Welcome from your Moderator

[Stephanie]

Hello Everyone:

Welcome to the Barnes & Noble Book Club for Marianne Wiggins' The Shadow Catcher, a novel about Edward S. Curtis, the world-renowned photographer of the west. So much more than a novel characterizing Curtis, Ms. Wiggins places herself into the novel as a character, and the Wiggins/Curtis stories parallel each other, and eventually intertwine. It's a rare novel which provides food for thought on every page, but Wiggins' has given us one. This is a book to be chewed, savored and thoroughly digested.

Happy Reading,

[Sambutler]

Hello Stephanie and Marianne!

This is a really interesting book, very...heady for me! I've done a few of these book clubs and this story is maybe the most complex I've yet come across. But I'm really enjoying it so far. I've just finished what I suppose is the first section about Edward and Clara. Very beautiful and emotional.

Curtis is a man I wish I'd known more about before reading -- the photographs, even at small scale, are wonderful.

Looking forward to seeing where this journey goes!

-Sam

---

Stephanie wrote:
Hello Everyone:

Welcome to the Barnes & Noble Book Club for Marianne Wiggins' The Shadow Catcher, a novel about Edward S. Curtis, the world-renowned photographer of the west. So much more than a novel characterizing Curtis, Ms. Wiggins places herself into the novel as a character, and the Wiggins/Curtis stories parallel each other, and eventually intertwine. It's a rare novel which provides food for thought on every page, but Wiggins' has given us one. This is a book to be chewed, savored and thoroughly digested.

Happy Reading,

---

[LetitiaP]

Hi Stephanie:

I'm a huge fan of Ms. Wiggins' work and can't wait to discuss The Shadow Catcher. I'm also very curious to learn more about the photographer Edward Curtis -- I admit that I hadn't heard of him or his work before picking up the novel, but am definitely intrigued....

Looking forward to the conversation this month!

Letitia

Message Edited by LetitiaP on 07-10-2007 08:10 PM

[Stephanie]

Sam,

I think you're going to be amazed at where this journey takes us - this is without a doubt one of the most eye-opening novels I've read in a long time. Marianne's wisdom is like nutrition, or a salve - hard to describe, but since you've started reading I'm sure you know what I mean.

I'd seen many Curtis photographs but never equated them all with one man. If I had, I certainly would have found out more about him. Really glad Marianne wrote this book, it's going to stay with me a long time.

[Stephanie]

Letitia,

Glad you're here! I'm still rocked by this book - it's one of those I'll be rereading for years to come.

[EdIowaCity]

Hello

I've just started reading the book and am about 100 pages in.

The opening discussion of the sketch of the map was interesting. I'm not sure I had thought about some innate tendency we have to think about our landscapes from the perspective of "flying" above them but I know that, for me at least, those views of "life from above" are always extremely engrossing.

I live in Iowa City and on the University of Iowa campus in the Union building there was this photograph of Iowa City taken from the air and while it hung there I often would spend time looking at it when I was in that building.

I think those views tend to "ground" us to our relationship to a much bigger world in some way almost better than any other images can. It's on a manageable scale as it were as it's a specific locale and yet it allows us to see how minute in a way we are to whole in a much different way than ground level photos do.

I think it is also true that we're all observers but that when we observe those around us (family, friends, co-workers) we're really often only able to see into those lives with that "mile in the sky" perspective and only "know" a very small part of what makes up those lives in most instances.

[Stephanie]

Hi Ed,

Welcome! I know just what you mean about those aerial views that force us to look at a bigger picture. I like to look at satellite shots for just that reason. Whenever I'm flying over towns and cities, it's the swimming pools that blow me away, perhaps more than buildings and houses, because we're not used to a simple top view of those. The pools are something so familiar though, and there they are, little blue ovals and rectangles, ant-sized. Seeing the world spread out below- it's almost a god-view - and you realize that you're a mere speck amongst the landscape.

Great thoughts on us as observers - you made me ponder my relationships with friends and family, and think about what I really know of them. I always thought of "knowing" others in my life as seeing them through a sort of backwards telescope, but I think your "mile in the sky perspective" makes more sense.