The Forest: A Fable of America in the 1830s

by Alexander Nemerov

A vivid historical imagining of life in the early United States

“One of the richest books ever to come my way.”―Annie Proulx, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Shipping News

“This is a wonderful book. . . . An extraordinary achievement.”―Edmund de Waal, New York Times bestselling author of The Hare with Amber Eyes

Set amid the glimmering lakes and disappearing forests of the early United States, The Forest imagines how a wide variety of Americans experienced their lives. Part truth, part fiction, and featuring both real and invented characters, the book follows painters, poets, enslaved people, farmers, and artisans living and working in a world still made largely of wood. Some of the historical characters―such as Thomas Cole, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Fanny Kemble, Edgar Allan Poe, and Nat Turner―are well-known, while others are not. But all are creators of private and grand designs.

The Forest unfolds in brief stories. Each episode reveals an intricate lost world. Characters cross paths or go their own ways, each striving for something different but together forming a pattern of life. For Alexander Nemerov, the forest is a description of American society, the dense and discontinuous woods of nation, the foliating thoughts of different people, each with their separate shade and sun. Through vivid descriptions of the people, sights, smells, and sounds of Jacksonian America, illustrated with paintings, prints, and photographs, The Forest brings American history to life on a human scale.

Published in association with the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts, National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Essays, Nature

336 pages, Hardcover

First published March 7, 2023

About the author

A scholar of American art, Nemerov writes about the presence of art, the recollection of the past, and the importance of the humanities in our lives today. Committed to teaching the history of art more broadly as well as topics in American visual culture — the history of American photography, for example — he is a noted writer and speaker on the arts. His most recent books are Wartime Kiss: Visions of the Moment in the 1940s (2013) and Acting in the Night: Macbeth and the Places of the Civil War (2010). In 2011 he published To Make a World: George Ault and 1940s America (2011), the catalogue to the exhibition of the same title he curated at the Smithsonian American Art Museum. Among his recent essays are pieces on Peter Paul Rubens, on Henry James, on Thomas Eakins and JFK; and on Rothko and Rembrandt.

Reviews

[Kim Lockhart · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is not The Overstory. It isn't about saving the trees, though trees are present in these vignettes, these moments of impression people have on each other and on the place and time they inhabit.

The author isn't weaving a story or making an overarching point. He's describing the past through moments, not through the historical record. If Nemerov could travel back in time, he would want to capture how people felt in certain moments, not how they fit in a larger picture. It's as if you visited a place like Paris or Vienna: you'd be struck by the feel of a place like that, what it conjured for your individual experience.

The writing is very good, and it fits the premise perfectly,  offering glimpses of a place in the past and the people in it: what it sounded like, smelled like, felt like, just being there, things you might not notice, except that you are only witnessing a condensed experience, which serves to sharpen the senses.

Kirkus review called Nemerov a "collector of forest-born visions" and that is an apt description. 

The author presents the trees as sacred sentinels, the witnesses to history. But more than that, he creates a kind of transcendent role for the trees, as circumstances change, and they become participants in events, even consumed in the fire that traps them in historical time.

We might forget today, that for centuries, scientists were also artists. Photography is a modern marvel, and microscopic image capture, even more so. Imagine the patience it must have taken to not only write field notes, but to draw botanical species of the wilderness. 

With his gift for plumbing meaning, Nemerov sees lines of connection invisible to others. He has us each thinking of our own lives. What makes us remarkable or notable? What ties us invisibly to this place, this time? If there were a painting of a major event in our lives (or even our death) what symbols would be included in the artist's rendering?

I am, perhaps, making the whole import of this novel more esoteric than it is, but it seems that a certain kind of reading is necessary in order to flow with the author's ideas. This is certainly no ordinary rumination on nature, art, people, place, or time.

The author goes a bit overboard with fancy flying metaphors in the Audubon section, but for the most part, the poetics are grounded just enough.

This is a highly unusual book with some fascinating stories for the artistically inclined.

