"I believe every sunrise and I remember the smell of wet grass, the
color of robins, and rustle of leaves on the big oaks that outlive
nations, all this comes with each sunrise." Sonata marks the sixth
and final installment of Charles Bowden's towering "Unnatural
History of America" series. While his earlier volumes were suffused
with violence and war, Bowden offers here a celebration of rebirth
and regrowth. Rendered in Bowden's inimitable style, more prose
poetry than reportage, he evokes panoramas that contain the
potential for respite and offer a state of grace all but lost in
the endless wars of man. Bowden travels back in time to the worlds
of artists Francisco Goya and Vincent van Gogh, the latter painting
furiously against encroaching madness. "Van Gogh tries to dream a
life of color," writes Bowden. "Powder blue sheds, yellow stubble,
pink skies-but the fears and dark things drag him down." As
Bowden's vivid prose wrestles with the madness of the world, van
Gogh's paintings represent an act of resistance, ultimately
unsuccessful, against depression and suicide. Moving from the
vibrant hues of van Gogh's painted gardens to America's southern
border, Bowden returns once more to the Mexican asylum run by "El
Pastor," Jose Antonio Galvan, who was first introduced to readers
of the sextet in Jericho. Here, too, is the dream of a garden that
will be planted in the desert, a promise of regeneration in a world
gone mad. Poetic, elegiac, and elliptical, Sonata is the final,
captivating book of Bowden's monumental career.
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