I have a real weakness for biographies, autobiographies, diaries, and collected letters of writers, artists, and composers, particularly the ones who lived life richly then alchemized that experience into art. I ought to be delighted then that memoirs have become so fashionable in the publishing industry -- yet many modern memoirs I've come across have proved to be disappointing fare, ranging from navel-gazingly whiny to tiresomely ironic. (Oh how I long for a Post Irony movement in arts & letters. Not that there's anything wrong with true irony, mind you -- that wry way of looking at life that certain cultures, Yorkshiremen and Navajos for instance, do so well; I mean that peculiarly adolescent kind of ironical pose that too often passes for hip these days. But I digress.) There are some good memoirs out there, however, by writers who have thoroughly immersed themselves in life and who truly bring their experiences alive on the printed page. I've recently re-read two old favorites: About this Life: Journeys on the Threshold of Memory, a very inspiring collection of autobiographical essays by naturalist and mythologist Barry Lopez, and Memories of My Ghost Brother, a gorgeous, folklore-infuse narrative about the Korean childhood of Endicott writer Heinz Insu Fenkl. Then just last night I was kept up far too late finishing a a terrific memoir set in the American West, post-World War II: The Boy Who Invented Skiing by Swain Wolfe. I have Charles de Lint to thank for introducing me to Wolfe's work. I loved Wolfe's magical-realist Western novels Lake Dreams and The Parrot Trainer (both of which I highly recommend), and it's fascinating to learn that the life lived by the man behind the novels is every bit as engrossing as his fiction. The Boy Who Invented Skiing is both a coming-of-age tale about a boy's survival in a colorful, unusual, occasionally brutal childhood, and a paean to the spirited landscape, people, and regional culture of Montana. It's also an examination of how a writer grows into his craft and finds his voice. The book has a wonderful cast of characters: miners, loggers, ranchers, cowboys, iconoclastic intellectuals and those free spirits particular to the American West. Below the surface of the tale, as in all Wolfe's work, is a subtle strain of what one reviewer dubbed "cowboy metaphysics" -- i.e. a deep appreciation for the poetry and mystery in the land below our feet.