ISBN: 1-933693-60-6 and 9781933693606
Under its former title, 368 libraries from California to Australia according to WorldCat, shelve the seven-essay Jack Ruby. Cinco Puntos’ addition of two essays not in the earlier volume, the title piece, “Revenge of the Saguaro” and “The Occidental Tsuris,” should find welcome space in those libraries, and your own.
Miller’s style bears repeating, he must feel, because every essay assumes the same voice and similar structure. The title conveys the major theme, but Miller’s way is theme and variations. His “La Bamba” essay, for example, begins with a consideration of a travel music mix for a Southwest jaunt, selected for location. Depending upon where your wheels are rolling, sounds would include Indian flute by R. Carlos Nakai, country folk by Latie Lee, chicken scratch music by Joe Miguel and the Blood Brothers, Alice Cooper because you're in his hometown, cantina rolas from Los Blues Ventures, and broadly regional work from Los Lobos and Los Tigres del Norte. One song, Miller suggests, fits the entire region, “La Bamba.”
The essay looks at the Ritchie Valens oldie rock version then explores further south into Veracruz and jarocho music, then back into history with Cortés and the European invasion’s syncretic influences on Mexican sounds. Miller’s musical journey U-turns from Xalapa to McCarthysim, noting folksinger Travis Edmonson was hauled before “a congressional hearing because he performed a foreign folk tune assumed to be about the bomb.”
Enriching the essay, Miller doesn’t drop "La Bamba" and stop there. Instead, he circles around the rim of the Morenci mine, delving into its ballad, “Open Pit Mine,” then heads east to the west Texas town of El Paso and Marty Robbins' hit about wicked Felina and a wild young cowboy’s misplaced passion. True to his travel genre, Miller takes you not only through the song but also to the “real” Rosa’s Cantina and associated ironies.
The title essay,"Revenge of the Saguaro," offers a gem of storytelling and righteous retribution. In a well-refined narrative, Miller tells of the death of a loser named David Grundman. Having told the story numerous times, Miller observes, not a single listener expressed any remorse over Grundman’s death. I am not the first to feel it, nor will you. You, as I, will side with Ha:san, a Saguaro cactus.
The essay links Ha:san's growing years to historical benchmarks. Saguaros themselves have populated the earth for 10,000 years. Ha:san germinated as a microscopic seedling during the hegemony of James Buchanan. In this period, the Supremes hand down their mistaken Dred Scott decision, some invader discovers gold along the Gila River, and Mexicanos are being swindled out of their lands and culture supposedly guaranteed by the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo.
In 1912, Ha:san’s tierra becomes the State of Arizona. Now 55 years old and standing 8 feet tall, Ha:san blooms.
Michael Sedano
Back in 2000 and again in 2002, the National Geographic Society published Tom Miller's Jack Ruby's Kitchen Sink. Now, in 2010, 
EPT's Cinco Puntos Press republishes the volume, retitled with the more southwesty title, Revenge of the Saguaro. Offbeat Travels Through America's Southwest
EPT's Cinco Puntos Press republishes the volume, retitled with the more southwesty title, Revenge of the Saguaro. Offbeat Travels Through America's SouthwestShared in common are seven essays, including “The Great Stinking Desert,” “What Is the Sound of One Billboard Falling?”, “Jack Ruby's Kitchen Sink,” “Searching for the Heart of ‘La Bamba’,” “Hollywood Goes Southwest,” “Death by Misadventure,” and “The Free State of Cochise.”
Miller’s style bears repeating, he must feel, because every essay assumes the same voice and similar structure. The title conveys the major theme, but Miller’s way is theme and variations. His “La Bamba” essay, for example, begins with a consideration of a travel music mix for a Southwest jaunt, selected for location. Depending upon where your wheels are rolling, sounds would include Indian flute by R. Carlos Nakai, country folk by Latie Lee, chicken scratch music by Joe Miguel and the Blood Brothers, Alice Cooper because you're in his hometown, cantina rolas from Los Blues Ventures, and broadly regional work from Los Lobos and Los Tigres del Norte. One song, Miller suggests, fits the entire region, “La Bamba.”
The essay looks at the Ritchie Valens oldie rock version then explores further south into Veracruz and jarocho music, then back into history with Cortés and the European invasion’s syncretic influences on Mexican sounds. Miller’s musical journey U-turns from Xalapa to McCarthysim, noting folksinger Travis Edmonson was hauled before “a congressional hearing because he performed a foreign folk tune assumed to be about the bomb.”
Enriching the essay, Miller doesn’t drop "La Bamba" and stop there. Instead, he circles around the rim of the Morenci mine, delving into its ballad, “Open Pit Mine,” then heads east to the west Texas town of El Paso and Marty Robbins' hit about wicked Felina and a wild young cowboy’s misplaced passion. True to his travel genre, Miller takes you not only through the song but also to the “real” Rosa’s Cantina and associated ironies.
The title essay,"Revenge of the Saguaro," offers a gem of storytelling and righteous retribution. In a well-refined narrative, Miller tells of the death of a loser named David Grundman. Having told the story numerous times, Miller observes, not a single listener expressed any remorse over Grundman’s death. I am not the first to feel it, nor will you. You, as I, will side with Ha:san, a Saguaro cactus.
The essay links Ha:san's growing years to historical benchmarks. Saguaros themselves have populated the earth for 10,000 years. Ha:san germinated as a microscopic seedling during the hegemony of James Buchanan. In this period, the Supremes hand down their mistaken Dred Scott decision, some invader discovers gold along the Gila River, and Mexicanos are being swindled out of their lands and culture supposedly guaranteed by the Treaty of Guadalupe-Hidalgo.
