The Redwood Coast

Volume 12, Number 2 Review Spring 2010 A Publication of Friends of Coast Community Library in Cooperation with Coast Observer

PLACE & People Shadow Grounds

Julian Hoffman

t was that time again; each year it occurred as an unexpected grace note, Ia sudden flourish to accompany the slow fading of summer, like the lifting of haze from the lake, the leaving of birds. Increasingly, though, it was a quieter affair, signaled by the heaving chorus of fewer and fewer animals. The Sarakatsani were on the move again, bound for their winter quarters, and they were taking with them the cows, goats and sheep that con- stitute their livelihood. The fully loaded trucks and trailers had wound their way down the frosted mountain valley early that morning, and were now paused in our village square: there were last goodbyes

to be said, wishes for a safe winter, a

mick a coffee for the road. While some of the Ad Terry drivers mingled around their trucks, smok- ing cigarettes or checking oil levels and brake lines, the deep moans and tremulous lowing of the animals rose and fell like a collective breath. The warmth of their The Architecture of Pelicans jostling bodies materialized through the slatted sides of the trailers as a thin film A vertical walk on the cattle ranch of cloud. The air was rife with the reek of herds. The Sarakatsani are transhumant Carolyn Cooke shepherds, pastoralists who move with the turning of the seasons, journeying t begins, of course, with cows. back and forth with their animals between defiantly vertical, creating depth abruptly, sheer walls 30 or 40 feet high and slick You walk the rungs of the iron summer and winter grounds. Tradition- where before all attention had been, as it with waves. But there is, as there almost cow-grate, slip between the fence ally they wintered their large flocks on usually is, on horizontal movement—ve- always is, some man-made artifact of iron and the gate into the zone of Black the plains and coastal flats of central or locity, trajectory. or wood impaling the air. Angus and Holsteins, the tags southern Greece, and migrated on foot to A squadron of pelicans flies architec- This is the real Pacific rim, the jagged, Iin their ears twitching as the herd turns turally just beyond the headlands, honing crumbling edge of the continent. The reach summer pastures in the mountains toward you, stolid and inscrutable. Some- of the north. The earthy tumult of those themselves into a sharpened line. You waves toss ionized particles up the walls times, they run. It is a decision not made marching herds was replaced long ago by wonder whether taking flight is the pelican of the sandstone cliffs in which twenty lightly—cows prefer rumination to sudden the convenience of trucks. Many of these metaphor for going deep—an avid, up- or so cormorants are nesting, their long action—but like any overly domesticated vehicles have now also been silenced ward plunge into the sublime. black swanlike necks rubbing and curling mammal, they’re prone to small anxieties as the Sarakatsani become increasingly At some point the rear pelican moves against each other. You walk danger- and panics. settled in their lowland villages. Despite to the front and the front pelican moves ously close to the edge, spying, testing, The earth rumbles, and the herd high- this, a few small communities can still to the rear. The bird at the front uses reminding yourselves that the ground tails it across the field, usually in the most be found on the high summer meadows, the most energy, so the stronger pelicans you walk on is temporary, these arrange- direct path away from you, but sometimes continuing their centuries-old custom of agree to trade off. They know how to use ments—conservancy lands, towns, cities, not. Sometimes the herd runs beside you, calling two places home. their bodies to create a spontaneous aero- states and nations—are temporary. You eyes wide, unable to correct, and lands, dynamic structure in the air; they know walk along the bluffs then peer respect- sullen and embarrassed, in a grove of I have often wondered about how to flow. In flight, the birds are at fully into the actual sinkhole, an inverted scrub pine just where you’re headed. the nature of home. I was born in the home, maybe even most