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Topographies
A wild ride on the madcap streets of Guatemala City. A twilight walk through old Havana with a Cuban mailman. A canoe trip in search of a lost grave in the Everglades. A late-night visit to a border-town casino. These are some of the experiences Stephen Benz describes in Topographies, a witty, insightful, and evocative collection of personal essays and literary journalism. Topographies is a collection of research-based personal essays that visit, describe, and reflect on landscapes of historical and cultural significance. Combining researched exposition, lyrical reflection, and storytelling, Topographies engages multiple genres, including narrative history, travel writing, literary journalism, and nature writing; in doing so, these essays follow in the narrative tradition of writers such as William Least Heat Moon, Wallace Stegner, Joan Didion, and John McPhee. Locations visited include the American West, Eastern Europe, Florida, Cuba, and Central America. The essays that comprise Topographies take an interest in the stories―particularly forgotten, overlooked, or misunderstood stories―that landscapes have to tell. According to William Cronon, a renowned landscape scholar, “Each landscape has endless stories to tell if only we understand the codes that render the details, their surfaces and depths, their peculiarities and contradictions, legible.” These essays attempt to recognize and interpret such codes. By looking more keenly at places of historical and cultural significance―by “reading” the landscapes―Topographies attempts to understand the social and cultural forces that have shaped a particular place and that continue to define, structure, and constrain it. Evoking a strong sense of place and alert to the myriad forces that have shaped the land, the essays in Topographies explore landscapes rich in natural and cultural history, places steeped in story. Benz, the author of Guatemalan Journey and Green Dreams, takes readers to locales both familiar and remote, introducing unusual characters and recounting little-known historical anecdotes. Along the way, he contemplates the meaning of road signs, describes the hardships of daily life in the former Soviet Union, reflects on the lives and deaths of forgotten people, and listens to a bolero during a Havana blackout. Originally published in newspapers, magazines, and journals such as The Miami Herald, River Teeth, and Permafrost, these essays eloquently inform and entertain both the armchair traveler and the general-interest reader who appreciates stories lyrically recounted in a strong personal voice.
340 pages, Paperback
Published August 1, 2019
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March 19, 2019
Note: I received a free advanced copy of this book to independently review.
The title of Stephen Benz’s 2019 book, Topographies, comes from the American Corps of Topographical Engineers and Howard Stansbury’s 1849 exploratory journey of the American West, in which he transforms the ‘most magnificent and awesome terrains into precise and exacting prose.’
Written in two parts, the first is predominantly tied to the America West and the second is about Eastern Europe, Cuba, and Central America.
Benz begins his travelogue by recalling words from Jack Kerouac’s ‘On The Road’ – an American land journey. It’s fitting that he begins on the land, on the open road, in his home country. Not quite – he is actually in a canoe, down south, in the Everglades, and writing about pollution, environmental damage, species extinction, and exotic fauna-trimmed fashion. It’s a depressing start to jolt readers into recognizing their part in nature’s destruction.
But now he is in Ash Hollow State Park on the Oregon Trail in Nebraska – ‘the quintessential Western landscape’ two thousand miles from the west coast – looking at the irrigated land that has replaced the desert, re-imagining the sights of its pioneers. It’s June in the year of who knows when. From his modern car, Benz goes back to the 1800s, to the time of the wagon and teams of oxen, when ten percent of emigrants died in search of the promised land. Their elation at reaching the west coast is described in terms of water, plants, animals, and birds – before Benz crushes the idyll with a reminder that migration exploited the land and its indigenous peoples, and changed the landscape forever, while Hollywood glamorized and fancified Western history. He takes readers further back; back to the Pliocene days, which is as far back as he can get in history, to the formation of the blue limestone cliffs.
Benz continues across his homeland and stops to read road signs, historical markers, and the headstones of long-forgotten graves. He contemplates whether anyone interupts their high-speed journey in this current high-speed life to learn about obscure episodes in history. But, some are not so obscure, such as the lost Donner Party that resort to cannibalism to survive. Benz, bedazzled too by the 1846 story, retraces their fateful westward journey from Springfield, Illinois. Their mistake was in taking the short cut, and so this is a cautionary tale, and one of the most interesting in this book. Benz doesn’t quite take the shortcut; he takes an ‘approximated’ car journey of the Donner Party’s perilous ‘serpentine’ wagon route.
Road weary readers are nearly at the end of Part One as Benz writes about the Trinity Site of the 1945 explosion in New Mexico, the first successful test of an atomic bomb. The site is open to the public twice a year and Benz is there. His account is another of my favourite chapters in this book, with, at least, some humour – a festive air amid the radioactive apocalyptic landscape and ‘the destroyer of worlds.’
