye of the Mammoth . Stephen Harrigan's career has taken him from the Alaska Highway to the Chihuahuan Desert, from the casinos of Monaco to his ancestors' village in the Czech Republic. And now, in this new edition, he movingly recounts in "Off Course" a quest to learn all he can about his father, who died in a plane crash six months before he was born. Harrigan's deceptively straightforward voice belies an intense curiosity about things that, by his own admission, may be "unknowable." Certainly, we are limited in what we can know about the inner life of George Washington, the last days of Davy Crockett, the motives of a caged tiger, or a father we never met, but Harrigan's gift—a gift that has also made him an award-winning novelist—is to bring readers closer to such things, to make them less remote, just as a cave painting in the title essay eerily transmits the living stare of a long-extinct mammoth.

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction, Nature

424 pages, Paperback

First published April 4, 2013

About the author

Stephen Harrigan was born in Oklahoma City in 1948 and has lived in Texas since the age of five, growing up in Abilene and Corpus Christi.
He is a longtime writer for Texas Monthly, and his articles and essays have appeared in a wide range of other publications as well, including The Atlantic, Outside, The New York Times Magazine, Conde Nast Traveler, Audubon, Travel Holiday, Life, American History, National Geographic and Slate. His film column for Texas Monthly was a finalist for the 2015 National Magazine Awards.
Harrigan is the author of nine books of fiction and non-fiction, including The Gates of the Alamo, which became a New York Times bestseller and Notable Book, and received a number of awards, including the TCU Texas Book Award, the Western Heritage Award from the National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum, and the Spur Award for Best Novel of the West.Remember Ben Clayton was published by Knopf in 2011 and praised by Booklist as a "stunning work of art" and by The Wall Street Journal as a "a poignantly human monument to our history." Remember Ben Clayton also won a Spur Award, as well as the Jesse H. Jones Award from the Texas Institute of Letters and the James Fenimore Cooper Prize, given by the Society of American Historians for the best work of historical fiction. In the Spring of 2013, the University of Texas Press published a career-spanning volume of his essays, The Eye of the Mammoth, which reviewers called “masterful” (from a starred review in Publishers Weekly), “enchanting and irresistible” (the Dallas Morning News) and written with “acuity and matchless prose.”(Booklist). His latest novel is A Friend of Mr. Lincoln.
Among the many movies Harrigan has written for television are HBO’s award-winning The Last of His Tribe, starring Jon Voight and Graham Greene, and King of Texas, a western retelling of Shakespeare’s King Lear for TNT, which starred Patrick Stewart, Marcia Gay Harden, and Roy Scheider. His most recent television production was The Colt, an adaptation of a short story by the Nobel-prize winning author Mikhail Sholokhov, which aired on The Hallmark Channel. For his screenplay of The Colt, Harrigan was nominated for a Writers Guild Award and the Humanitas Prize. Young Caesar, a feature adaptation of Conn Iggulden’s Emperor novels, which he co-wrote with William Broyles, Jr., is currently in development with Exclusive Media.
A 1971 graduate of the University of Texas, Harrigan lives in Austin, where he is a faculty fellow at UT’s James A. Michener Center for Writers and a writer-at-large for Texas Monthly. He is also a founding member of CAST (Capital Area Statues, Inc.) an organization in Austin that commissions monumental works of art as gifts to the city. He is the recipient of the Texas Book Festival’s Texas Writers Award, the Lon Tinkle Award for lifetime achievement from the Texas Institute of Letters, and was recently inducted into the Texas Literary Hall of Fame. Stephen Harrigan and his wife Sue Ellen have three daughters and four grandchildren.

Reviews

[Marie Angell]

Most books of essays have some high spots along with a lot of mehs. Not expecting too much, I picked up Stephen Harrigan's "The Eye of the Mammoth: Selected Essays" mostly because I (mistakenly) thought it contained science essays.

Wowza. Mr. Harrigan cleverly weaves history, science, geology, geography, memoir and more into this collection with elegant wordsmithing and a clear voice. Perhaps the impact is greater for me because I am so familiar with many of the places he writes about, but his stories really stay with me.

As an example, I had read an article in Texas Monthly some time ago about kolaches (they're delicious--look 'em up) which I remembered vividly and have thought about from time to time. Of course, I had paid no attention to who had written the piece. Yep.

Highly recommended, even to those who "don't like" essay colections.

[David Ward]

The Eye of the Mammoth: Selected Essays by Stephen Harrigan (University of Texas Press 2013)(814.54) is a thoughtful and thought provoking series of essays. There are four in particular that captivated me completely. The first is "The Tiger is God," which is the author's rumination upon observing a captive tiger who had killed his keeper; the second wonderful essay is on snapping turtles and is called "Swamp Thing." The third piece which I loved is called "The Man Nobody Knows" which is about Otzi, the frozen glacial mummy from the "Late European Stone Age" who was discovered in 1991 high in the Otzal Alps on the Austrian - Italian border. Finally, "The Eye of the Mammoth" is not to be missed as well. The rest of the thirty-some essays in the collection are all worthy of consideration, but do yourself a favor and run straight to your local library or book store and read the four pieces I've highlighted here. You can thank me later. My rating: 8/10, finished 8/5/13. I finally bought a HB copy from Amazon on 12/14/18, and I reread this 1/29/19. HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH

[Amanda Maregente]

p.42 We speak of “going into the desert” and we mean nothing less than seeking our true selves.

Big facts 💯

He reminds me of Dillard’s Pilgrim at Tinker Creek mixed with Mary Oliver. He captures the ugliest of nature and the most beautiful. Usually those are milliseconds apart.

From Big Bend to Egypt, Mexico to Lonesome Dove - bc of course McMurty’s ghost is still haunting me 😂- this was an incredible collection of essays for people who love nature, the past, and the lonestar state BAYBEE.

[Nancy]

Absolutely beautifully written, thought-provoking essays spanning about 30 years of the author's writing tor Texas Monthly. Harrigan's descriptions of places are immersive, so each essay feels like a trip or a journey home. I would recommend to any reader.

[Paul Delacruz]

This was a nice book to read where it contained several different types of stories presented in a way you want to keep reading more. Some were historical and some from personal experiences by the author. I am sure when you finished reading this book you will have your own set of favorites where it seems to be designed to attract a broad range of readers.

[Brian]

My first book by Harrigan and I enjoyed it but wasn't blown over. It is kind of a weird book combining a hodge podge of his writings for magazine articles. There were parts that I really liked and parts that I sped read. I liked his writing enough to put "Gates of the Alamo" on my reading list.