Raise your hand if you know where the Northeast Kingdom is.

I didn't know until a few years ago. Actually, I know where northeastern Vermont is; I just had no idea that it carried that enigmatic title. And I still am not entirely certain why it does. Nor, apparently, is there consensus among Vermonters, including David Mamet, whose book South of the Northeast Kingdom is a series of musings that help define the intellectual and endearingly parochial culture of that portion of the Green Mountain State that doesn't have monarchial aspirations or pretense. Collectively, the musings are an ode to Mamet's adopted, adapted home state and to its history, seasons and self-consciously suspicious denizens.

The writing of this book amounts to spurts of philosophy, nostalgia, biography, anecdote, autobiography, humor, introspection and circumspection. It has no discernible tempo and, if there is a plot, it may have something to do with the witness and unintended metaphor of an evanescent mountain lion. Some of the meditative spurts border on the existential.

Of pastoral Vermont, Mamet writes that it is "various, remote, interesting, challenging." Vermonters, he notes, are necessarily philosophic, exercising the "practicable wisdom of living in a harsh world." They embrace mudrooms (air locks between the world and the house?surely there's a metaphor there), the antiquity and functionality of wood stoves, virgin wool, things that start with the word "maple," dowsing, unpretentious artisans, and hunting.

"One must be smart to hunt successfully. The deer are smart. The quiescent, slaughter-tropic cartoon creature is a down-country fiction. The successful hunter does not boast his triumph over nature, rather he acknowledges his acceptance of its laws, and endeavors to better understand them."

Mamet musings are accomplished with an economy of words, a conspicuous Vermont trait?"Here, we are expected to say what we mean." The book itself is a mere 152 pages. I found something worthwhile at every turn.

I didn't read South of the Northeast Kingdom with any intention to review it. I submit this review because the book is a terrific read. And, I just was in Vermont, a week before the sugar maples turned psychedelic. Even without the autumn kaleidoscope, all of the state?Kingdom and elsewhere?is a stunning part of the universe. The people I met there are content and friendly, and I experienced none of their fabled reserve. But, then again, I was a tourist for all they knew and with money for all they knew, and they may have been exercising their practicable wisdom for all I knew.

Subtly, charmingly, pridefully, author Mamet writes about a state of grace, called Vermont. It is uniquely American, not unlike its history, seasons and self-consciously suspicious denizens. By his observations and associations and with his facile pen, he helps preserve of the place what the chance of time may not.

South of the Northeast Kingdom (2002) was published by the National Geographic Society. It retails for $20.00.

(You can put your hand down?. OK, Vermonters, Simon says?.)