at home, in their cone in the ground perhaps 35 feet across. After a while, when the cows have northeast of England when my parents most familiar structure. Such surges of The sinkhole is too steep to climb into, so arranged themselves at some mutually were in the process of emigrating to Can- consciousness in a group require planning, it’s impossible to determine what kind of satisfactory distance, you let the dogs off ada. As a result, I spent the first few years communication, subtle agreements like opening or pothole leads to the bottom, the leash. So much open space brings of my life seesawing between our native the cows make when they decide when and where the “bottom” might be—an on a kind of madness and the dogs run in port town and the north shore of Lake and where to run. underground world of hollow galleries, wide, whizzing arcs that blur at the edges. Ontario, while they searched for work and The pelicans fly above the caves and stalactites, stalagmites, siphons and slen- You walk along the barbed-wire fence a place of possibilities. Eventually they the rock arch and the sea stack, a mesa der, sandy supporting columns harassed past the old AT&T housing that looks over settled near Toronto, where I grew up, of shale perhaps an acre around. The by subterranean streams constantly the trans-Pacific cable to Hawaii, already comfortable with that placid landscape. sea stack seems marooned, impossible to straining against the membrane that holds talking intensely about the deep subjects Soon after finishing university, though, I reach, too tall and vertical to climb, the back the Pacific. You might be able to —sex at midlife, how best to work, long, felt an overwhelming urge to go back, to wriggle down or fall, Alice-like, into this involved stories about the past (childhood, return to the country of my birth. It was a other world, but you might not come back men, mistakes, choices, witchy coinci- The story drops land I was familiar with from the accents again; the whole Army Corps of Engineers dences) or stories about people you know and recollections of my parents and their suddenly, like a body could not save you. that unravel like 19th-century novels, or transplanted friends, through brief sum- as if you were Freud or Jung, and your mer holidays and the doting attention of from a plane, defi- hat we think of as “underground” is subjects were splayed on a récamier like relatives. In the end, though, I was drawn Wwell within the area of the Earth’s Manet’s Odalisque, prepared for intense antly vertical, creat- back by something incalculably smaller crust. Beneath are less hospitable regions: inspection or analysis. The walk, with and more difficult to define: the resonance ing depth abruptly, sedimentary rock, metamorphic rock, talk, takes an hour and a half. If you of place. the granite layer, the basaltic layer, and were different people, content with one Certain places follow us, like shad- where before all deeper, hotter places approaching the pleasure at a time, you might walk in ows. At times they lengthen and stretch earth’s core—the sun at the center. Walk- a companionable silence, humbly (or attention had been, implausibly tall until they tower above our ing now across the clifftops you feel at the arrogantly) letting in the visions and the lives, or slant decisively away as if trying top of the world, though sea level is just salt air, allowing yourselves to be passive, as it usually is, on to flee. Occasionally they appear not to be one precipice away. Seventy-five hundred penetrated. But you are greedy girls—you there at all—so exact is the overlay of self horizontal move- miles distant Everest soars above us, walk and talk. Your goal is to cover and place, so precise the meridian sun. dwarfed in turn and immediately by the ground—skim a certain surface of the ment—velocity, Whether seen or not they are undoubtedly dimensions of the troposphere, the strato- world, and at the same time go deep. The close, tethered by subtle threads spool- sphere, the mesosphere, the thermosphere, story is, for this purpose, a sinkhole. It trajectory. drops suddenly, like a body from a plane, See shadow page 4 See pelicans page 8 Page  The Redwood Coast Review Spring 2010 editor’s note Salinger’s Masterpiece: 50 years of silence

