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"I keep looking back to see where I've been": Bobbie Ann Mason's Clear Springs and Henry David Thoreau's Walden.(Book Review)

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From: The Southern Literary Journal
Date: 20040322
Author:Champion, Laurie

The title of Bobbie Ann Mason's memoir, Clear Springs, refers both to the small town in Western Kentucky near the farm where Mason grew up and to the attempt to see clearly, the goal for which she struggles throughout the book. Mason demonstrates in Clear Springs that "to write about nature is to write about how the mind sees nature, and something about how the mind sees itself" (Cameron 44). Throughout the memoir, references to nature relate to learning to see and to leaving or returning home, central issues the memoir explores. Learning to see also relates to maturity, personal ...

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