Cowan, James (Granville) 1942-

views updated

COWAN, James (Granville) 1942-

PERSONAL: Born September 4, 1942, in Melbourne, Australia; son of James L. B. (an airline executive) and Marjorie (Smith) Cowan; married; wife's name Wendy (an executive); children: Brett. Politics: "Left of centre." Religion: Greek Orthodox. Hobbies and other interests: Horse breeding.

ADDRESSES: Home—4125 Billyard Ave., Elizabeth Bay, New South Wales 2011, Australia. Agent— Howard Sanburg and Associates, 144 E. 84th St., New York, NY 10028.

CAREER: Writer. Worked as an airline operator in Tripoli, Libya, 1972-74, and as an airline sales executive in Sydney, Australia, 1974-78.

WRITINGS:

A Rambling Man, Wentworth (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia) 1966.

Toby's Angel (novel), Wentworth (Sydney, New South Wales, Australia), 1975.

The Mountain Men, Reed Books (French's Forest, New South Wales, Australia), 1982.

The River People, Reed Books (French's Forest, New South Wales, Australia), 1983.

Mysteries of the Dreamtime: The Spiritual Life of the Australian Aborigine, Prism/Avery, 1989.

Letters from a Wild State: An Aboriginal Perspective, Element Books (Rockport, MA), 1990, published as Letters from a Wild State: Rediscovering Our True Relationship to Nature, Crown (New York, NY), 1992.

(Translator) Jalal ad-Din ar-Rumi, Where Two Oceans Meet, Element Books (Rockport, MA), 1992.

The Aborigine Tradition, Element Books (Rockport, MA), 1992.

Messengers of the Gods: Tribal Elders Reveal the Ancient Wisdom of the Earth, Vintage (Milsons Point, New South Wales, Australia), 1993.

Balgo Hills Aboriginal Paintings, Gordon and Breach Arts International Limited (East Roseville, New South Wales, Australia), 1994.

Kun-man-gur the Rainbow Serpent, Barefoot Books (Boston, MA), 1994.

Wirrimanu: Aboriginal Art from the Balgo Hills, Gordon and Breach Arts International Limited (East Roseville, New South Wales, Australia), 1994.

Two Men Dreaming: A Memoir, a Journey, Brandl & Schlesinger (Rose Bay, New South Wales, Australia), 1995.

A Mapmaker's Dream: the Meditations of Fra Mauro, Cartographer to the Court of Venice, Shambhala (Boston, MA), 1996.

Petroglyphs: Prose Poems, Brandl & Schlesinger (Rose Bay, New South Wales, Australia), 1996.

Rumi's Divan of Shems of Tabriz: Selected Odes, Element (Rockport, MA), 1997.

A Troubadour's Testament: A Novel, Shambhala (Boston, MA), 1998.

Balgo: New Directions, Craftsman House (North Ryde, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia), 1999.

Francis: A Saint's Way, Liguori/Triumph (Liguori, MO), 2001.

Journey to the Inner Mountain: In the Desert with St. Anthony, Hodder & Stoughton (London, England), 2002, published as Desert Father: In the Desert with Saint Anthony, Shambhala (Boston, MA), 2004.

SIDELIGHTS: Australian writer James Cowan is a renowned poet, author, and historian who has lived in the Outback of Western Australia among native Aboriginals, where he and his wife helped establish an arts program. His understanding of these cultures and love of the land are evident in his writings, in books that include Letters from a Wild State: Rediscovering Our True Relationship to Nature and Messengers of the Gods: Tribal Elders Reveal the Ancient Wisdom of the Earth.

Cowan's A Mapmaker's Dream: the Meditations of Fra Mauro, Cartographer to the Court of Venice, called "a charming short novel," by Alan Lightman in the Los Angeles Times Book Review, is written in the form of a journal, penned by a sixteenth-century monk who is chained to his writing table. Frau Mauro is creating a map of the world based on the reports he receives from travelers and merchants who visit him. In attempting to interpret the world, he finds conflicting theories as he listens to stories about the mummy of an Egyptian priestess, a sect of devil worshippers, the religion of people in the jungles of Borneo that involves the calls of sacred birds, Christian missionaries in China, and Genghis Khan's Karakorum. Frau Mauro listens attentively and is tolerant toward the tales of vastly different cultures and religious beliefs that are subjectively recalled from the memories of his visitors.

He comes to the conclusion that the thought of which the world is made is constantly changing as humanity evolves and that "the true location of the world, of its countries, mountains, rivers, and cities, happens to lie in the eye of the beholder." "Full of startling leaps of imagination and thought, this small gem of a book proves that the mind's desire can be as seaworthy a vessel as a schooner for exploring new worlds," commented a Publishers Weekly contributor.

Wendy Cavenett reviewed the book for Between the Lines online, noting the stories of the travelers "entrance both Fra Mauro and any reader who favours the nuances of fine literature. A Mapmaker's Dream enraptures the imagination with its potent blend of history and insight, sourcing a language and humanity often forgotten by our postmodernist writers. Cowan is a true wordsmith, a dedicated student of etymology who trawls the pages of ancient texts for the discovery of a new word and a new perception. He is the literal alchemist who travels the breadth of time within the meaning of the words he writes."

