#522 Mannahatta- John Keene
Mannahatta is the Lenape word for “Land of Many Hills,” the
name taken in New Amsterdam for Manhattan and the name of a great poem by Walt
Whitman. A man from Santo Domingo, who had bought his own freedom, now finds
himself alone scouting land in the “New World.” He is having a spiritual
experience and stakes down a cross hoping that the First People don’t remove it
before he can return.
This is the first story in the new collection,
Counternarratives by John Keene. It is a powerful opening look at what is
already being talked about as one of the best books of the year. I like the
rich descriptions of the riverfront and the landscape; the power of a man by
himself in the woods near the water, in a place unknown and ready to be
explored.
There is a good lineage of literature that has tapped into
the emotional history of early American “discovery” in the lower Hudson.
Besides the obvious Whitman reference, great art and literature has sprouted
from this very place; names like Asher Durant, Thomas Cole, and more recently
TC Boyle or Edward Rutherford have used the beauty and spirit of this region as
springboards for great art.
“A thousand birds proclaimed his ascent up the incline; the
bushes shuddered with the alarm of creatures stirred from there lees; insects
rose in a screen before his eyes, vanishing. When he had secured the boat and
settled onto a sloping meadow, he sat, to wet his throat with water from his
winesack, and orient himself, and rest. Only then did he look back.”
