This engaging memoir has the same plainspoken eloquence and down-to-earth intelligence that distinguish Edward Hoagland's nature and travel writing, from Tigers & Ice to African Calliope. Compass Points opens with an account of the gradual loss of his eyesight in the 1980s, characteristically detailed and utterly lacking in self-pity: blindness made it hard to grade papers or indulge his love of walking, he writes, but it was great for his sex life, and for some reason his lifelong stutter improved. Surgery finally restored his vision, and a new look at the world prompted the writer to turn toward autobiography. Lucid, frank, and funny, his recollections range from an affluent WASP childhood in New York City and its suburbs to joining the circus in 1951 at age 18, then marrying and divorcing twice as he roamed the world and discovered his vocation. Hoagland began his writing career as a novelist, and his early fiction was fairly well received, so that readers can only be grateful that he concluded, after a few books, that he was better suited to the "familiar, unassuming" tone of the personal essay. That intimate tone binds the rambling text together, as he pauses in his personal chronicle to muse on the nature of friendship (we need both the fair- and foul-weather kinds, he concludes), the burdens and benefits of aging, or some other more general topic. There's literary gossip, too--after all, Archibald MacLeish and Alfred Kazin were his teachers, John Berryman was a friend, and Norman Podhoretz was his second wife's boss at Commentary. But the focus rightly remains on Hoagland's life experiences and thoughts, in this deceptively casual but artfully organized narrative. --Wendy Smith

From Publishers Weekly
Noted novelist and essayist Hoagland (Cat Man; The Tugman's Passage; etc.) weighs in with a memoir in the form of 11 loosely interconnected autobiographical essays, the author's life unfolding thematically rather than temporally--an intriguing departure from the norm, but one that, when coupled with Hoagland's rambling, tangent-laden prose, yields mixed results. In his opening salvo, "In the Country of the Blind," which explores his experience with a years-long descent into almost total blindness (from which he was eventually saved by surgery), frequent departures from the central subject create a compellingly rich and complex narrative that ably showcases Hoagland's mental agility and talent for finding significance in the small, often unnoticed encounters that make up everyday life. But "Mentors and Roots," similarly digressive, is less successful: Ostensibly a meditation on the roles others have played in shaping the author's life, it never really coalesces into more than a catalogue of his relatives' and teachers' accomplishments. Nevertheless, readers who approach these essays in search of thought-provoking insights and opinions will not be disappointed. Consistently, at times almost disarmingly, candid, Hoagland grapples throughout with the issues that have most vexed him--failed or fraught relationships, adultery, the difficulty of forging a self-determined identity as a writer--and waxes lyrical about those that have brought him particular joy or satisfaction--parenthood, teaching, an adolescent stint in the circus. In all these cases, it's his struggle to find meaning and merit in certain crucial episodes in his life that makes for compelling reading. And Hoagland's often at his best when he strikes a quietly elegiac tone, as when he observes, "Most of us live like stand-up comedians on a vaudeville stage... by our humble wits, messing up, swallowing an aspirin, knowing Hollywood won't call, thinking nobody we love will die today, just another day of sunshine and rain." Lovers of fine prose will be delighted with this new volume. (Feb.)Forecast: Hoagland has a fine reputation among the literati, who will want to read particularly about his loss and regaining of sight. So this book should enjoy solid sales; a PW Interview is slated for February.Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
When cataracts and weak retinas threatened to take all of his eyesight, Hoagland (Cat Man, African Calliope, Tugman's Passage) began to experience the isolation and dependence of blindness. After being refused by a number of surgeons, he finally found one who operated and miraculously restored his sight. This memoir celebrates the author's joy in the visual world he nearly lost. The book's strengths lie in Hoagland's skill with detail and his candid discussion of his personal relationships. In fascinating travel accounts, he manages to capture the eccentricities of the local characters as well as the look and feel of the landscape. In one of the most memorable chapters, "Calliope Times," he recounts the excitement of traveling with the circus in the summer of his 18th year. Among such characters as the Eightfoot Man, the Sword Swallower, and the Armless Wonder he learned the appeal of the traveling life and the joy of loving one's work. Recommended for larger public libraries.-DNancy R. Ives, SUNY at Geneseo Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist
Like a master gardener who brings forth fresh wonders from the same plot of earth each year, Hoagland nurtures and harvests memories and observations. Now in his sixties, this nature writer who loves cities as much as forests, and who finds human beings as intriguing as the animals he reveres, explores the terrain of his own life as ardently as he has traveled the world. This foray into self-reflection was inspired by his enduring a progressive deterioration of his eyesight, then experiencing the joy of restoration only to be told that his blindness would recur. Eager to "see" all that he can both in the present and the past, Hoagland shares his magnetic family history; avidly describes how writing granted him the voice his stutter denied and infused him with an unshakeable sense of mission; and rather awkwardly analyzes his two marriages. There is an invigoratingly flinty energy here, a striving to push through the swirl of experience to the bedrock of meaning, and passages of sudden beauty that reflect Hoagland's uplifting and inspiring "commitment to ebullience." Donna Seaman
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Review
?Ablaze with wonder in nature but also at the glorious mess of the human condition.??The Washington Post Book World