The intense heaviness of Part One disappears as Part Two changes tone to sadness. Benz begins in 1999 with his visit, for several months, to the newly-independent country of Moldova, where the locals are ‘paragons of obdurate patience and Sisyphean stoicism.’ There was little hope, and much frustration, with the slow pace of progress.
In Cuba, the author is researching the Spanish-American War and Colonel Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders – the U.S. volunteer cavalry. The sadness of this chapter makes way for the light-hearted (at last) unpredictable fluidity of Cuban hospitality. In Mexico, Benz discusses the ironies and parodoxes of Diego de Landa’s book of his journey to Yucatan from 1549.
And now for something completely different – Benz writes of his two years in Guatemala, taking driving lessons and debating poetry. What two years? Apart from Moldova, readers don’t know when these travels, in Part One or Part Two, take place.
The concluding chapter, Coda: The Longest Road, is the author’s fantastic finale as he returns to his childhood influences, the places and the people.
After Part One, readers may feel burdened by the tragedies, carnage, and ravaged landscapes of previous travellers – which Benz indirectly labels ‘the eve of destruction’ of the American West. Fortunately for readers, Part Two will reinvigorate their cultural curiosity and feelings of wanderlust, without the guilt, largely due to the author’s humour, wit, and wisdom.
Using evocative language and beautifully descriptive phrases, Benz combines a range of writing techniques, from personal essays to travelogue to researched reflections and storytelling.
How would I describe Topographies? For me, it’s a retrospective historical highway journal of remote routes recounted in two parts: one dark and one light. I’m taking the light road.
The title of Stephen Benz’s 2019 book, Topographies, comes from the American Corps of Topographical Engineers and Howard Stansbury’s 1849 exploratory journey of the American West, in which he transforms the ‘most magnificent and awesome terrains into precise and exacting prose.’
Written in two parts, the first is predominantly tied to the America West and the second is about Eastern Europe, Cuba, and Central America.
Benz begins his travelogue by recalling words from Jack Kerouac’s ‘On The Road’ – an American land journey. It’s fitting that he begins on the land, on the open road, in his home country. Not quite – he is actually in a canoe, down south, in the Everglades, and writing about pollution, environmental damage, species extinction, and exotic fauna-trimmed fashion. It’s a depressing start to jolt readers into recognizing their part in nature’s destruction.
But now he is in Ash Hollow State Park on the Oregon Trail in Nebraska – ‘the quintessential Western landscape’ two thousand miles from the west coast – looking at the irrigated land that has replaced the desert, re-imagining the sights of its pioneers. It’s June in the year of who knows when. From his modern car, Benz goes back to the 1800s, to the time of the wagon and teams of oxen, when ten percent of emigrants died in search of the promised land. Their elation at reaching the west coast is described in terms of water, plants, animals, and birds – before Benz crushes the idyll with a reminder that migration exploited the land and its indigenous peoples, and changed the landscape forever, while Hollywood glamorized and fancified Western history. He takes readers further back; back to the Pliocene days, which is as far back as he can get in history, to the formation of the blue limestone cliffs.
Benz continues across his homeland and stops to read road signs, historical markers, and the headstones of long-forgotten graves. He contemplates whether anyone interupts their high-speed journey in this current high-speed life to learn about obscure episodes in history. But, some are not so obscure, such as the lost Donner Party that resort to cannibalism to survive. Benz, bedazzled too by the 1846 story, retraces their fateful westward journey from Springfield, Illinois. Their mistake was in taking the short cut, and so this is a cautionary tale, and one of the most interesting in this book. Benz doesn’t quite take the shortcut; he takes an ‘approximated’ car journey of the Donner Party’s perilous ‘serpentine’ wagon route.
Road weary readers are nearly at the end of Part One as Benz writes about the Trinity Site of the 1945 explosion in New Mexico, the first successful test of an atomic bomb. The site is open to the public twice a year and Benz is there. His account is another of my favourite chapters in this book, with, at least, some humour – a festive air amid the radioactive apocalyptic landscape and ‘the destroyer of worlds.’
The intense heaviness of Part One disappears as Part Two changes tone to sadness. Benz begins in 1999 with his visit, for several months, to the newly-independent country of Moldova, where the locals are ‘paragons of obdurate patience and Sisyphean stoicism.’ There was little hope, and much frustration, with the slow pace of progress.
In Cuba, the author is researching the Spanish-American War and Colonel Theodore Roosevelt’s Rough Riders – the U.S. volunteer cavalry. The sadness of this chapter makes way for the light-hearted (at last) unpredictable fluidity of Cuban hospitality. In Mexico, Benz discusses the ironies and parodoxes of Diego de Landa’s book of his journey to Yucatan from 1549.
And now for something completely different – Benz writes of his two years in Guatemala, taking driving lessons and debating poetry. What two years? Apart from Moldova, readers don’t know when these travels, in Part One or Part Two, take place.