Stephen Kessler

olden Caulfield is a sensitive, sympathetic young man, and The Catcher in the Rye is, ac- An exceptional artist, cording to critical consensus, among the more perfectly a popular artist, an Hmade works in American . When I artist who in some way read it, some 45 years ago, I was already out of high school but not what I’d call a mature enchants us, we often reader, so while I could tell there was something different about this book—about find a way, through the voice of the narrator and the author’s the very intensity of use of language—I can’t say I was all that captivated by it. I would probably appreci- our attention, to tear ate it much more now as an extraordinary piece of writing, but as an 18- or 19-year- to pieces, as the old aspiring poet I confess I didn’t connect maenads did to poor with Holden Caulfield. Salinger’s protagonist, with his New Orpheus. Surely York City Upper East Side prep school neurotic insights into the difficulties of Salinger could see growing up, is akin to Woody Allen’s later this coming. series of lovable schlemiels, put-upon whiners who speak for that part of us all. I don’t care for that aspect of Woody Allen, rough equivalent of a valley girl’s today) and even at 18 I didn’t especially relate to and in the mysterious rhythms and stylistic Holden’s problems. If I’d read the book in precision of the author’s other fictions, sev- high school, maybe it would have spoken to eral of which I read in part out of curiosity me more meaningfully, but I was so clueless about what made this writer such a subject at Holden’s age that his monologue would of public interest, I could sense something more likely have gone totally over my head. slightly beyond my grasp as a reader but The fictional characters I took to in those engaging nonetheless—a feeling there was formative literary years were people like something going on in Salinger’s sentences Joyce’s Stephen Dedalus in A Portrait of the beneath the surface of the narrative, some Artist as a Young Man and Thomas Wolfe’s subterranean sensibility, an eccentric, inter- Eugene Gant in Look Homeward, Angel esting way of perceiving the world. and ’s Augie March and even Critical response to the later books was