In 1912, Ha:san’s tierra becomes the State of Arizona. Now 55 years old and standing 8 feet tall, Ha:san blooms.
Miller builds a loving biography of the magnificent cactus, contrasting it to the meaningless life of an easterner who moves to Arizona at age 21, the Attica parolee, Grundman.
One happy sad day, Grundman and his pal load up on ammo and birongas and drive out to the wilderness where Grundman and pal kill a half-dozen Saguaros of varying sizes and histories. When Grundman drops the hammer on Ha:san, the hundred twenty-five year old 3000 pound magnificence refuses to fall. The drunken pendejo attacks Ha:san with the dried rib of a long-dead Saguaro. Too close, menso. Whump! Grundman is felled by Ha:san’s 500 pound arm. Then Whu-ump! Ha:san herself, devastated by the frenzied attack and unbalanced from her lost arm, succumbs to gravity and comes crashing down on the exact spot where Grundman lies under the fallen arm. “The joke was on David Grundman, and so was Ha:san. . . . Grundman lay face-up, dead beneath a ton and a half and 125 years of cactus…Natural selection had played its hand.”
The title story alone is well worth the time spent with Tom Miller’s ambling, oft intricate story-telling. You’ll likely enjoy the history of velvet painting, backstage stuff on the films “Milagro Beanfield War” and “Salt of the Earth,” ride-alongs with eco-terrorists, and ample helpings of social irony and salutes to lost causes and Miller's personal heroes.
I hope you’ll read and enjoy Revenge of the Saguaro. If so, you’ll also enjoy William Least Heat Moon’s Blue highways : a journey into America for much the same reasons. They're the same book, only different. Per WorldCat, the latter is available in only 68 libraries worldwide, a real lastima because these two titles are kissin’ cousins of the curious byways of United States culture.
One happy sad day, Grundman and his pal load up on ammo and birongas and drive out to the wilderness where Grundman and pal kill a half-dozen Saguaros of varying sizes and histories. When Grundman drops the hammer on Ha:san, the hundred twenty-five year old 3000 pound magnificence refuses to fall. The drunken pendejo attacks Ha:san with the dried rib of a long-dead Saguaro. Too close, menso. Whump! Grundman is felled by Ha:san’s 500 pound arm. Then Whu-ump! Ha:san herself, devastated by the frenzied attack and unbalanced from her lost arm, succumbs to gravity and comes crashing down on the exact spot where Grundman lies under the fallen arm. “The joke was on David Grundman, and so was Ha:san. . . . Grundman lay face-up, dead beneath a ton and a half and 125 years of cactus…Natural selection had played its hand.”
The title story alone is well worth the time spent with Tom Miller’s ambling, oft intricate story-telling. You’ll likely enjoy the history of velvet painting, backstage stuff on the films “Milagro Beanfield War” and “Salt of the Earth,” ride-alongs with eco-terrorists, and ample helpings of social irony and salutes to lost causes and Miller's personal heroes.
I hope you’ll read and enjoy Revenge of the Saguaro. If so, you’ll also enjoy William Least Heat Moon’s Blue highways : a journey into America for much the same reasons. They're the same book, only different. Per WorldCat, the latter is available in only 68 libraries worldwide, a real lastima because these two titles are kissin’ cousins of the curious byways of United States culture.
News from the heartland
You'll have to be a local, or traveling through Kansas City Missouri, to enjoy La Bloga guest bloguera Xánath Caraza and friends reading at The Writers Place. (Click image for a larger view):
Readers everywhere will appreciate the news from the Eric Hoffer Award for Short Prose & Independent Books. The Latino Writers Collective's prose collection, Cuentos del Centro, reviewed at La Bloga last July, is shortlisted for the Hoffer's Montaigne Medal. From the Hoffer website:
The Eric Hoffer Award for short prose and books was established at the start of the 21st century as a means of opening a door to writing of significant merit. It honors the memory of the great American philosopher Eric Hoffer by highlighting salient writing, as well as the independent spirit of small publishers. The winning stories and essays are published in Best New Writing, and the book awards are covered in the US Review of Books.
¡Felicidades to Latino Writers Collective of Kansas City MO, and publisher Scapegoat Press!
Prayers for the Women of Juarez
This is the final week of the 40 day vigil around the world dedicated to the femicide victims in Juarez. In Los Angeles, Casa 0101 annex, 2102 E. 1st St. Los Angeles, CA 90033, closes an art exhibit curated by Victoria Delgadillo. Click here for details.
The image below comes from poet Don Newton of La Palabra, one of five artists whose joint effort created the image based roughly on a poem by Judith Terzi. The five artists are: Poli Marichal, Marianne Sadowski, Kay Brown, Victor Rosas and Don Newton.
That's March's penultimate Tuesday, a Tuesday like any other Tuesday, except You Are Here. Thank you for visiting La Bloga. See you next Tuesday.
mvs
La Bloga welcomes your comments on this and all columns. Click the comments counter below to add your observations. La Bloga welcomes guest columnists. If you have a book review, an extended commentary on something you've read here at La Bloga, a literary, arts or cultural event to report, or something from your writer's notebook, click here to discuss being our guest.
On behalf the Latino Writers Collective thank you Em and La Bloga. We are very proud of our Cuentos del Centro anthology y ojalá y nos pudieran acompañar el 26 de marzo.
ReplyDeletePeace,
Xánath Caraza