Granite and Grace: Seeking the Heart of Yosemite. By Michael P. Cohen. Illustrations by Valerie P. Cohen. University of Nevada Press, 2019. Paperback, 232 pages, $21.95.  
 
“Tell me what you pay attention to,” writes the philosopher José Ortega y Gasset, “and I will tell you who you are.” Cohen’s latest book is about granite. Or, more specifically, it’s about the polished slab and dome country of Tuolumne Meadows, known to geologists as the Tuolumne Intrusive Suite, terminology expressive of music. Cohen—venerable climber, mountaineer, and scholar that he is—knows this place well, having spent the better part of a lifetime exploring it, ruminating on it, and writing about it. The prose in this finely produced volume is as graceful as it is pellucid, and so are the book’s illustrations by Valerie P. Cohen, the author’s wife, who is as much a presence in these pages as the granite is. Cézanne once remarked, “The landscape thinks itself in me.” If the landscape of Tuolumne thinks itself in anybody, then certainly it must be Michael Cohen. Granite and Grace is ample testimony to that.

The 27 essays that comprise Cohen’s book are presented as attempts to get at the meaning—however contingent it might be—of the writer’s relationship to granite. As is the case with all human relationships, this one is an affair of the imagination. “Granite,” writes Cohen, “is always an objective correlative for something else.” Thus each essay provides a different take on the same subject. The longest and most philosophical of these meditations is the title chapter, wherein Cohen artfully teases out the possibility of granite and grace being in cahoots. “I believe there is something one might call grace, born out of features of this cold rock…. Grace goes beyond the agility of bodies. Grace offers permission—a privilege or concession that cannot be claimed as a right. One climbs by grace, but of what? To speak of grace, I enter a difficult terrain that seethes with religious ideas and doctrines. I will do it nevertheless. Everyone lives by illusions.” And proceed he does into that difficult terrain, but not without the etiquette and celerity of intelligence that are the hallmarks of all his work.

Thus the reader arrives safely on the other side, I for one having gained a bit of wisdom for following the author’s lead. Cohen writes: “I find my commerce with rock, especially granite, best transacted without conversation, because I desire something concrete and immediate, not articulate and meaningful.” The lure of Tuolumne rock, the appeal of walking on it, of ascending and descending it, of lying on it, perchance to dream. The suitor of granite well knows the “austere and lonely offices” of such a love. “Granite,” Cohen observes near the end of the book, “is silent, steadfast, everlasting. Granite is without brother or sister, kinship, relationship, love, friendship, or happiness, yet provides a kind of peace because it is not of me, or with me. Granite does not care and does not expect care. It resides at the edge of everything and nothing.”

To modify the proverb: Well goes the book where wisdom counsels. Granite and Grace is just such a book: an epic read and a firm hold one can trust.
 
– John P. O'Grady