?The precision with which Hoagland sees and the appetite with which he explores are staggering.??Philip Roth

?A poignant and substantive summing up of the life and work of one of the finest writers this nation has produced.??The Oregonian

?Compass Points is sensual, taut, pungent, and full of the hot licks of a vigorous, involved life.? -- Annie Proulx

FROM THE PUBLISHER

For nearly fifty years Edward Hoagland has proven himself to be, in the words of William Kittredge, "one of our basic writers"--a writer whose novels, essays, and travel books have demonstrated a "pungency, directness, and his special gift for finding joy in the most unexpected places" (Alfred Kazin).

In Compass Points, Hoagland looks back over his life in an attempt to discern the fundamental directions in which he is traveling, and he tells a story that embraces some of the contradictions and complexities of human experience. It reflects with elegance Hoagland's intransigent honesty, his protean ardor, and, most important, his generosity. Here, family and friends, wives and lovers, mentors and fellow writers are given their due in a life's reckoning that is shrewd in observation, marvelously crafted, rapturous in its acceptance and appreciation. A pithy mix of family history and personal insight, Compass Points transforms one man's story into an American saga.

FROM THE CRITICS

Robert Clark - Washington Post

Compass Points...is one great writer's summing up, at age 69, after a lifetime of close observation, and its author is blunt about what lies ahead for him. But his work is scarcely done. An essay, and the beautiful and profound skein of reflections that constitute this book, resists conclusion, even after it's completed. This is a life's work that, much like the world to which Hoagland has attended with such care and brilliance, bears looking at again and again.

Book Magazine

Labeled a memoir, Hoagland's remarkable book is better approached as a collection of essays about himself. Hoagland, the author of Heart's Desire, has been observing and interpreting the world around him for decades; here, he offers up his own life for examination. Among the subject matter, Hoagland recalls a serious (and ultimately corrected) bout with blindness, a period in his youth working in a circus, his life in Manhattan and his numerous relationships and affairs with women. Throughout the book, Hoagland mentions the writers who have mentored, befriended or championed him: Philip Roth, Archibald MacLeish and John Updike, among others. These relationships, which constitute a part of the author's identity, are considered with the same candor as, say, his lifelong stutter. Hoagland writes with heavy revision—what he calls the "daily lope" of analysis, composition and reconsideration. Rarely nostalgic, the author scours his past to better understand how it has determined his life. While the prose can become thick, the lucidity that also results assures a captivating read. —Ted Waitt

