A Place Of Sense: Essays In Search Of Midwest

by Michael Martone (Editor)

Collected here are essays by Louise Erdrich, Michael Rosen, Gary Comstock, Mary Swander and Jane Staw, David Hamilton, Janet Kauffman, Douglas Bauer, and Michael Martone. Sixteen black-and-white photographs by David Plowden illustrate the sweeping territory covered in the essays. Together they bring a new understanding of the moods, emotions, people, and places that form the Midwest, proving it to be as complex and unordinarily beautiful as it is modest.

Genres: Nonfiction

144 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 1988

About the author

Michael A. Martone is a professor at the creative writing program at the University of Alabama, and is the author of several books. His most recent work, titled Michael Martone and originally written as a series of contributor's notes for various publications, is an investigation of form and autobiography.

A former student of John Barth, Martone's work is critically regarded as powerful and funny. Making use of Whitman's catalogues and Ginsberg's lists, the events, moments and places in Martone's landscapes — fiction or otherwise — often take the same Mobius-like turns of the threads found the works of his mentor, Barth.

Reviews

[Tim · Rating 4 out of 5]

A Place of Sense is a collection of essays on the Midwest. Written in the late 80s they do focus on the farm crisis, but also on human connection to place and the land. Some essays were better than others - the first, "Under the Sign of Wonder Bread and Belmont Caskets" and the second to the last, "Grandma's Backbone, Dougie's Ankles" (written by a religion professor at Iowa State) particularly tickled me for authorial voice and sense of time and place, tradition and story.

[Cheryl Walsh · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a spotty collection--some wonderful writing about the Midwest, and some so-so writing. It was published in the late 1980s, so most of these essays were written in the depths of the Farm Crisis. There are some poignant observations about rural life and family farms that made the collection well worth reading.

[Summer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some essays are much better than others. While I was wary of the title, many of these essays do capture aspects of the Midwest that balance the flattering with the unflattering, feel genuinely honest, and in my case felt very familiar.