Archive - September 25, 2020

  The Long Arc of the Universe: Travels Beyond the Pale by Kathleen Stocking (Thailand 2006-07; Romania 2010-12) Stocking Press 384 pages’ January 2016 $19.95 (Paperback) Reviewed by Kathleen Coskran (Ethiopia 1965-67) • The Long Arc of the Universe: Travels Beyond the Pale is an ambitious title with reverberations from Theodore Parker and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. coupled with the expectation of going where you aren’t necessarily comfortable. It is also a big book for a collection of essays, 384 pages, 5 sections: California, Latin America, Asia, Europe, and Home. These are not exactly parallel divisions: a state, three continents, and then Stocking’s home, the tiny village of Lake Leelanau, a knuckle on the skinny finger of land, Leelanau Peninsula, that juts into the northeastern waters of Lake Michigan. But it works. It works extremely well. For some reason I started at the end, which I never do, and read . . .