The concluding chapter, Coda: The Longest Road, is the author’s fantastic finale as he returns to his childhood influences, the places and the people.
After Part One, readers may feel burdened by the tragedies, carnage, and ravaged landscapes of previous travellers – which Benz indirectly labels ‘the eve of destruction’ of the American West. Fortunately for readers, Part Two will reinvigorate their cultural curiosity and feelings of wanderlust, without the guilt, largely due to the author’s humour, wit, and wisdom.
Using evocative language and beautifully descriptive phrases, Benz combines a range of writing techniques, from personal essays to travelogue to researched reflections and storytelling.
How would I describe Topographies? For me, it’s a retrospective historical highway journal of remote routes recounted in two parts: one dark and one light. I’m taking the light road.
May 21, 2019
This is a collection of travel essays exploring locales within America and abroad. The fifteen essays collected are reprints of periodical publications.
As Benz describes destinations and tells travel tales, he often presents local history such as a murder mystery in the Everglades, the fate of the Donner Party, the truth about the Rough Riders at San Juan Hill, and the nuclear test at Trinity, New Mexico. But not all of the essays mix history lessons into the travelogue, and some of the most evocative pieces touch on the local landscape in interesting ways such as walking a postman’s route in Havana or camping in Wyoming.
Some travel writing drills down on a single destination and other works spread out over a diverse set of locations. Benz’s approach is somewhere in between. While, except for a couple chapters set in Havana, the essays are about varied locations, only a couple (i.e. the ones on the Everglades and Moldova) stand out as far afield of the rest. Of the seven international essays, three feature Cuba and two Guatemala, and of the eight US essays, all but one is set in the West and three present Wyoming.
The essay collection is divided into two parts. The first eight essays are about locations within the United States, and the last seven describe foreign travels. I found the organization to be smartly arranged, with each of the two parts beginning an ending on essays that are among the strongest in the collection. In the case of Part I, the collection starts with a piece set in the Everglades which brings to life a historical murder, and it ends with a visit to the Trinity Site where the first nuclear test detonation took place.
With respect to the international chapters, they open with a visit to Moldova. The last travel essay I read about Moldova was in Eric Weiner’s “The Geography of Bliss.” If you’re wondering why a book on the happiest places on Earth would feature Moldova, it’s for the perhaps ironic but definitely instructive reason that Moldova often comes up as among the LEAST happy countries. Benz presents a similar portrait of Moldova without explicitly taking the dismal nature of the country as his theme. The last two chapters discuss the author’s time in Guatemala, and the last discusses the poetry scene in a country in a country under political upheaval.
The book has a prologue in verse and an extended epilogue in prose.
I’d recommend this book for readers of travel writing, particularly those interested in the American West and Central America. I found the writing to be both skillful and readable, and that the author recognized the value of an intriguing story.
As Benz describes destinations and tells travel tales, he often presents local history such as a murder mystery in the Everglades, the fate of the Donner Party, the truth about the Rough Riders at San Juan Hill, and the nuclear test at Trinity, New Mexico. But not all of the essays mix history lessons into the travelogue, and some of the most evocative pieces touch on the local landscape in interesting ways such as walking a postman’s route in Havana or camping in Wyoming.
Some travel writing drills down on a single destination and other works spread out over a diverse set of locations. Benz’s approach is somewhere in between. While, except for a couple chapters set in Havana, the essays are about varied locations, only a couple (i.e. the ones on the Everglades and Moldova) stand out as far afield of the rest. Of the seven international essays, three feature Cuba and two Guatemala, and of the eight US essays, all but one is set in the West and three present Wyoming.
The essay collection is divided into two parts. The first eight essays are about locations within the United States, and the last seven describe foreign travels. I found the organization to be smartly arranged, with each of the two parts beginning an ending on essays that are among the strongest in the collection. In the case of Part I, the collection starts with a piece set in the Everglades which brings to life a historical murder, and it ends with a visit to the Trinity Site where the first nuclear test detonation took place.
With respect to the international chapters, they open with a visit to Moldova. The last travel essay I read about Moldova was in Eric Weiner’s “The Geography of Bliss.” If you’re wondering why a book on the happiest places on Earth would feature Moldova, it’s for the perhaps ironic but definitely instructive reason that Moldova often comes up as among the LEAST happy countries. Benz presents a similar portrait of Moldova without explicitly taking the dismal nature of the country as his theme. The last two chapters discuss the author’s time in Guatemala, and the last discusses the poetry scene in a country in a country under political upheaval.
The book has a prologue in verse and an extended epilogue in prose.
I’d recommend this book for readers of travel writing, particularly those interested in the American West and Central America. I found the writing to be both skillful and readable, and that the author recognized the value of an intriguing story.
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