{"id":2193,"date":"2012-08-09T21:47:55","date_gmt":"2012-08-10T01:47:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/?p=2193"},"modified":"2012-08-09T22:06:35","modified_gmt":"2012-08-10T02:06:35","slug":"benjamin-busch-dust-to-dust-a-memoir-ecco-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/benjamin-busch-dust-to-dust-a-memoir-ecco-2012\/","title":{"rendered":"Benjamin Busch, Dust to Dust: A Memoir (Ecco, 2012)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>If you crave a book filled with comic youthful yarns or riveting war tales, this one is not for you. Dust to Dust<\/a> is not so much a memoir as a meditation, an effort by a man to understand life.\u00a0 We go, we do, but why, and whither?<\/p>\n

Busch essays his philosophy through retrospective chapters with themes that are tactile and elemental—soil, stone, and ultimately, ash.\u00a0 Busch experiences life through mixing himself physically with it; as a child he dug holes and damned streams; as a young man, he made art.\u00a0 Now, a veteran and married man with children, he is building a home from a wrecked farmhouse in Michigan.<\/p>\n

His prose can be lyrical—much of the books consists of descriptions of places outdoors.\u00a0 At his center, he seems essentially stoic.\u00a0\u00a0Dust to Dust<\/a> feels a bit like a modern version of Marcus Aurelius’ Meditations<\/a>.\u00a0 It is sober and almost obsessively rooted.<\/p>\n

Busch has hacked, hauled, carved, sculpted, and built. Life, he finds, is a paradox—we relentless build despite knowing that in the end all we create will crumble; “dust to dust.”<\/p>\n

Why we do despite knowing how it ends will vary from person to person; but for Busch the important thing seems to be the doing.\u00a0 For what choice have we?\u00a0 -Kevin R. Kosar<\/em><\/p>\n

You may read more about this book or buy a copy here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If you crave a book filled with comic youthful yarns or riveting war tales, this one is not for you. Dust to Dust is not so much a memoir as a meditation, an effort by a man to understand life.\u00a0 We go, we do, but why, and whither? Busch essays his philosophy through retrospective chapters […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[73],"tags":[146],"class_list":["post-2193","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book-reviews-nonfiction","tag-benjamin-busch"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pBCzY-zn","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2193","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2193"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2193\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2200,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2193\/revisions\/2200"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2193"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2193"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevinrkosar.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2193"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}