[Erik B.K.K. · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really hope my brain was just not in the mood for meandering mind exercises by a woolly, vaguenessphilic author. The stories seemed to go nowhere, there was no structure and Nemerov's writing style isn't catchy or engaging at all. I kept zoning out, thinking about everything else but this book. A shame, because on paper stories about more or less famous Americans during the centuries who had direct or indirect ties with forests sounds very interesting. Sequoyah's language, trail trees, Edgar Allan Poe's inspirational love for the forest, Hessian soldiers... I'd rather read their Wikipedia pages for now.

[Eddie Callaway · Rating 5 out of 5]

Vignettes about famous, infamous, and obscure characters from the United States in the 1830s. These historical fables are mysterious and Nemerov's writing is magical. The forest is not merely a setting but a backdrop or dare I say, the main character of the book.

[Jodi · Rating 5 out of 5]

For those who love history, art, nature, and story. I picked up The Forest: A Fable of America in the 1830s browsing at my favorite bookstore in Lenox, MA without knowing what to expect. This beautiful book is a collection of vignettes, many inspired by artworks included as colored images. To me the experience of reading felt as if on a museum walking tour with the most interesting, articulate, and well informed tour guide on the planet. Rather than a dry overly intellectual summary as often seen on the wall adjacent to the work, Nemerov brought each piece of art to vivid life, a painter that uses the media of words. You may expect a book like this to feel flat, but to the contrary, the stories he weaved were fascinating and full of suspense. He is a master at finding connections in the seemingly unconnected. I found myself digging deeper into the history of some of the artists and subjects, Fannie Kemble for example. This book is a gem and something I know I will return to over and over again.

[Grace · Rating 4 out of 5]

Symphonic in scale, 'The Forest' conjures a picture of the United States in the 1830s through a series of vignettes centred around trees- namely the setting and resources they provide. Nemerov's lyrical forays into the lives of real and fictional Americans, inspired by historical artifacts, works of art, and intriguing historical anecdotes, are brief but impactful. This remains one of the most unique and stunningly written books I've enjoyed this year.

Complete with pages of full-colour photos/prints and thoroughly researched notes, this is an irresistible masterpiece for art lovers, American history enthusiasts, and literary fiction afficionados.

(My bookseller review.)

[Robert · Rating 2 out of 5]

Perhaps one of the most interesting books I have read in a while, but also one of the most disjointed that leaves the reader with no sense of having accomplished anything by reading this.
Our author strings together over thirty different stories into the book all his own creations based on historical knowledge. All are connected by woods and forests but most are depressing pieces of history that are made more depressing by the author’s take of the respective matters.
I cannot agree with the book being listed as non fiction as well.
Not worth it!

[Captain Sir Roddy, R.N. (Ret.) · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting, but odd, little collection of short stories or prose poems. All of them are essentially set during the "Manifest Destiny" period of development of the American republic. Generally, each story has the touchstone of the relationship between natural environment (mostly forests) and the humans interacting with it. I think I need to read this again to fully wrap my brain around what Nemerov is trying to accomplish with this collection of stories.

[Marci · Rating 1 out of 5]

DNF. This read like someone’s grad school creative writing capstone project. Just not my thing.

[Thomas Goddard · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’ve always been amazed by writers who possess the ability to richly bring a place to life. Be it a ‘tower, patched unevenly with black ivy, arose like a mutilated finger from among the fists of knuckled masonry and pointed blasphemously at heaven...’ (Titus Groan) or the sea’s ‘wondrous depths, where strange shapes of the unwarped primal world glided to and fro...’ (Moby-Dick)

Alexander Nemerov manages to do that same kind of magic here in his book about America in the 1830s.

In some ways it is a puzzling book. It provides speculation on many characters from American history. There is a sort of knowing that goes beyond empathy at work.

I think that the way that this book’s structure - small stories, brief episodes in lives lived - builds into something far beyond the sum of its parts is a real testament to the skill of the author. For it generates a sort of petri dish presentation, a diorama-like expression of what a society is... it is as much the interaction as it is the lives lived entirely without awareness of each other. And what we owe to the tree is far more than simply material. It is psychological and philosophical. Religious and scientific. The world, amusingly, would look very different if it were not newly built from the old growth of the last. Into this rests a renewed awareness.

