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Summary
Summary
"Beneath the flannel surface of this deer-hunting, truck-loving Badger is the soul of a poet."
--Chicago Tribune
You'll find in this book a slender silver cord of smart contemplation about meaning and purpose."
--Minneapolis Star Tribune
"He's the real thing."
--USA Today
Author Notes
Michael Perry is a writer and a humorist. He has written three best selling memoirs and his work has appeared in Esquire, The New York Times Magazine, Backpacker, Outside, and Salon.com.
Perry was born in rural Wisconsin. He has spent many years as a volunteer firefighter. The majority of his writing discusses his farming background and life lessons. He was educated at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire.
Perry's books include Visiting Tom: A Man, a Highway, and the Road to Roughneck Grace (2012); Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting (2009); Truck: A Love Story (2006); Off Main Street: Brainstormers, Prophets, and Gatemouth's Gator (2005); Population: 485: Meeting Your Neighbors One Siren at a Time (2002); Big Rigs, Elvis & the Grand Dragon Wayne (1999); and Why They Killed Big Boy (1996).
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Perry (Population: 485) is that nowadays rare memoirist whose eccentric upbringing inspires him to humor and sympathetic insight instead of trauma mongering and self-pity. His latest essays chronicle a year on 37 acres of land with his wife, daughters and titular menagerie of livestock (who are fascinating, exasperating personalities in their own right). But these luminous pieces meander back to his childhood on the hardscrabble Wisconsin dairy farm where his parents, members of a tiny fundamentalist Christian sect, raised him and dozens of siblings and foster-siblings, many of them disabled. Perry's latter-day story is a lifestyle-farming comedy, as he juggles freelance writing assignments with the feedings, chores and construction projects that he hopes will lend him some mud-spattered authenticity. Woven through are tender, uncloying recollections of the homespun virtues of his family and community, from which sprout lessons on the labors and rewards of nurturance (and the occasional need to slaughter what you've nurtured). Perry writes vividly about rural life; peck at any sentence-"One of the [chickens] stretches, one leg and one wing back in the manner of a ballet dancer warming up before the barre"-and you'll find a poetic evocation of barnyard grace. Photos. (May) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Booklist Review
Perry appears to be writing his autobiography on the installment plan. In Population: 485 (2002), he describes his experiences as a volunteer EMT in his Wisconsin home town. In Truck: A Love Story (2006), he chronicles his twin love affairs with a fixer-upper truck and a woman. Now happily married, with a stepdaughter and a baby on the way, he's taking up residence in a Wisconsin farmhouse, where he and his wife intend to live frugally, peacefully, and this might be the hard part self-sufficiently. It's a bit of a culture shock, suddenly being thrust into the living-off-the-land milieu, but Perry draws on his childhood for inspiration: he grew up on a farm, watching his own father, a man of the city, learn to be a farmer. Coop (the title refers to the author's dream project, a chicken coop he builds with his own hands) is typical Perry: written in an easygoing, talk-to-the-reader style, with a self-effacing sense of humor and an ability to conjure up vivid mental pictures with a few well-chosen words.--Pitt, David Copyright 2009 Booklist
Kirkus Review
The author takes up farming and gathers memories after moving to a Wisconsin homestead with his wife and daughter. Though he grew up on a farm, Men's Health contributing editor Perry (Truck, 2006, etc.) doesn't pretend to be a son of the soil. He lives mostly in his head and through his eyes. His tasks around the farm are discreet enthusiasms and bemusements rather than vexing chores. He also has a complete set of anxieties, from his wife wanting a home birth for their impending child to making sure he doesn't deglove his handthat is, remove all the tissue so that only the bones remainin a whirling piece of machinery. At the beginning of this memoir, after gently reflecting on a slice of his past, Perry writes, "It would be sweet to noodle along in this minor key, but I'm stopping now"then he noodles right on. He notes with affection that his wife can blow her nose without the aid of a hanky ("now there is a woman who can endure"), grimly ponders the axe-blow-to-BTU ratio of his woodcutting, experiences the winter night's air as "tin-pail cold against my nose" and stands rapt with his six-year-old daughter as their dog eats a dead rabbit. (He later has the bright idea of feeding some dead rabbits to his pigs.) He frequently thinks back on his farm childhood, marveling at how his devoutly religious parents made ends meet as they welcomed dozens of abandoned, mistreated or otherwise lost children into their home. Because Perry is an adept storyteller, he balances the sweeter sections with passages evoking the sting of loss and griefnot unduly, but enough to recall the impermanence of life and the swiftness of its transformations. Dryly humorous, mildly neurotic and just plain soulfula book that might even make you want to buy a few chickens. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Coop A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting Chapter One This morning while splitting wood, I attempted to clear my left nostril using a rustic maneuver known as the "farmer snort" and misfired badly. My Eustachian tubes have yet to assume their former diameter. I bubble-gummed an eardrum, shot fizz out both tear ducts, and may have permanently everted one eyeball. I believe I sprained my uvula. The act of blowing one's nose without benefit of Kleenex is a skill appreciated along a wide spectrum of background and endeavor--synonymous terms include fisherman's tissue and air hanky . But I grew up calling it a farmer snort, because them's my people, and them's who taught me. The lessons were not formal. Watch and learn, learn by doing. Same way I learned to spit. Although Dad nearly derailed me there. We were walking from Oliver Baalrud's barn to the house for a lemonade break between unloading hay wagons when I puckered up and gobbed a stringer down my miniature bib overalls. I'd been watching Oliver all day. He was a diminutive Norwegian and an accomplished spitter--not big tobacco-ey streamers, just frothy little pips, but he did it constantly, and the flecks flew sharp and straight. Gosh, it was just the neatest thing. He could do it while talking, pitchforking, or backing up the tractor. I wasn't even in kindergarten yet, but I was trying to march beside my dad like a little hay-making man, and I guess I figured spitting would be the thing. When I goobered on my bibs, Dad didn't break stride. Just looked down and said, "Don't spit until you know how." Boy, that set up a conundrum. How you gonna learn if you don't do ? I guess I got around it. Later, when I lost my milk teeth, the new set came in with a pretty good gap. This helps with the aiming, and has a rifling effect. Given a gift, you work with it. I can sit in the kitchen and knock a horsefly off your doorknob. Executed smartly, the farmer snort is a source of transcendent clarification. In short, it really lightens your head, and consequently your day. Conversely, a snort misplayed can put a serious crimp in your karma. As with most things in life, your odds of success improve through focus and rehearsal. Determine your dominant nostril; visualize success; think through the snort--that sort of thing. I have encountered people who claim to be able to perform a hands-free double-barrel farmer snort. I am skeptical and not about to hang around while they prove it. The first time I saw my wife farmer-snort, I felt a renewed flush of affection and thought, Now there is a woman who can endure . I split wood because I boldly predict that next winter will be cold. Climatic creep notwithstanding, one retains the long johns. Ever since I departed the home farm some twenty-four years ago, I have warded off winter with a twist of the thermostat. Now that we've moved to the farm, we have backup electric heat, but the preponderance of warmth in our house is generated from within a square steel box in the living room, and the thing must be fed. I have this spot where I like to chop; it overlooks a swale that breaks into the valley below. Now and then I pause to unbend my back and absorb the view. I feel hardy standing here, muscular and flush with the full pulse of labor. There is sweat in my stocking cap, my typist palms are nicely sore from gripping the ax, and the splintered wood at my feet is tangible evidence of my attempt to provide for our little family of three. Our farmhouse--just up the slope from where I stand--is a mishmash of remodels and add-ons clad in scuffed aluminum. The windows are uncoordinated, and the floorboards are straight out of a carnival funhouse. Moving from the kitchen to the living room, you step up a four-inch riser; keep moving on the same plane around the central wall, and you will circle right back to the riser, having never stepped down. This creates an M. C. Escher effect and helps explain why my mother-in-law refers to the bathroom hall as "that wheelchair ramp." But at the heart of the structure is a log cabin built in the 1880s, and it is dead solid. A few of the hand-squared logs are still visible along one side of the living room. They are the width of a boar's back. Pausing ax in hand to gaze off across the territory, I picture myself as some austere pioneering backwoodsman on the order of Abe Lincoln--albeit dumber, stubbier, and unlikely to alter the course of human events, unless you count snoozing at a stoplight. It's a good day for splitting. Fifteen below at dawn, and even in mid-afternoon the oak is frozen tight. Wet wood split in summer absorbs the ax with a punky tunk! You spend half your time wrenching the sunk blade free; the beveled steel cheeks press out a watery froth. Today at subzero, nearly every stroke terminates in a crisp ker-rack! The halves part neatly, releasing a scent like musk and cheese. The exposed wood is laced with crystals of ice that refract the sun and salt the grain with an interstitial twinkle. I split a while, then stack a while. The baby is due in early April, just over three months from now. After a slow start, I am astounded at the speed with which Anneliese's belly is growing. Whatever is in there, it is a kicky little creature, and prone to nocturnal hiccups. Nearly every night when we lie in bed, Anneliese's midsection begins to lurch sharply and at measured intervals. It is my understanding that the sensation is equivalent to the baby playing foosball with Anneliese's innards. It is tough to drift off with a miniature single-stroke engine boing-boinging between your liver and bladder, and compounding the problem, ever since Anneliese became pregnant, she has been struggling with insomnia. Coop A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting . Copyright © by Michael Perry. Reprinted by permission of HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. All rights reserved. Available now wherever books are sold. Excerpted from Coop: A Year of Poultry, Pigs, and Parenting by Michael Perry All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
