Temple
Stream: A Rural Odyssey
By Bill Roorbach
Reviewed by
Kenny Brechner
Few would argue with the notion that the relationship between nature and literature is as old and diverse as the human experience. The topic is itself currently an academic subject, and has been the centerpiece of whole intellectual movements. August literary names are immediately, even reflexively, Thoreau, Emerson, associated with it. And yet, for all its daunting history and lineage, a creative linkage between nature and literature remains both fresh and familiar, a topic perpetually current, for whenever we think of nature we think also of ourselves.
The art of memoir is, of course, to interest other people in ourselves, a task carried out marvelously well In Temple Stream: A Rural Odyssey, by Bill Roorbach. Roorbach’s success is aided and abetted by his skill as a writer, both in terms of style and craftsmanship, and his personal charm, but the central source of Temple Stream’s success lies in its author’s genuine and multifaceted interest in Temple Stream itself. We are never so compelling as when we are informed and attuned to a compelling interest.
Temple Stream is written for a national audience, and is being distributed by Random House, the largest publishing house in the United States. One feels certain that Roorbach’s book will engage a broad national audience for the sake of its gentle but insistent narrative flow, its deft characterizations of persons and places, and the engaging and entertaining blend of affection, intimacy, and insight, which the book maintain from start to end.
Yet no one who lives in Franklin County can be quite sure, for Temple Stream is so fraught with local interest, with people we know and places we go, that our judgement is hopelessly compromised. We can, nonetheless, find another reason for supposing that Temple Stream’s audience will be a broad one.
The relationship between nature and narrative is a clear window into a book. The Romantic idea of sympathetic nature, the ebb and flow of nature at extremes, of a lightning storm backdrop to a raging heart, presupposes the primacy of the heart over the actual storm. It also employs the natural world as a kind of cheering section for the narrative, robbing it of independent character. What makes Temple Stream stand apart is the primacy of the stream in the narrative, and the lack of any need by the narrator to use the stream for dramatic effect. Roorbach’s interest in the motion of his primary subject casts all its corollaries and tributaries in sharp and independent relief.
One thing readers of Temple Stream will be struck by is the easy flow of the book, the sense that its blend of genres and its intricate structure were a breeze to create. As there is no surer sign that a book was a work of painstaking labor we will end by asking the author, a Farmington resident, a few questions.
An Interview With Bill Roorbach
1. St. Anselm, a learned egg by any standard, talked of the vital role which "the imagined audience" of a book plays during its production. Whom did you imagine reading over your shoulder while you wrote Temple Stream?
[I tried to imagine one reader, someone far away, smart and sympathetic, but who wouldn't necessarily know anything at all about Farmington or even Maine. Presumably many of my readers will be in this category (I once got a fan letter from Swaziland!). How to catch and maintain such a person's interest?]
2. In Temple Stream you blend several different genres and aspects of writing. Do you see the result as unified and gestalt, or do the combining elements maintain their individual integrity?
[I think all books should make their own rules, answer their own needs. In Temple Stream, I hoped for a structure and presentation that would be as unified as the stream itself, with a definite flow, but of course with pools and eddies to contrast to the whitewater, lots of boulders, a dam or two, some bridges, places to linger barefoot, places to hurry along.]
3. In Virginia Woolf's The Voyage Out Helen asks of a book being described to her, "but does it aim at Beauty?" What was your target for Temple Stream?
[Beauty is a lofty goal and always in my mind as I write. Also drama, coherence, clarity, fascination, depth, and on and on, qualities that (come to think of it) tend to add up to the first quality, that beauty Helen was talking about.]
4. Your portrait of Franklin County, in terms of our natural surroundings, our community, and of course some individual residents, is, entertaining, intimate and affectionate. Also, there is a strong narrative thread in Temple Stream linking the movement of the natural and your personal world. Is there anything particular about our area that drove or influenced the narrative?
[The stream. I really did want to see it whole by looking at all the pieces, but of course the stream like anything turns out to be infinite, even in its wholeness. I learned a lot studying and researching and exploring as I worked on the book.]
5. Suppose you were working in a Library or a Bookstore and someone came up to you and said, "I really loved that new book, Temple Stream, can you suggest something similar I might like?" What would you suggest?
[[I'd say, "Temple Stream? Why, I wrote that book!" And I'd hug that customer a good one. I do love to meet readers. And then I'd recommend hundreds of books, starting perhaps with Great Plains, by Ian Frazier, or Dakota, by .]
6. Do you have a favorite passage from Temple Stream, one which cannot be read and reread a sufficient number of times? Which is it?
[The book is still too new for me to see it very clearly--I guess I'll have to leave it to readers to pick out their own passages...]
