Wednesday, July 25, 2012

EVERETT RUESS: HIS SHORT LIFE, MYSTERIOUS DEATH, AND ASTONISHING AFTERLIFE … A BOOK REVIEW.


“So much paper and ink have been expended on Ruess, especially on speculations regarding his mysterious disappearance from an Escalante side canyon in 1934, that it almost seems an environmental crime to add to the expenditure, but a summary account of his life, at least is necessary.” (Topping, 1997, p. 317)

Philip Fradkin also wrote the
biography of Wallace Stegner.
In the final paragraphs to “Everett Ruess: His Short Life, Mysterious Death, and Astonishing Afterlife” – and its devotion to understanding and telling the truths associated with Everett’s “short life” – Philip Fradkin suggests that literary and investigative favors are “not about to be extended to everyone.”

So why then does Everertt’s story about his mysterious disappearance in the Utah desert in 1934 deserve to have even more paper, ink, and energy expended on his life?

In my opinion, this particular expenditure by Fradkin is needed because the telling of Everett’s story always lacks context. It needed to have written what Paul Harvey coined “the rest of the story.”

Fradkin’s book brings an expanded and insightful context to the Everett saga. And this is Fradkin’s biggest gift to Everett’s mysterious death because it keeps the “short life” from becoming long in fiction.

However, Fradkin’s research does leave out the fact that “Finding Everett Ruess” was written and researched during the same time period he alliterates about Everett’s “Astonishing Afterlife.” Despite that fact, Fradkin’s book doesn’t need to review David Robert’s book “Finding Everett Ruess” because Roberts offers very little new information about Everett’s story and basically repeats what most Ruess fans already know – if they read “Everett Ruess:Vagabond for Beauty” and kept up with the steady flow of news about Roberts’ misadventures to solve the Ruess mystery.


I first learned about Fradkin’s book about Everett a couple of years ago when he contacted me to get a copy of my thesis about Everett Ruess’s connection to the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance. (SUWA still uses a block print, inspired by Everett's artwork during his trips to the Utah desert). 

The Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance
used a "self portrait" created by Everett Ruess
as their logo. They dropped the design and replaced it
with a logo inspired by Everett's block prints of the
Utah desert He created a juniper print that was
very much loved by wilderness warrior
Terry Tempest Williams.
Fradkin was pushy and impatient in his requests and as a result I didn’t feel like helping him out with his research.

Besides, I thought, a copy of my thesis is at the University of Utah, where he is doing much of his original research, so it shouldn’t be that hard to find it there or at Brigham Young University. My stubbornness with Fradkin’s request may have led to my thesis research not even getting mentioned or referenced by Fradkin. Roberts read my thesis after learning about it the night I gave a copy of it to him and Bud Rusho.  

Fradkin may have read my thesis but it isn’t evident in book’s footnotes or index. However, he did report one of the most interesting things I first reported about Everett regarding claim’s about his mysterious love letters to Frances. Robert’s picked up on this “tidbit” from my thesis, but should be noted, that Roberts’ struggled to solve this mystery. Fradkin, on the other hand, shows the panache of a seasoned investigative reporter and provides some very interesting insights that will end this part of the mystery for many Ruess aficionados.

However, both Roberts and Fradkin missed out on some of the important insights my research highlights. (More on that later.)

Fradkin’s thoughtfully researched book is full of context and insights that do not use Everett as a platform to talk about his own opinions or experience in the wilderness (sorry David Roberts … that description very much describes the narrative and style of your writings about Everett, despite the fact you were very gracious in your recognition of my thesis). Fradkins does this to a certain extent but it is tastefully done and, in most cases, provides more context about how he did his research.

Gibbs Smith, Publisher, had W.L. "Bud" Rusho edit some of the first
books about Everett Ruess. "Vagabond for Beauty" remains
one of the best books containing Everett's original,
art, poetry, prose and letters.
Fradkin’s devotion to reporting the context of Everett’s “Astonishing Afterlife” includes great insights about Everett’s relatives, associates, and goings-on in American history. That context is beautiful and complimentary to the topic. It also helps demythologize the Ruess story, by reminding the reader that yes, Everett Ruess is unique, but no, he is not alone in his sentiments about nature, art, and literature for this time period.