And another one with stunning illustrations. Hats off to the people publishing this unique work. This one put me in mind of Osebol: Voices from a Swedish Village by Marit Kapla if it were longer and had far far more lives at play within it.

I really do think that we are in a golden age of Historical Fiction. And I really feel that it comes along due to the tireless effort, but sadly without the presence, of the titan of Historical Fiction: Hilary Mantel.

This one loses access to a full five stars only on the basis of my personal case of its impenetrability. There were just too many references to events and people that I had no working or rudimentary knowledge of. If I was American then this would register amongst the finest of books written this year. Sadly, I’ll have to keep an eye out for an English equivalent.

If they had half stars, it would get 4.5.

[Richard · Rating 2 out of 5]

In the Author’s Note at the beginning of The Forest Nemerov cautions the reader that it ‘…unfolds in brief stories. Each is an episode, an impression not an argument or a claim. The book is fable not a history…of human beings going about their ways…’ largely in 1830’s America.

The 30 pages of Notes at the end of the book confirm what the vignettes suggest: the author did an immense amount of work to gather, assimilate, and present an impressive diversity of people, places and events of those years. Some of them already were or subsequently became quite famous. Eg, President Andrew Jackson, Nathaniel Hawthorne or Edgar Allen Poe in literature, Alexis de Tocqueville or Francis Parkman as historians, Nat Turner as the leader of a slave revolt, a young African American girl who became Harriet Tubman, and painters like Karl Bodmer and Sanford Gifford and John Gadsby Chapman. Most were everyday people like traveling peddlers and actors, farmers settling the land, wealthy estate owners, immigrants, a young orphan girl trying to make a life for herself, etc. All of them were trying to cope with the sometimes intense physical, social, and emotional challenges of life in those days.

I came away with some powerful impressions of many of the people in the book. This is because the author articulated highly nuanced and insightful descriptions of the interior lives of his characters. Seventy five color plates of portraits, art work, and photographs enhanced these episodes.

Unfortunately, there were some serious obstacles which prevented me from benefitting from The Forest. First, oftentimes very long complex, compound sentences made it slow going at best. Nemerov indulged in his obvious love of language far too much for my admittedly more pedestrian tastes.

Second, the sources were not noted in the narrative text. Thus, I never knew to what extent his insights into his characters were based on fact rather than his own intuitive speculations. Trees were often anthropomorphized in ways which were imaginative, albeit stretching credulity.

Third, the lack of an overall theme(s) meant there was nothing to connect one vignette to the next. The book was divided into parts, each of which was named. However, the labels often had little to do with what the episodes in that section presented.

Finally, all of the color plates were presented as a whole towards the end of the book. I understand publishers do this to make it less costly. But there were no links provided in the digital format which made it easy to actually look at what Nemerov was describing in his narrative text. It was cumbersome, at best, to try to find the plate which corresponded to that point in the text.

By the time I was about one third of the way through the book my frustration with these 4 deficiencies made me consider whether I wanted to give up reading it. Instead, I persisted because many of the depictions were informative. About two thirds of the way through I decided I would finish it….more out of my own determination not to quit than out of any great satisfaction I was deriving. Readers with more tolerance for its loquacious prose style and its serious organizational deficits might find it more worthwhile than I did. As I was more relieved than pleased at completing The Forest I will rate it as 2 stars. IMHO, it was a well intentioned but seriously flawed effort that could have been much better than it was had an editor taken the author in hand, so to speak.

[Cat · Rating 2 out of 5]

I loved the concept of this book, weaving together art, literature, historical incident, and life writing from the 1830s in order to capture this moment as America begins to "modernize" (in terms of industry and deforestation) and also to enter into a period of artistic and literary ferment. These economic and cultural processes are deeply entangled with the idea of the New World as a wooded continent. While the vignettes that make up this book suggest Nemerov's likely power as a lecturer--his ability to set up a suggestive scene for his students and to help them imagine another historical moment and its geographical terrain in order to elicit particular response from an image--they fell short for me. Because the language is meant to be lyrical, suggestive, even prophetic at times, it sometimes reads as purple prose. It's very interesting to look at the notes after reading these very dream-like anecdotes. This novelistic form is meant to weave together various strands into what feels like a chiaroscuro whole, but for me, it never quite came together in that way, and the ambiguity and brevity became frustrating rather than elucidating across the volume.

