Holy Land
A Suburban Memoir
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4.3 • 10 Ratings
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- $10.99
Publisher Description
"Infinitely moving and powerful, just dead-on right, and absolutely original." —Joan Didion
Since its publication in 1996, Holy Land has become an American classic. In "quick, translucent prose" (Michiko Kakutani, New York Times) that is at once lyrical and unsentimental, D. J. Waldie recounts growing up in Lakewood, California, a prototypical post-World War II suburb. Laid out in 316 sections as carefully measured as a grid of tract houses, Holy Land is by turns touching, eerie, funny, and encyclopedic in its handling of what was gained and lost when thousands of blue-collar families were thrown together in the suburbs of the 1950s. An intensely realized and wholly original memoir about the way in which a place can shape a life, Holy Land is ultimately about the resonance of choices—how wide a street should be, what to name a park—and the hopes that are realized in the habits of everyday life.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Waldie, public information officer of Lakewood, Calif., as a boy moved with his family to one of that town's suburbs that was designed and built nearly overnight during the 1950s. In this unusual and compelling memoir organized into a series of short, episodic essays, some of which were previously published in journals, the author describes both a place and the mindset of a decade. Built on a grid, the subdivision of identical houses on similar lots was owned by three businessmen whose Jewish background would have prevented them from living there at that time. Homes were quickly sold to young couples--many of the men were WWII veterans--purchasing a house for the first time. The design of a shopping mall within Lakewood that was opened in 1952 included a half-mile civil defense fallout shelter and reflected the fear of Soviet attack that was mirrored by the attitudes of the Roman Catholic nuns who taught Waldie in school. Photos.
Customer Reviews
A Non-linear Collection of Urban Poems
Holy Land is a collection of short poems to the suburban landscape, written with uncommon insight and perception of the human condition. More than any other work, it reminds me of William Carlos Williams’ Paterson. Holy Land is as effective an explanation of who the American middle class is and the lives of quiet desperation they lead as anything I’ve read.