A Troubadour's Testament: A Novel is the story of twelfth-century French troubadour Marcebru, who mourns the untimely and unexplained death of Amedee de Jois, a young nun he loved from a distance. It is told through the narrator, who discovers a scroll upon which the troubadour had written his thoughts about the deceased. The narrator takes the scroll on a pilgrimage through Provence, talking to people along the way about the poet and the woman he loved, as well as about the history, politics, and beauty of the region, all the while musing about her death and the poet's resulting withdrawal. A Publishers Weekly critic felt that the book suffered from some of the scholarly conversations, but added that "the exploration into the medieval mind and into the essential nature of love has its own gathering poetic power."

Francis: A Saint's Way is Cowan's biography of Saint Francis of Assisi, born Giovanni di Pietro Bernadone in about 1181. The son of a prosperous merchant, he was dubbed "Il Francesco" (the little Frenchman) because of his fondness for troubadour songs. He enjoyed life to its fullest until he was in his midtwenties, when he renounced worldly goods, founding the Franciscan order. Saint Francis is shown to be a "vagabond of faith," a man who travels to preach, rather than confine himself to an institutional setting. He is best known for the reverence he showed nature, in both its animate and inanimate forms. He so cared for living things that he ruled that red wine and honey was to be provided for bees to sustain themselves during the winter. When swallows noisily interrupted his sermons, he spoke directly to them, and the birds fell silent.

The London Sunday Telegraph's Charles Nicholl wrote that Cowan "interestingly compares this attribute of Saint Francis to shamanism. Saint Francis was one who 'entered the domain of creatures'; he was a 'guardian of nature's inner resources.' His dialogue with birds and animals is compared to the incantations and prayers of tribal shamans, and the songs and 'corroborees' (ritual dances) of the Aborigines, on whose religion Cowan has also written."

Journey to the Inner Mountain: In the Desert with Saint Anthony tells of Cowan's visit to the Monastery of Saint Anthony (or Antony) while on a trip in Egypt. During the third century, Saint Anthony escaped the demands of his followers by joining a caravan of merchants. When they came to a desert oasis at the foot of a mountain, he stayed, and the caravan moved on toward the Red Sea. Saint Anthony, who was in his sixties, had only dried bread to eat, yet he lived for more than forty years and died at the age of 105. The monastery was built after his death.

Upon reaching the area, Cowan was told that a hermit was living atop the mountain in Saint Anthony's cave. He visited the hermit, who he discovered was an Australian and former lecturer, but who felt his life to be meaningless after his mother died of cancer. He renamed himself Lazarus and eventually retreated to the cave. Cowan's book concentrates on his meeting with Lazarus, but more on his time spent reading ancient texts in the library of Saint Anthony's Monastery and visiting the Coptic churches in Cairo, as well as other monasteries. Isabel Colegate commented in the Times Literary Supplement that it isn't so much his interpretations of his reading, but Cowan's "description of his own daily life in the physical surroundings of the monastery and in the cave of the Inner Mountain [that] conveys more of his actual spiritual experience."

Cowan told CA: "I spent many years living among indigenous peoples in Morocco, Libya, Tahiti, and Japan, as well as seven years in Europe and the United States. I have always been interested in the voices of non-national peoples such as the Native Americans and Aborigines of Australia. I travelled, often by hitchhiking, through many countries prior to my twenty-first birthday, and these years in foreign parts conditioned my later writings. My early books on the agricultural peoples of Australia are The Mountain Men and The River People. I have long believed that we need to listen to those people not afflicted by modernism if we are not to destroy our earth. I always wanted to be a writer. Poetry and metaphysics are abiding interests of mine. I belong to no groups or organizations, which seem to me to be superfluous to a writer's real mission. I have, however, lectured all over the world on Aboriginal perspectives and culture. My work includes field research, so I travel into the bush, sleep on beaches, and endure cheap hotels in my quest for material. Such books as Where Two OceansMeet, a new translation of Jalal ad-Din ar-Rumi's poetry, are derived from chance encounters with the bones of wise men in the middle of Turkey. My advice to young writers: stay out of debt. Freedom is the best, most incisive tool a writer can have."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

periodicals

Australian Aboriginal Studies, spring, 2001, Mitchell Rolls, "James Cowan and the White Quest for the Black Self," p. 2.

Booklist, September 15, 1996, Brad Hooper, review of A Mapmaker's Dream: The Meditations of Fra Mauro, Cartographer to the Court of Venice, p. 219; April 15, 1998, Bonnie Johnston, review of A Troubadour's Testament: A Novel, p. 1426.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, December 29, 1996, Alan Lightman, review of A Mapmaker's Dream, p. 1.

Publishers Weekly, August 5, 1996, review of A Mapmaker's Dream, p. 429; March 30, 1998, review of A Troubadour's Testament, p. 70; April 23, 2001, review of Francis: A Saint's Way, p. 73.

Sunday Telegraph (London, England), December 16, 2001, Charles Nicholl, review of Francis.

Times Literary Supplement, August 30, 2002, Isabel Colegate, review of Journey to the Inner Mountain: In the Desert with Saint Anthony.