2) The following is a passage from a book entitled, "American Wife," by Curtis Suttenfeld. It is the story of a fictional first lady but it is said to be loosely based off the life of Laura Bush. I highly recommend this book. It's a bit risqué at times but I loved the character development and reading about a wife's perspective in male-dominated politics.
The passage is about the Midwest. The main character is from Wisconsin and reflecting on her travels around the US.
"Admittedly, the area possesses a dowdiness I personally have always found comforting, but to think of Wisconsin specifically or the Midwest as a whole as anything other than beautiful is to ignore the extraordinary power of the land. The lushness of the grass and trees in August, the roll of the hills (far less of the Midwest is flat than outsiders seems to imagine), that rich smell of soil, the evening sunlight over a field of wheat, or the crickets chirping at dusk on a residential street: All of it, it has always made me feel at peace. The seasons are extreme but they pass and return, pass and return, and the world seems far steadier than it does from the vantage point of a coastal city.
Certainly picturesque towns can be found in New England or California or the Pacific Northwest, but I can't shake the sense that they're too picturesque. On the East Coast, especially, these places--Princeton, New Jersey, say, or Farmington, Connecticut-- seem to me aggressively quaint, unbecomingly smug, and even xenophobic, downright paranoid in their wariness of those who might somehow infringe upon the local charm. ...The West Coast, I think, has a similar self-regard-- all that talk of proximity to the ocean and the mountains-- and a beauty that I can't help seeing as show-offy. But the Midwest: It is quietly lovely, not preening with the need to have its attributes remarked on. It is the place I am calmest and most myself."
(pg. 33, American Wife)
No comments:
Post a Comment