Master of the short form: 'A passing west' an invigorating, thought-provoking mix of personal, journalistic essays

If you’re unfamiliar with Dagoberto Gilb’s writing, now is an excellent time to get started. Pick up his latest nonfiction collection, which is titled “a passing west: Essays from the Borderlands.”

It’s an invigorating, thought-provoking mix of 25 personal and journalistic essays, most previously published. Gilb’s writing style is engaging, earthy.

Master of the short form: 'A passing west' an invigorating, thought-provoking mix of personal, journalistic essays

One of my favorite essays in the collection is “Las Milpas en Iowa.” Or, in English, “The Cornfields in Iowa.” Obviously, it’s not set in the borderlands. Far from it.

There’s so much going on in the essay — changing scenes, points of view, pop-up sidebars — without losing the reader.

Gilb tells you how he came to write the essay. He was invited by the editor of the anthology “State by State” to look at where he, the editor, was from — Iowa. Gilb was thrilled to be asked to write it because he had once dreamed of doing a long takeout on the subject of corn.

Here is Gilb on board a small regional jet out of a Dallas-Fort Worth airport headed for Iowa to research his journalistic piece.

He introduces readers to a few of his fellow passengers. One big guy seated next to Gilb is maybe six-foot-five, 250 pounds at least. He’s healthy, not fat. And he’s friendly.

He’s reading USA Today. That leads Gilb to comment that reading the newspaper isn’t terribly taxing, though there’s a great deal to read inside its many sections.

Then Gilb ponders: “… at least he’s reading, that skill becoming more and more rarefied.”

Which triggers a question for Gilb from this reviewer about the decline in the reading public. Gilb’s reply: “I’m astounded (that fewer people are reading today). I think it’s because of the smartphone. A paragraph looks like a page. Two paragraphs? I can’t write all of that,” he kids.

Gilb is crazy for reading, for books. It’s a recurring theme.

Back to observing fellow passengers. Gilb spies another guy so large the author can’t understand how he doesn’t make the small plane dip. Then he espies other passengers he says aren’t so terribly small for the small plane.

Then begins references to corn and, naturally, tortillas.

Gilb tells a friend who is picking him up at the airport: “El águila ha tortillado.” This is Gilb announcing in a funny, foodie way in Spanish that his plane has landed. Flat. Like a tortilla.

Gilb reminds himself and readers that this essay is about corn grown in Iowa, about the corn tortilla, and about the people working in Iowa’s cornfields. They are Mexicans.

Next a brief lesson from the author in prehistory: “They (the Mexican farmhands) are from the civilization that worshiped the corn plant as a god — in some regions, such as what became known as Guatemala, the God, the image of God — and they are from the soil and nation where this corn we have all learned to eat and to feed as grain for healthy livestock was first developed and harvested 5,000 years ago.”

That lesson is jammed inside one sentence. Like a sopaipilla stuffed with words.

Gilb introduces national and international politics as reasons why Mexican nationals are working in Iowa. In short, it’s where the jobs are. And they’re welcomed there.

That segues, unexpectedly, into a step-by-step explanation of the making of the commercial tortilla.

The essay suddenly jumps to sociology. A look at what Gilb calls the most Mexican neighborhood of Des Moines, Iowa. It’s some blocks east of the golden-domed Iowa State Capitol building.

Further into the essay, Gilb asks Tom Bell, the owner of the cornfield he’s writing about, why he doesn’t hire illegals. Not worth the risk, Bell says. Why not Americans? He can’t find them.

Returning to Gilb’s earlier comment about why more people are reading less. Maybe Gilb is just the right author for them. He’s the master of the short form, nonfiction and fiction.

At about the same time “a passing west” was published by the University of New Mexico Press’ imprint High Road Books, Gilb’s newest book of short fiction, “New Testaments: Stories,” has come out from City Lights.

The 74-year-old Gilb grew up in Los Angeles and El Paso. These days he divides his time between Austin, Texas, and Mexico City.

Most recently he was visiting Houston to speak about both of the books to the organization Nuestra Palabra. “It’s been around for about 20 years. It promotes Latino/Chicano writers,” Gilb said.

Despite his lifelong love of writing in the short form and his aversion to long fiction, Gilb is currently working on two novels.

One of them he wants to set in Mexico City. The other, he said, is “the big one. I’m trying to make it to 400 pages.” Gilb’s writings have appeared in, among other publications, The New Yorker and Harper’s, and his work has been featured in Best American Essays and O. Henry Prize Stories.

Los Angeles author/journalist Hector Tobar wrote a blurb for the back cover of “a passing west.” Tobar calls Gilb “a national treasure” and “an unstoppable Latino literary force of nature.”