This is something Gibbs Smith, the Everett Ruess publisher-in-chief, will tell you over and over: that Everett was the first real appreciator of wilderness, for sentimental reasons. Fradkin proves otherwise. But be warned: Fradkin stops short of providing some of the political context of the wilderness movement that reinvigorated the telling of the Everett Ruess story in the 1980s and what I think are some of the real reasons for Everett’s “astonishing afterlife.”

Fradkins book is a page turner because, like the good journalist he is, Fradkin writes for the audience that knows Everett’s story – while still giving the Ruess novice the ability to enjoy an extended prologue to the original Everett Ruess books: “Vagabond for Beauty” and “The Wilderness Journals.”

Fradkin further dampens the Everett Ruess myth by setting the record straight, by grounding Everett in reality – which does, in my mind diminish Everett’s mythos and storied connection to the Utah wilderness movement and self-styled, ersatz desert rats (line taken from a letter to the editor of a Tucson newspaper, criticizing how Everett’s story is used for political purposes).

Letter criticizing the use of Everett Rues for political purposes.
Source: http://www.tucsonweekly.com/tw/05-29-97/mailbag.htm
The irony here is that Everett, in many ways, never seemed to be grounded in reality and now the definitive story about him is fertilized with facts. I also like the fact Fradkin also looked at this story from the lens of a parent who has to deal with children who are depressed or go their own way.

And since I can’t resist being a hypocrite, I want to tell my own story about my connection with Everett -- as taken from the introduction to my master’s thesis, "Everett Ruess and the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance: A Triangulated Study Employing the Elaboration Likelihood Model of Persuasion (ELM).”

My thesis is currently published online as “Selling Everett Ruess: Protecting Utah’s Redrock Wilderness Created an Environmental Saint.” 

Here’s a blurb from the introduction:

“I first learned about Ruess when my father spent two bits at a yard sale and bought me a copy of Everett Ruess: Vagabond for Beauty (Rusho, 1983). That summer I shared a mutual love with Ruess of the Escalante Canyons in southern Utah. Since that time it’s been an interesting journey, but my parasocial relationship with Ruess has stirred within me an everlasting lust for the desert. And like Ruess, I too crave intellectual companionship, boring easily with people who revel in “the discontent bred by cities.”

My thesis was first published as "Everett Ruess
and the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance:
A Triangulated Study Employing the Elaboration
Likelihood Model of Persuasion (ELM). The
cover of the online version is very similar to
the cover design for David Robert's
"Finding Everett Ruess."
Ironically, my zeal for Ruess waned when my passion for protecting the environment peaked. It was one thing to revel in beauty, but quite another to preserve it. Activism resulted in abandoning much of the art and literature that was a catalyst for my raging environmentalism. SUWA became a part of my paradigm and I participated as a “wilderness warrior” in Washington D.C. About that time, Big Suckin’ Moose – a band I used to play drums and percussion for – recorded a song about wilderness titled, “Washington D.C.” The song is now on a compact disc sold through SUWA. Nevertheless, my interest in SUWA, like my love for Ruess, went into remission.

Interest in the Ruess myth resumed when I researched a communication theory about parasocial relationships. While rummaging through scholarly journals, I remembered an experience I had when I was working in the backcountry of Alaska’s Resurrection Bay. I was in the midst of building a bridge made of raw spruce trees when a tousled man in his mid twenties walked up to me from almost out of nowhere and started talking. We exchanged a few sentiments about the Bay and then the young man excused himself and mumbled as he walked away, “I think I’ll be going now... I’m gonna build a fire and commune with the spirit of Everett Ruess.” That memory hurled me back into the lure of the Ruess myth and for the past year I have been researching how Ruess has evolved from myth to wilderness icon. How could an obscure young adventurer from California, lost in Utah in 1934, be known over sixty years later, by a stranger passing by in the wilds of Alaska?

That question, asked by me in 1999 – about how Everett could be known, at all – begins to be answered by Fradkin. His book also signifies what I think could be the peak of the Golden Age of Ruess.

I predicted this golden age in the conclusion to my thesis in 2003. Fradkin misses this point in his book.

That is, at least, one part of the context readers need to know when they digest Fradkin's book: that Everett’s short life, with its enduring afterlife, depends on storytellers with an agenda. And where that agenda takes the Everett Ruess story from here is something I will continue to follow -- as one of Everett’s enduring disciples.





References

Topping, G. (1997). Glen Canyon and the San Juan Country. Moscow: University of Idaho Press.


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