Dry Rivers and Standing Rocks: A Word Finder for the American West

by Scott Thybony

Book Overview

All writers get stuck looking for the right word. Noticing that this was an acute problem for writers in the West because standard thesauruses face east, Scott Thybony started a file of western words.... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0826322611
• ISBN13: 9780826322616
• Release Date: September 2000
• Publisher: University of New Mexico Press
• Length: 104 Pages
• Weight: 0.35 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.3" x 5.4" x 8.0"

Customer Reviews

I wish I'd had this years ago.

This book is a terrific thesaurus of the words used by western writers, and is a priceless resource for anyone writing about the West. Look up "mesa" in a normal thesaurus, and you'll find: "plateau, tableland, butte, tablemountain." But look up "mesa" in Scott Thybony's thesaurus, and you'll find lists of synonyms for every one of the above words, and a ton of synonyms for "mesa" itself: "altarstone, cathedral rock, mesa escarpment, mesa wall, mesatop, outlier, platform mountain, pyramid, erosional remnant, sky island, stepping stone, table, tabular relief, ziggurat," you'll find a list of traits of mesas, and you'll find related American Indian and Spanish words. If you want to write about the West, get this book. It's worth it alone for the quotes it includes from Western writers like Cormac McCarthy and D.H. Lawrence. Even if you just want to talk about the West and sound informed, get this book. Even if you just like the West, get this book for a little deeper understanding of it.

Catch a phrase and step blithely across a writer's block.

I was expecting a thesaurus of Old West words and phrases. It was a treat to discover that this book is far more. It came into being because Scott Thybony worked through writer's blocks by collecting words.What a surprise to discover in the Introduction that Gustave Flaubert (of Madame Bovary fame) would sit for long periods of time, head braced in his hands, as he mentally searched for the perfect word to begin his stories. "It can happen to the most careful writers -- especially the careful ones." Knowing that writer's blocks happens to all writers does not make it any easier when facing a blank paper wall. Wrapping up the Introduction Thybony writes, "...but remember Flaubert. He demanded a perfect fit for something inherently loose-jointed." Then you get to the meat of the word feast. Thybony is a very accomplished, easy to read author. He overcame blocks as he "...paid attention to the color and texture of language." Whenever he interviewed someone, he listened for the words that grounded the location to the scene or "threw sparks" that brought the American West to life. The words are section headers with the shades of meanings listed below making it easy to find what you are looking for. However, this book is not a compendium of disconnected words. There are beautiful etchings within each of the sections: Land, Sky, Water, Fire, Life, Seasons, and People that give you the feeling of history and poetry.I am including a few quotations from Scott Thybony's book to show the poetic prose and sound advice: "...the blank page in front of me wasn't due to a lack of vocabulary but a loss of motion." Always expand the horizon and possibility of your words because "language needs room to breathe, and it has plenty of it here." My favorite: "Also, the nature of writing tends to encourage cannibalism. Writers consume the words of their own kind and sometimes swallow them without chewing."This is a wonderful book. Start anywhere and read for a few minutes; it is funny, charming, educational, and inspirational. It is a 92 page treasure and worth every single star.