Overview

“I just plain loved In the Land of Temple Caves. Frederick Turner makes a compelling case for civility organized in response to culture–shaping art as our most ancient source of saving graces. Beautifully said, humanely thought out, the story he tells is particularly useful in these sorrowful times. Read, and take heart!” —William Kittredge, author of The Willow Field In the Land of Temple Caves travels back to the very beginning of Art to assess anew its meanings in the long human story. Frederick Turner makes a personal investigation of sanctuaries in France and Spain that the great mythographer Joseph Campbell called the “temple caves,” the earliest known of which contains paintings and engravings more than 32,000 years old, works of art more advanced than the hunting implements by which their creators lived. In caves and prehistoric shelters, along the valleys tracing the mighty rivers of the Ice Age, in a war–ravaged village, and in a city church far removed from the country of the caves, Turner finds resonant meaning in what he has always believed to be true. Art does matter—vitally—and never more than now.

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9781640093966

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Reviews

Praise for In the Land of Temple Caves Frederick Turner's In the Land of Temple Caves examines the first roots of western art in the caves of the Dordogne which may fairly be called the birthplace of the Occident. Turner's prose often reaches sublimity as he casts the wide arc of his profound knowledge and wisdom from Cro-Magnon splendors to the problematical present where the gods die suffocated by our strenuous banality. This book is permanent. -Jim Harrison, author of Legends of the Fall Frederick Turner's journey to the origins of human artistic expression, in the temple caves of southwest France, is at once bracing, instructive, and delightful. He is a superb guide to that which makes us fully human, and in the wall paintings of our most distant ancestors he discovers what is most enduring in the human spirit: the noble intertwining of our aspirations with our surroundings. This is a book of and for the ages. -Christopher Merrill, author of Self-Portrait with Dogwood How can we possibly understand horrific acts of inhumanity like the recent tragedy on 9/11, or the earlier World War II massacre of French villagers at Oradour-sur-Glane? Fredrick Turner tackles this hard problem in an elegant and compelling book . . . In The Land of Temple Caves is a wise and thoughtful look at ourselves, from both sides of the mirror. -David S. Whitley, author of Cave Paintings and the Human Spirit I just plain loved In the Land of Temple Caves. Frederick Turner makes a compelling case for civility organized in response to culture-shaping art as our most ancient source of saving graces. Beautifully said, humanely thought out, the story he tells is particularly useful in these sorrowful times. Read, and take heart! -William Kittredge, author of The Willow Field With learning that embraces not only the history but the literary evolution, the dreams, and the profound psychic cravings of Western development, with insight, elegance, and uncanny precision that his readers have come to take for granted, Turner's work addresses the underlying delusion, the tragedy, the wreckage of our age, and how it came to pass. We are all in his debt. -W.S. Merwin

