ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Sunday, February 18, 1996 TAG: 9602160102
SECTION: BOOK PAGE: G-4 EDITION: METRO
TYPE: BOOK REVIEW
SOURCE: REVIEWED BY MONTY LEITCH
RIVER TEETH: STORIES AND WRITINGS. By David James Duncan. Doubleday. $20.
``River teeth`` is David James Duncan's name for those parts of a drowned tree that refuse to disintegrate. ```Knots', they're called, in a piece of lumber. But in the bed of a river, after the parent log has broken down and vanished, these stubborn masses take on a very different appearance" - the appearance of ``enormous fangs,'' that a child who's ``grown up around talk of `headwaters' and `river mouths' might easily imagine `having washed loose from a literal river's jaw' ... ''
There are, Duncan explains, ``many things worth telling that are not quite narrative ... '' For these, he has invented ``river teeth''- delicate prose sculptures of the verities that anchor our memories: such as how he learned that ``we live among quiet heroes, and that ``no matter what the world offers them, children will believe in something ... a child's soul is going to worship.''
And that marvels abound.
This is no story, no essay, but it is something worth depicting, worth securing - as are all of Duncan's ``river teeth.''
Monty Leitch is a columnist for this newspaper.
LENGTH: Short : 33 linesby CNB