Publishers Weekly

Noted novelist and essayist Hoagland (Cat Man; The Tugman's Passage; etc.) weighs in with a memoir in the form of 11 loosely interconnected autobiographical essays, the author's life unfolding thematically rather than temporally--an intriguing departure from the norm, but one that, when coupled with Hoagland's rambling, tangent-laden prose, yields mixed results. In his opening salvo, "In the Country of the Blind," which explores his experience with a years-long descent into almost total blindness (from which he was eventually saved by surgery), frequent departures from the central subject create a compellingly rich and complex narrative that ably showcases Hoagland's mental agility and talent for finding significance in the small, often unnoticed encounters that make up everyday life. But "Mentors and Roots," similarly digressive, is less successful: Ostensibly a meditation on the roles others have played in shaping the author's life, it never really coalesces into more than a catalogue of his relatives' and teachers' accomplishments. Nevertheless, readers who approach these essays in search of thought-provoking insights and opinions will not be disappointed. Consistently, at times almost disarmingly, candid, Hoagland grapples throughout with the issues that have most vexed him--failed or fraught relationships, adultery, the difficulty of forging a self-determined identity as a writer--and waxes lyrical about those that have brought him particular joy or satisfaction--parenthood, teaching, an adolescent stint in the circus. In all these cases, it's his struggle to find meaning and merit in certain crucial episodes in his life that makes for compelling reading. And Hoagland's often at his best when he strikes a quietly elegiac tone, as when he observes, "Most of us live like stand-up comedians on a vaudeville stage... by our humble wits, messing up, swallowing an aspirin, knowing Hollywood won't call, thinking nobody we love will die today, just another day of sunshine and rain." Lovers of fine prose will be delighted with this new volume. (Feb.) Forecast: Hoagland has a fine reputation among the literati, who will want to read particularly about his loss and regaining of sight. So this book should enjoy solid sales; a PW Interview is slated for February. Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

When cataracts and weak retinas threatened to take all of his eyesight, Hoagland (Cat Man, African Calliope, Tugman's Passage) began to experience the isolation and dependence of blindness. After being refused by a number of surgeons, he finally found one who operated and miraculously restored his sight. This memoir celebrates the author's joy in the visual world he nearly lost. The book's strengths lie in Hoagland's skill with detail and his candid discussion of his personal relationships. In fascinating travel accounts, he manages to capture the eccentricities of the local characters as well as the look and feel of the landscape. In one of the most memorable chapters, "Calliope Times," he recounts the excitement of traveling with the circus in the summer of his 18th year. Among such characters as the Eightfoot Man, the Sword Swallower, and the Armless Wonder he learned the appeal of the traveling life and the joy of loving one's work. Recommended for larger public libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 10/15/00.]--Nancy R. Ives, SUNY at Geneseo Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

Hoagland's (Tigers and Ice, 1999, etc.) autobiography reads much like his essays—seemingly meandering, but masterfully grounded in an independent sensibility and enlivened by a joie de vivre. Individual chapters can be read as separate essays (and, in fact, some appeared in that format previously, in such magazines as Harper's, Esquire, the New Yorker, and Granta). While inevitably featuring overlapping material, these also allow the author to examine events of his life like objects held up to a prism. Following eye surgery that restored his vision, he seems intent now, as a senior citizen, both to plunge into life all at once (in journeys to India and Antarctica, for example) and to view his past with mellow acceptance. A New York City native, Hoagland grew up in suburban Connecticut and rebelled early on against the buttoned-up world of his parents. Compensating for a lifelong stammer, he learned to modulate his prose effortlessly from minute naturalistic observation to broader conclusions that range from eloquent to wry (e.g.,"the essay's appeal includes an accommodation to defeat by means of the phoenix of humor, plus intelligence and postgame analysis"). He fondly recalls not only Midwestern ancestors, but also Harvard instructors Archibald MacLeish and John Berryman (who taught him, respectively, the useful aspects of sanity and insanity in literature). Not all of this memoir is admirable—his description of second wife Marion Magid's right-wing sympathies as an editor at the neoconservative periodical Commentary, for example, sounds like a justification for his adultery. What shines from these pages, however, is a pantheistic, sensual delight inexistence(aftereye surgery, he returns to Vermont to see"the juncos wintering in the dogwoods, the hungry possum nibbling seeds under the birdfeeder, the startling glory of our skunk's white web of fur in a shaft of faint moonlight") that finds expression in vivid prose. A rich accounting of time well spent.