Bill Broyles - Americas Most Alarming Writer: Essays on the Life and Work of Charles Bowden

Also by Charles Bowden

Killing the Hidden Waters (1977)

Street Signs Chicago: Neighborhood and Other Illusions of Big-City Life, with Lewis Kreinberg and Richard Younker (1981)

Blue Desert (1986)

Frog Mountain Blues, with Jack W. Dykinga (1987)

Trust Me: Charles Keating and the Missing Billions, with Michael Binstein (1988)

Mezcal (1988)

Red Line (1989)

Desierto: Memories of the Future (1991)

The Sonoran Desert, with Jack W. Dykinga (1992)

The Secret Forest, with Jack W. Dykinga and Paul S. Martin (1993)

Blood Orchid: An Unnatural History of America (1995)

Chihuahua: Pictures from the Edge, with Virgil Hancock (1996)

Stone Canyons of the Colorado Plateau, with Jack W. Dykinga (1996)

Jurez: The Laboratory of our Future, with Noam Chomsky, Eduardo Galeano, and Julin Cardona (1998)

Eugene Richards, with Eugene Richards (2001) Down by the River: Drugs, Money, Murder, and Family (2002)

Blues for Cannibals: The Notes from Underground (2002)

A Shadow in the City: Confessions of an Undercover Drug Warrior (2005)

Inferno, with Michael P. Berman (2006)

Exodus/xodo, with Julin Cardona (2008)

Some of the Dead Are Still Breathing: Living in the Future (2009)

Trinity, with Michael P. Berman (2009)

Murder City: Ciudad Jurez and the Global Economys New Killing Fields, with Julin Cardona (2010)

Dreamland: The Way Out of Jurez, with Alice Leora Briggs (2010)

The Charles Bowden Reader, edited by Erin Almeranti and Mary Martha Miles (2010)

El Sicario: The Autobiography of a Mexican Assassin, with Molly Molloy (2011)

The Red Caddy: Into the Unknown with Edward Abbey (2018)

Dakotah (2019)

AMERICAS MOST ALARMING WRITER

Essays on the Life and Work of Charles Bowden

Edited by Bill Broyles and Bruce J. Dinges

University of Texas Press

Austin

Compilation copyright 2019 by the University of Texas Press Individual contributors copyright information is available on .

All rights reserved

First edition, 2019

Requests for permission to reproduce material from this work should be sent to

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University of Texas Press

P.O. Box 7819

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Broyles, Bill, 1944 July 9 editor. | Dinges, Bruce J., editor.

Title: Americas most alarming writer : essays on the life and work of Charles Bowden / edited by Bill Broyles and Bruce J. Dinges.

Description: First edition. | Austin : University of Texas Press, 2019. | Includes bibliographical references and index.

Identifiers: LCCN 2019005753

ISBN 978-1-4773-1990-1 (cloth : alk. paper)

ISBN 978-1-4773-1991-8 (library e-book)

ISBN 978-1-4773-1992-5 (non-library e-book)

Subjects: LCSH: Bowden, Charles, 19452014. | Authors, American20th century.

Classification: LCC PS3552.O844 Z55 2019 | DDC 814/.54dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019005753

doi:10.7560/319901

Peggy, Apparently, at one time I went down the wrong road. And, alas, remembered the geography. Love, Chuck

CHARLES BOWDEN inscription to his sister Peg in Blues for Cannibals

I sensed that he wanted nothing more than to write in some new way about subjects no one had addressed.

DAVID F. ALLMENDINGER, about classmate Charles Bowden in 1972

Contents

, Bill Broyles and Bruce J. Dinges

, Peg Bowden

, David F. Allmendinger

, Charles Bowden

, Barbara Houlberg

, Kathleen Dannreuther

, Norma Coile

, Tony Davis

, Katie Lee

, Molly McKasson

, Ray Carroll

, Winifred J. Bundy

, Joseph C. Wilder

, Kasey Anderson

, Kim Sanders

, Phil Jordan

, Cal Lash

, Ken Sanders

, Melissa Harris

, Rebecca Saletan

, Gregory McNamee

, Tim Schaffner

, Walt Bartholomew

, Clara Jeffery

, Jack Dykinga

, Michael P. Berman

, Alice Leora Briggs

, Molly Molloy

, Julin Cardona

, Eugene Richards

, Judy Nolte Temple

, Todd Schack

, Mike Evans

, Michael Lundgren

, Tom Sheridan

, Jim Harrison

, Scott Carrier

, Leslie Marmon Silko

, Luis Alberto Urrea

, Gary Paul Nabhan

, William deBuys

, Don Henry Ford Jr.

, James Galvin

, Francisco Cant

, William Langewiesche

, Philip Caputo

, Richard Grant

, Tom Zoellner

, Mary Martha Miles

, Alan Weisman

, Charles Bowden

Charles Bowden, Americas most alarming writer

Introduction

BILL BROYLES AND BRUCE J. DINGES

On March 15, 2015, three hundred people filled an auditorium at the Tucson Festival of Books on the University of Arizona campus in Tucson to pay their respects to Charles Bowden, who had passed away the previous summer, and participate in a discussion of his life and legacy. The panelists included writers Jim Harrison and Luis Alberto Urrea and Bowdens editor at Harpers and Mother Jones, Clara Jeffery. During the question and answer period that followed, Harrisonwho had once described Bowden as Americas most alarming writerobserved that its interesting to see... how the whole Chuck reputation is lifting, rather precipitously, and Im wondering why do we have to die to get that kind of jolt? Harrison thought it was more than just postmortem curiosity. The fatalists among us... , he reminded the sympathetic audience, have been trying to get you to read this for years.

And here, in a nutshell, is the challenge: How do we introduce this profoundly American writer, with his distinctive voice, disdain for borders and conventions, and propensity to peer into the abyss, where most of us would prefer not to look, to a readership accustomed to precise categories and easy answers? Bowden, himself, acknowledged the problem when he wrote: Ive noticed in bookstores they never know where to put my stuff. To him it all seemed so annoyingly simple. Everything he wrotethe dozens of books and hundreds of national magazine articlescame down to one thing: I... believe with every bit of my being, that the Nature, ecology, urban sprawl, human greed, violence, drugs, politics all play parts in a global drama whose unfolding Bowden was committed to chronicling with a reporters keen eye for detail and an Old Testament prophets apocalyptic urgency.