[David Robertson · Rating 5 out of 5]

Initial reaction: a strange, wholly original and wonderful book, almost indescribable in its intent and execution. A triumph. It will not appeal to everyone.

One of the advance reviews included on the back cover of The Forest describes the book as “Sebaldian.” The term refers to the oeuvre of German author W.G. Sebald, whose writing “combines memoir, fiction, travelogue, history, and biography in the crucible of his haunting prose style to create a strange new literary compound.” (O’Connell, M. 2011. Why you should read W.G. Sebald. The New Yorker December 14, 2011). This description is equally and perfectly appropriate for Alexander Nemerov’s book.

As Nemerov states up front in an Author’s Note, “This book tells the story of many people. Sometimes they know one another, sometimes they do not. Often, they go their separate ways… Together they make a pattern of life at a given time in the history of the United States. The forest is a backdrop—if not always an actual setting… Trees play an important role, but this is not a book of ecology.” Indeed not.

The book consists of a collection of 58 vignettes, generally shorter near the beginning and progressively longer toward the end. The vignettes are grouped into nine parts, each of which bears a subtitle loosely suggestive of the theme of the vignettes contained therein. The vignettes are all basically structured the same. They open with a story about an incident in the life of one or more historical figures. Slave insurrectionist Nat Turner and gothic writer Edgar Allen Poe feature more than once. Many of the stories then go on to contrast the life of the historical figure with that of another individual of a different social caste or class. Finally, each vignette concludes with a lyrical, speculative digression on the implications of the story for the lives of the people involved, the landscape, or the trajectory of history.

Some of the vignettes are fully (or mostly) true, some are concatenations of several stories that may be related to one another or might be the result of Nemerov’s imagining realistic possibilities. Some are suggested by works of art, photographs, rumors, or tall tales and may not be true at all but are nonetheless plausible. The vignettes are singularly masterful interweavings of historical fact and imagined fiction. As Nemerov cautions later in his Author’s Note, “Each is an episode, an impression… The reader searching for conclusive meanings will be disappointed. The book is a fable, not a history.”

Trees (and, by extension, timber and wood products) are a common theme, but not in every story. In fact, trees and forests may not play a significant part at all other than as a setting. The two stories most closely approaching natural histories are “Longleaf Pine and the Length of Time,” documenting the destruction of the Southeastern longleaf pine forests, and “Shades of Noon,” profiling the decimation of eastern hemlocks to supply tanneries. “Calamity at New Garden” chronicles what may or may not have been the fatal collection of the last specimen of an enigmatic bird species, the “Townsend’s Bunting,” by naturalist John Kirk Townsend in southeastern Pennsylvania in 1833. Other anecdotes relate to prominent 19th century naturalists, botanists and zoologists. Artist John James Audubon struggles to transmute the essence of two live Barn Owls that had been gifted to him onto paper. Eccentric and erratic genius Constantin Rafinesque, a naturalist who named 6,700 plants and many animals, experiences spiritual enlightenment in a Kentucky black locust grove. David Douglas, for whom the Douglas-fir is named, dies in an awful and bizarre accident in Hawai’i.

The stories’ tones are even and uniform, and all are deadly serious. Levity or lightness rarely intrude. While Nemerov’s digressions and summations at the end of the stories are poetic, rhapsodic and sometimes haunting flights of fancy, they can also be dense and obscure, shrouded in hidden meanings and implications, rather than direct and forthright. As a result, they can be somewhat unsatisfying. I occasionally wished Nemerov had restrained himself and been a bit more concrete and less oblique. This is the book’s greatest shortcoming. Notwithstanding, the stories and their digressions are unfailingly arresting and evocative.

Similarly, Nemerov occasionally lets his imagination get the better of himself when he liberally interprets works of art. His speculations are legitimate, but sometimes he stretches credulity in his conjectures about artists’ intentions.