Praise for In the Land of Temple Caves Frederick Turner's In the Land of Temple Caves examines the first roots of western art in the caves of the Dordogne which may fairly be called the birthplace of the Occident. Turner's prose often reaches sublimity as he casts the wide arc of his profound knowledge and wisdom from Cro-Magnon splendors to the problematical present where the gods die suffocated by our strenuous banality. This book is permanent. --Jim Harrison, author of Legends of the Fall Frederick Turner's journey to the origins of human artistic expression, in the temple caves of southwest France, is at once bracing, instructive, and delightful. He is a superb guide to that which makes us fully human, and in the wall paintings of our most distant ancestors he discovers what is most enduring in the human spirit: the noble intertwining of our aspirations with our surroundings. This is a book of and for the ages. --Christopher Merrill, author of Self-Portrait with Dogwood How can we possibly understand horrific acts of inhumanity like the recent tragedy on 9/11, or the earlier World War II massacre of French villagers at Oradour-sur-Glane? Fredrick Turner tackles this hard problem in an elegant and compelling book . . . In The Land of Temple Caves is a wise and thoughtful look at ourselves, from both sides of the mirror. --David S. Whitley, author of Cave Paintings and the Human Spirit I just plain loved In the Land of Temple Caves. Frederick Turner makes a compelling case for civility organized in response to culture-shaping art as our most ancient source of saving graces. Beautifully said, humanely thought out, the story he tells is particularly useful in these sorrowful times. Read, and take heart! --William Kittredge, author of The Willow Field With learning that embraces not only the history but the literary evolution, the dreams, and the profound psychic cravings of Western development, with insight, elegance, and uncanny precision that his readers have come to take for granted, Turner's work addresses the underlying delusion, the tragedy, the wreckage of our age, and how it came to pass. We are all in his debt. --W.S. Merwin Praise for Renegade Turner tells a good story: how Miller's Tropic of Cancer came to be written, came to be banned and came to be an American classic. --New York Times Book Review, front cover, Editor's Choice Frederick Turner's Renegade tells the story of Miller's miraculous transformation, from unknown failure to literary giant, in highly evocative style, with wit and erudition. Turner draws together the threads of the American literary and political tradition and shows, convincingly, that for all his years spent in Paris and his carping at his homeland, Miller remained profoundly American. Renegade makes fascinating reading for everyone interested in the development of twentieth-century American literature and the Paris expatriate experience. --Karl Orend, European editor of Nexus: The International Henry Miller Journal This short, erudite and highly coloured account of Miller's creative backstory explores both an extraordinary American life and Miller's 'renegade' American inheritance. --Robert McCrum, The Observer Tropic of Cancer was indeed groundbreaking, and as Turner demonstrates so well, the novel stirred such controversy . . . that it helped pave the way for the liberation of American letters. --Ron Antonucci, Booklist Praise for Rediscovering America Allows the reader to follow [Muir's] progression from a young vagabond to the crony of presidents . . . a biography as shapely as its subject's life. --Dennis Drabelle, The Washington Post An imaginative, beautifully written biography. --New York Times Splendid and passionately written . . . a tour de force. --Library Journal Presented in a prose so brightly graceful that the very reading of it is a literary experience of rare magnitude . . . never likely to be surpassed. --Wilderness Praise for When the Boys Came Back Fifty years ago, baseball fans were anticipating the first post-World War II season and the return to the game of such prewar stars as Ted Williams. Turner's history of that epochal year not only relates the often-inspirational, on-field triumphs of the returnees but also looks at larger questions: Would major-league baseball, like other businesses, be required to hire recently discharged black veterans, or was the game exempt from this rule as it was from so many others? Was a player who had been in the service three years a free agent? . . . Much of the research for this book was done through first-person interviews, and the result is a richly detailed, very entertaining account of the reinvigoration of an American tradition. --Wes Lukowsky No one has captured the back-room workings of baseball better than Turner. To understand why baseball is what it is today, reading When the Boys Came Back is a must. --Ralph Kiner, Hall of Fame slugger and long-time New York Mets broadcaster Praise for Remembering Song Turner's clear-eyed, affectionate backward look at New Orleans jazz . . . is altogether worthy of its subject, and there can be no higher praise than that. --Shelby Foote, author of The Civil War: A Narrative Praise for A Border of