All Is Leaf
Essays and Transformations
by John T Price
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Pub Date Jun 06 2022 | Archive Date Jun 06 2022
University of Iowa Press | University Of Iowa Press
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Description
He employs an array of forms and voices, whether penning a break-up letter to America or a literary rock-n-roll road song dedicated to prairie scientists, or giving pregame pep talks to his son’s losing football team. Here, too, are moving portrayals of his father’s last effort as a small-town lawyer to defend the rights of abused women, and his own efforts as a writing teacher to honor the personal stories of his students.
From his Iowa backyard to the edge of the Arctic Circle, from the forgotten recesses of the body to the far reaches of the solar system, this book demonstrates the ways imagination and informed compassion can, as Price describes it, expand thousandfold the boundaries of what we might “have naïvely considered an individual self.”
Advance Praise
“All Is Leaf is a master class in the essay, demonstrating inspiring stylistic and emotional range. Hilarious and tender, it opens a redemptive view of home, self, family, and the natural world. Price shows how humor and pathos, nature and human nature, are two sides of the same remarkable leaf.”—Michael P. Branch, author, On the Trail of the Jackalope: How a Legend Captured the World’s Imagination and Helped Us Cure Cancer
“Whether writing movingly and urgently of his father’s last legal case or exploring the absurdity of pizza night at Planet Fitness, Price does so with a compelling goodwill that is in such short supply these days. He masterfully balances genuine emotion and whimsy with the sly aplomb and generous gaze of a true midwesterner.”—Sue William Silverman, author, How to Survive Death and Other Inconveniences
“With a wink and a humble nod to the universe, John Price has crafted a brilliant collection that captures his enchantment with nature and delves into flights of fancy. All Is Leaf will invite you to ponder, imagine, or laugh with every delightful page.”—Lydia Kang, author, Opium and Absinthe
“John Price’s roaming curiosity charges these wide-ranging, oftentimes humorous, always insightful, essays. This is a book to read with pencil in hand—not only to mark his memorable passages and phrases, but because you’ll be flabbergasted at how Price delivered such a beautiful smorgasbord of prose into your brain.”—Taylor Brorby, author, Boys and Oil
Available Editions
| EDITION | Other Format |
| ISBN | 9781609388355 |
| PRICE | $19.95 (USD) |
| PAGES | 218 |
Available on NetGalley
Featured Reviews
Paul V, Reviewer
I'm not big on essays, but I did like many of these, and I can see the intelligence and good writing that presents itself. Recommended.
I really appreciate the free ARC for review!!
Bill C, Reviewer
All Is Leaf, an essay collection by John T. Price, started strong for me, but, as is often the case with collections, went up and down in terms of my response to individual essays, making for an overall enjoyable but uneven reading experience.
Price’s main topics/themes include nature (especially our despoiling of it), family (particularly father-son relationships), and the inevitable march of time. In writing about these and other subjects, he ranges widely in form and tone (sometimes within the same essay), and the variety of styles and structures is for the most part a clear plus in the collection. The first essay, one of my favorites in the book, is written as a grant application introduction and Price’s wry, often self-deprecating voice nails his often humorous and sometimes moving explanation of how his project morphed from “a serious environmental essay about a centuries-old burr oak tree in our front yard in Iowa” into something that saw him flying to Germany to research Goethe (and visit an old friend) then touring Buchenwald, and then, five years later (“time flies”), it has become something else entire as his life and career have changed.
Other original structures were less successful for me. A break-up letter to America had its moments, but didn’t feel particularly fresh (I’ll note my reading was perhaps marred coming as it did within a slew of SCOTUS decisions that had me despairing), while an essay written as a series of speeches to the local high school football team, that again had its moments (all the essays here do) went on way too long for my preferences. And an otherwise engaging and often powerfully emotional essay about a trip with one of his sons was somewhat less enjoyable due to some stylistic choices, though personal mileage will probably vary more on that one than the others I’d say.
On the other hand, an essay about his father last case before retiring as an attorney was powerful and moving both thanks to its general subject matter (the ways in which the poor, and women in particular) are horribly shortchanged by the legal system and its personal subject matter (watching his fathers in present time, memories of his father, etc.). It’s a perfect model of what the best creative non-fiction does in how it melds the universal and the personal. It also, in its deft use of a film allusion, has a killer close. This essay and then first alone I’d argue are worth the cost of admission to the anthology, though as noted even the ones I’d consider weaker entries have something to admire, something to make you think, something to evoke an emotional response. So uneven, yes, but still recommended reading.
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