Physically, the collection of vignettes is interrupted amid the eighth part by a grouping of 48 glossy pages of color images. The images depict objects, works of art or landscapes related to the stories. Most (but not all) of the vignettes are related to one or more images included in this section. In many cases, the work of art or the object seem to have inspired Nemerov to investigate the origin of the image and to have built his story around the object. Following the end of the collection of vignettes is a section of notes keyed to the individual vignettes. Based on the notes, Nemerov clearly conducted exhaustive research to prepare for writing each of the stories, and his extensive archival searches are thoroughly documented here. The notes are followed by a section in which Nemerov credits the sources of the images he has included.

Alexander Nemerov is the Carl and Marilynn Thoma Provostial Professor in the Arts and Humanities at Stanford University and author of many books. The Forest is more historical and creative writing than natural history. Natural history and ecological professionals should savor the book for entertainment and enlightenment, for realigning their perspectives, resetting their thinking and steeping themselves in a milieu. Readers in general will be hard pressed to find a more compelling, original, erudite and thought-provoking work of historical literature. As another advance reviewer observes, “After you’ve read this book, most other cultural histories will seem as stale as the straw on the floor.”

[Sean · Rating 2 out of 5]

This seemed like just the sort of thing I'd like, but by the end I wanted nothing more than to be done with it. Shortish tales, factually based with imaginitive additions, of peoples and events in early/mid 19th century America, with trees and forests acting a bit as connective tissue. The writing strives for the poetic and philosophical, and achieves neither. There's nothing evocative or memorable about any of it. Half the time I found myself squinting at sentences thinking, Huh? What the hell is that supposed to mean? As opposed to nodding sagely thinking, Ah, so true, so true! Bad writing, the death of any book. So it goes.

[Marilyn Smith · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the story collection you didn’t know you needed to read. The central theme is the great push of commerce and expansion of vast wild lands. The feelings are tangible of resonant energy in densest forests and hallowing absence in cleared lands.

Wander these extraordinary writings and feel the otherness that distances and draws you in this brilliant book. It’s like nothing I’ve read before.

[Matthew Leigh · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book. In its series of vignettes, it touches on people and places that I knew, and many others that were new to me and entirely fascinating. Fenimore Cooper and Hawthorne were old friends, but so many of the others were not, and it was a joy to be in the company of so learned and eloquent an art historian. More scholars should have the courage to compose works of the imagination like 'The Forest'.

[Christopher · Rating 5 out of 5]

A luminous and evocative series of short essays, meditation really, loosely centered in time by events of the 1830s, and focused by their connections, in one way or another to forests in America—trees, woodwork, woodland birds and animals, indigenous peoples, pioneers and settlers, artists, writers, scientists—sometimes direct, sometimes tangential, but always conveyed with beautiful precision and empathy.

[Josh Roeder · Rating 4 out of 5]

A different type of reading for me, some parts truth some fiction, as with characters. All with life in America in the 1830s I would have liked to see more real historical character and the fiction parts be more in depth where you maybe questioned if they were fiction or not. But still highly recommend this book, makes you think deeper about life in that timeframe with a difference of characters.

[Martha Bush · Rating 3 out of 5]

Short stories of fantastical imaginings of America in the 1830s
Nice imagery and wordplay. I'm not one for short stories, but I'm interested in American culture between the War of 1812 and the Civil War. Most of these were more like magical realism to me. NIcely written. I wouldn't call them "shocking and beautiful" but that's just cover copy I guess.

[Kirsten Moffitt · Rating 5 out of 5]

I cannot recommend this book enough for lovers of poetic literature and early American material culture.

[Larry Roberts · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully written, you'll never think the same way about forests, trees, or wood. Sit back and enjoy!

[Park Frost · Rating 3 out of 5]

as a tree-interested person, i wanted to like it, but couldn’t get hooked, couldn’t get into it. a group of short stories that lacked yarn for me personally.

[chip minnick · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow.

[David Kurapka · Rating 5 out of 5]

Unlike anything I've ever read. So fantastic

[Aaron Eisler · Rating 4 out of 5]

woah