Blue A Border of Blue is a 'wonderful discovery of the ways in which place, in its intimate, provincial, and vernacular forms, is invested with history. It awakens a compassionate recognition of the human in the monumental past and the epic in the ordinary present.' --Marilynne Robinson, author of Housekeeping Praise for Beyond Geography With learning that embraces not only the history but the literary evolution, the dreams, and the profound psychic cravings of Western development, with insight, elegance, and uncanny precision that his readers have come to take for granted, Turner's work addresses the underlying delusion, the tragedy, the wreckage of our age, and how it came to pass. We are all in his debt. --W. S. Merwin It is an astonishing performance and it works--not merely because Turner writes with a grace and perception that place him with a handful of historians who can be called great literary stylists, but because he has an idea going here, a significant one. . . . [A] brilliant, demanding, and important work. --San Francisco Chronicle This is no ordinary critique of modern civilization . . . Beyond Geography is clearly a work of brilliance and imagination, a compelling, disturbing, and uncommonly literate exploration of one of mankind's most basic dilemmas. --Atlantic Monthly Praise for Spirit of Place . . . Turner's fascination for many of the literary shrines he describes, especially Willa Cather's craggy Southwest, gives to his writing a sense of devotion and love for the land that the reader can admire and feel. --Kirkus Reviews In Spirit Of Place Frederick Turner literally explores American literature, on foot, as it were. He walks about Walden Pond, Oxford, Mississippi, and Rutherford, New Jersey, to name a few of his journeys, examining the books and the writers who found inspiration in a particular landscape. A learned and original creative enterprise --Elizabeth Hardwick Praise for Of Chiles, Cacti and Fighting Cocks There are people around, Evan Connell, John McPhee, Peter Matthiessen--who can pick up just about any subject, give it some reflection, and thereupon crank out a dazzling and novel essay. . . . They fascinate me, these Original Thinkers, and it is always a treat to discover another of the band. Frederick Turner's Of Chiles, Cacti, and Fighting Cocks. . . ranges all over the American West. . . . Each essay is well turned and basted with Turner's elegant prose. --American Geographical Society Frederick Turner has once again penned his sharp-witted observations on the unusual and often intriguing dichotomy of the real and the legendary in the American West. Now in its third edition, Of Chilies, Cacti, and Fighting Cocks remains a touchstone of popular Western literature. Anyone interested in history, environmental issues, the American West, and particularly Native American history will give a resounding cheer for Turner's contribution to the endlessly fascinating American West. A thoughtful montage of western experience. This book is a lesson in consciousness. --Outside Magazine Praise for In the Land of Temple Caves Frederick Turner's In the Land of Temple Caves examines the first roots of western art in the caves of the Dordogne which may fairly be called the birthplace of the Occident. Turner's prose often reaches sublimity as he casts the wide arc of his profound knowledge and wisdom from Cro-Magnon splendors to the problematical present where the gods die suffocated by our strenuous banality. This book is permanent. --Jim Harrison, author of Legends of the Fall Frederick Turner's journey to the origins of human artistic expression, in the temple caves of southwest France, is at once bracing, instructive, and delightful. He is a superb guide to that which makes us fully human, and in the wall paintings of our most distant ancestors he discovers what is most enduring in the human spirit: the noble intertwining of our aspirations with our surroundings. This is a book of and for the ages. --Christopher Merrill, author of Self-Portrait with Dogwood How can we possibly understand horrific acts of inhumanity like the recent tragedy on 9/11, or the earlier World War II massacre of French villagers at Oradour-sur-Glane? Fredrick Turner tackles this hard problem in an elegant and compelling book . . . In The Land of Temple Caves is a wise and thoughtful look at ourselves, from both sides of the mirror. --David S. Whitley, author of Cave Paintings and the Human Spirit I just plain loved In the Land of Temple Caves. Frederick Turner makes a compelling case for civility organized in response to culture-shaping art as our most ancient source of saving graces. Beautifully said, humanely thought out, the story he tells is particularly useful in these sorrowful times. Read, and take heart! --William Kittredge, author of The Willow Field With learning that embraces not only the history but the literary evolution, the dreams, and the profound psychic cravings of Western development, with insight, elegance, and uncanny precision that his readers have come to take for granted, Turner's work addresses the underlying delusion, the tragedy, the wreckage of our age, and how it came to pass. We are all in his debt. --W.S. Merwin

