Stewartsville: George R. Stewart's Names on the Land

By Christine Smallwood

This article appeared in the December 8, 2008 edition of The Nation.

November 19, 2008

The 1945 cover of George R. Stewart's classic work NYRB

NYRB
The 1945 cover of George R. Stewart's classic work

In 1948, the year that Norman Mailer published The Naked and the Dead and Dawn Powell released The Locusts Have No King, an English professor at the University of California named George Rippey Stewart published a novel called Fire. The story of an imaginary blaze's path of destruction through Northern California and the men who coordinate an attack to put it out, it closely reworked a book he had written seven years earlier, Storm. It's not much of a fire--"any old-timer could recall a score of greater ones, and would only expect that the years to come would bring many more"--yet the charred trees, imagined as victims of a plague that spared adults and killed all the children, will have consequences for the land that "could be reckoned ahead in centuries."

Fire was a bestseller and a Book-of-the-Month Club selection. Its popularity is easy to understand--in many ways it's a potboiler, fast and dirty, with staccato dialogue and plenty of sweat and grime. Yet it contains passages of strange poetry, like this:

Humbug Point saw the blow-up, and Lovers Leap. Horse Mountain reported, and signed off, quoting Joel 2:30--"and in the earth, blood, and fire, and pillars of smoke." Far to the north, Sheer Rock saw it suddenly above the high shoulder of Howell Mountain. Hamlin Point saw it build up above the round top of Cerro Gordo, like the towering smoke of a new-born volcano.

Subscriber Login

4 ISSUES FREE

Subscribe Now!

The only way to read this article and the full contents of each week's issue of The Nation online is by subscribing to the magazine. Subscribe now and read this article -- and every article published since for the past five years -- right now.

There's no obligation -- try The Nation for four weeks free.

.

About Christine Smallwood

Christine Smallwood, a writer in New York, is former associate literary editor of The Nation. more...
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement

Blogs

» The Beat

Jobless Figures Pose Social, Political Threat for Obama, Dems | The president and his aides are failing to focus enough attention on the most serious economic issue. Democrats could pay the penalty in 2010.
John Nichols
17 Comments
Posted at 1:27 PM ET

» Act Now!

Defining Patriotism | What do you value in the traditions of your country?
Peter Rothberg
50 Comments

» Editor's Cut

Rediscovering Secular America | This Fourth of July those who identify themselves as non-believers have much cause for celebration.
Katrina vanden Heuvel
73 Comments

» The Notion

Celebrating the Fourth by Remembering the Fifth | On Independence Day, the forgotten and imperiled Fifth Amendment bears honoring.
Eyal Press
39 Comments

» Altercation

Mikey 'n' Me | I got closer to Michael Jackson than almost anyone, or at least closer than most people of the age of consent.
Eric Alterman

» Capitolism

Washington: Even More Corrupt Than You Thought! | Washington Post sells access to lobbyists.
Christopher Hayes
68 Comments

» The Dreyfuss Report

Whisky Tango Foxtrot? | General Jones tells the generals in Kabul: don't bother asking for more troops.
Robert Dreyfuss
65 Comments