Praise for In the Land of Temple Caves Frederick Turner's In the Land of Temple Caves examines the first roots of western art in the caves of the Dordogne which may fairly be called the birthplace of the Occident. Turner's prose often reaches sublimity as he casts the wide arc of his profound knowledge and wisdom from Cro-Magnon splendors to the problematical present where the gods die suffocated by our strenuous banality. This book is permanent. --Jim Harrison, author of Legends of the Fall Frederick Turner's journey to the origins of human artistic expression, in the temple caves of southwest France, is at once bracing, instructive, and delightful. He is a superb guide to that which makes us fully human, and in the wall paintings of our most distant ancestors he discovers what is most enduring in the human spirit: the noble intertwining of our aspirations with our surroundings. This is a book of and for the ages. --Christopher Merrill, author of Self-Portrait with Dogwood How can we possibly understand horrific acts of inhumanity like the recent tragedy on 9/11, or the earlier World War II massacre of French villagers at Oradour-sur-Glane? Fredrick Turner tackles this hard problem in an elegant and compelling book . . . In The Land of Temple Caves is a wise and thoughtful look at ourselves, from both sides of the mirror. --David S. Whitley, author of Cave Paintings and the Human Spirit I just plain loved In the Land of Temple Caves. Frederick Turner makes a compelling case for civility organized in response to culture-shaping art as our most ancient source of saving graces. Beautifully said, humanely thought out, the story he tells is particularly useful in these sorrowful times. Read, and take heart! --William Kittredge, author of The Willow Field With learning that embraces not only the history but the literary evolution, the dreams, and the profound psychic cravings of Western development, with insight, elegance, and uncanny precision that his readers have come to take for granted, Turner's work addresses the underlying delusion, the tragedy, the wreckage of our age, and how it came to pass. We are all in his debt. --W.S. Merwin Praise for Renegade Turner tells a good story: how Miller's Tropic of Cancer came to be written, came to be banned and came to be an American classic. --New York Times Book Review, front cover, Editor's Choice Frederick Turner's Renegade tells the story of Miller's miraculous transformation, from unknown failure to literary giant, in highly evocative style, with wit and erudition. Turner draws together the threads of the American literary and political tradition and shows, convincingly, that for all his years spent in Paris and his carping at his homeland, Miller remained profoundly American. Renegade makes fascinating reading for everyone interested in the development of twentieth-century American literature and the Paris expatriate experience. --Karl Orend, European editor of Nexus: The International Henry Miller Journal This short, erudite and highly coloured account of Miller's creative backstory explores both an extraordinary American life and Miller's 'renegade' American inheritance. --Robert McCrum, The Observer Tropic of Cancer was indeed groundbreaking, and as Turner demonstrates so well, the novel stirred such controversy . . . that it helped pave the way for the liberation of American letters. --Ron Antonucci, Booklist Praise for Rediscovering America Allows the reader to follow [Muir's] progression from a young vagabond to the crony of presidents . . . a biography as shapely as its subject's life. --Dennis Drabelle, The Washington Post An imaginative, beautifully written biography. --New York Times Splendid and passionately written . . . a tour de force. --Library Journal Presented in a prose so brightly graceful that the very reading of it is a literary experience of rare magnitude . . . never likely to be surpassed. --Wilderness Praise for When the Boys Came Back Fifty years ago, baseball fans were anticipating the first post-World War II season and the return to the game of such prewar stars as Ted Williams. Turner's history of that epochal year not only relates the often-inspirational, on-field triumphs of the returnees but also looks at larger questions: Would major-league baseball, like other businesses, be required to hire recently discharged black veterans, or was the game exempt from this rule as it was from so many others? Was a player who had been in the service three years a free agent? . . . Much of the research for this book was done through first-person interviews, and the result is a richly detailed, very entertaining account of the reinvigoration of an American tradition. --Wes Lukowsky No one has captured the back-room workings of baseball better than Turner. To understand why baseball is what it is today, reading When the Boys Came Back is a must. --Ralph Kiner, Hall of Fame slugger and long-time New York Mets broadcaster Praise for Remembering Song Turner's clear-eyed, affectionate backward look at New Orleans jazz . . . is altogether worthy of its subject, and there can be no higher praise than that. --Shelby Foote, author of The Civil War: A Narrative Praise for A Border of Blue A Border of Blue is a 'wonderful discovery of the ways in which place, in its intimate, provincial, and vernacular forms, is invested with history. It awakens a compassionate recognition of the human in the monumental past and the epic in the ordinary present.' --Marilynne Robinson, author of Housekeeping Praise for Beyond Geography With learning that embraces not only the history but the literary evolution, the dreams, and the profound psychic cravings of Western development, with insight, elegance, and uncanny precision that his readers have come to take for granted, Turner's work addresses the underlying delusion, the tragedy, the wreckage of our age, and how it came to pass. We are all in his debt. --W. S. Merwin It is an astonishing performance and it works--not merely because Turner writes with a grace and perception that place him with a handful of historians who can be called great literary stylists, but because he has an idea going here, a significant one. . . . [A] brilliant, demanding, and important work. --San Francisco Chronicle This is no ordinary critique of modern civilization . . . Beyond Geography is clearly a work of brilliance and imagination, a compelling, disturbing, and uncommonly literate exploration of one of mankind's most basic dilemmas. --Atlantic Monthly Praise for Spirit of Place . . . Turner's fascination for many of the literary shrines he describes, especially Willa Cather's craggy Southwest, gives to his writing a sense of devotion and love for the land that the reader can admire and feel. --Kirkus Reviews In Spirit Of Place Frederick Turner literally explores American literature, on foot, as it were. He walks about Walden Pond, Oxford, Mississippi, and Rutherford, New Jersey, to name a few of his journeys, examining the books and the writers who found inspiration in a particular landscape. A learned and original creative enterprise --Elizabeth Hardwick Praise for Of Chiles, Cacti and Fighting Cocks There are people around, Evan Connell, John McPhee, Peter Matthiessen--who can pick up just about any subject, give it some reflection, and thereupon crank out a dazzling and novel essay. . . . They fascinate me, these Original Thinkers, and it is always a treat to discover another of the band. Frederick Turner's Of Chiles, Cacti, and Fighting Cocks. . . ranges all over the American West. . . . Each essay is well turned and basted with Turner's elegant prose. --American Geographical Society Frederick Turner has once again penned his sharp-witted observations on the unusual and often intriguing dichotomy of the real and the legendary in the American West. Now in its third edition, Of Chilies, Cacti, and Fighting Cocks remains a touchstone of popular Western literature. Anyone interested in history, environmental issues, the American West, and particularly Native American history will give a resounding cheer for Turner's contribution to the endlessly fascinating American West. A thoughtful montage of western experience. This book is a lesson in consciousness. --Outside Magazine

Author Information

Frederick Turner is the author or editor of several books, including Renegade: Henry Miller and the Making of Tropic of Cancer and The Kid and Me: A Novel. He has received awards from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Guggenheim Foundation. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

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