Jack Kerouac’s pill-popping pot-smoking mixed, and according to some recent com- Simon Fieldhouse beer-swilling bipolar Sal Paradise of On the mentators the author was so sensitive to Road—though I myself was a rather con- negative criticism that he retreated perma- exceptional artist, a popular artist, an artist hen Salinger died in January I was servative lad still living with my parents in nently to his New Hampshire hideaway who in some way enchants us, we often find Wstruck by the extent of the coverage, Beverly Hills. I wasn’t really that interested and was never heard from again. Appar- a way, through the very intensity of our at- as if all the pent-up curiosity about him had in complaining about how “phony” adults ently, according to several stories in the tention, to tear to pieces, as the maenads did suddenly been released in an orgy of over- were or how soulless high school had been. days following his death, Salinger was no to poor Orpheus. due celebrity-lust. National Public Radio’s What inspired me were lyrical expressions recluse but a regular presence in his small Surely Salinger could see this coming. flagship program, All Things Considered, of the romantic spirit and visions of adven- out-of-the-way community, using the public Philip Roth, in Zuckerman Unbound, the made his death the top story on their 5 ture and travels in the magic of the English library, attending church suppers, shopping novel that chronicles in fictive form the o’clock newscast and devoted a whole 15- language. for groceries and generally enjoying the repercussions in the author’s life from the minute segment to the author and his work Here, at the level of language, is where I anonymity of the average citizen (whatever phenomenal success of Portnoy’s Com- and people’s memory of and commentary remember Salinger speaking to me in a way and whoever that might be). But his neigh- plaint, exposes the social ordeal and psychic on them. I can’t think of any other writer in that was compelling. In the talky American bors respected and protected his privacy, cost of sudden fame. , in the my lifetime—not Norman Mailer, not Saul vernacular of Holden Caulfield’s voice (the and he not only refused interviews and first volume of his Chronicles, tells of the Bellow, not (I wasn’t pay- avoided photographers (like the West Coast incredible inconveniences and frightening ing attention to such things in 1961 when writer to whom he is sometimes compared invasions of privacy attendant to stardom. Hemingway blew his brains out)—whose in this regard, the elusive Thomas Pynchon) Both Roth and Dylan wanted to be famous death provoked such a media frenzy. The Redwood Coast but ceased completely to write for publi- and have somehow, despite the hassles Of course it was mostly The Catcher in cation. This, to me, is the most fascinat- of their renown, gone on heroically to the Rye that everyone rushed to remember, ing thing about J. D. Salinger. Because evade their admirers and continue to create how that book had been a milestone in their however exceptional his fiction may be, his through the power of their own genius, lives or at least in their reading experi- Review renunciation of a writing “career” is even setting their own artistic agenda and letting ence. But does anyone really believe that Stephen Kessler farther off the charts. people take it or leave it. But not everyone such a fuss would have been made over Editor has such inner resources. Perhaps Salinger the author’s death if he had continued to ost writers, amateur or professional, felt that he couldn’t withstand the insanity publish for the last five decades? Would the Barbara L. Baer Mfiction or nonfiction, published or and absurdity and distraction and just plain mystique of his genius have been enhanced Daniel Barth unpublished, are motivated in part by the stress of being a popular icon. or diminished by a series of variously Daniela Hurezanu desire to communicate with others and to Think of Greta Garbo’s retreat into quiet acclaimed, variously popular books? Or Jonah Raskin be recognized for their accomplishments. Contributing Editors privacy. Or Marlon Brando’s refusal of would he, like so many other big-name writ- Surely Salinger too started out this way— the role of movie star, trading his gorgeous ers—even the best of them—have simply why else would have published all those young body and glamorous persona for the become part of our cultural landscape or Linda Bennett stories in The New Yorker? And I would Production Director fat-armored carapace of an aging troglo- ambient media noise like, say, Joyce Carol guess that he enjoyed the success of The dyte. Even Arthur Rimbaud, who famously Oates, to be acknowledged, even praised Catcher in the Rye and the cultural prestige The Redwood Coast Review is published renounced poetry at age 19 (before he was and celebrated and awarded, but not seen as that came with it—at least for a while. But quarterly (January, April, July and October) ever famous), had the good sense to die in any sort of extraordinary character. by Friends of Coast Community Library in evidently fame, as so many accidental or Africa before he was 40 rather than stay Silence, it turns out, was Salinger’s most cooperation with the Independent Coast incidental celebrities have learned, was around Paris to be treated as the cultural brilliant career move and most interesting Observer. The opinions expressed in these more than the writer bargained for; was in property of France and its intellectual elite. creation. However exquisitely written his pages are those of the individual writers and fact a major pain in the ass, and so, when The strange thing about Salinger, as far books may be, there are other comparable do not necessarily reflect the views of FoCCL, the critical tide began turning against him, the ICO or the advertisers. Contents copyright as we know, is that he continued writing accomplishments in American literature and his readers asked him to please repeat but refused to publish. He is said to have that never received this kind of attention. © 2010 The Redwood Coast Review. All rights himself and give them more of what he’d revert to authors and artists on publication. explained that, having abandoned the mar- Whatever may turn up in his unpublished done already, he decided he’d had enough ketplace, he wrote for his own pleasure. If papers—and I’m certain the predators of the We welcome your submissions. Please and he disappeared. send essays, reviews, fiction, poetry and letters readers were eager to see what he would do literary-industrial complex are on the hunt for Most writers don’t have such strength of to the Editor, The Redwood Coast Review, c/o ICO, next as a writer, too bad for them. Able to anything they can find and market—Salinger PO Box 1200, Gualala, CA 95445. Manuscripts character. Most popular artists—with sig- live comfortably thanks to the royalties from succeeded, through his very invisibility, in should be typed, double-spaced, with the nificant exceptions—are taken by the siren Catcher, he cut himself off from the life making himself an almost monumental liter- author’s name, address, phone and email at song of their fans’ praise and strive to please now aspired to by most contemporary writ- ary figure. Offered the job of professional the top of the first page. Postal mail only. A those clamoring multitudes whose repeat self-addressed, stamped envelope is required ers—the life of public appearances, book author, Salinger, like Melville’s Bartleby the business is paying their bills. Many artists signings, interviews, author photos, award Scrivener, preferred not to, maintaining an for our reply. discover at some point that this is a losing On the Web: stephenkessler.com/rcr.html ceremonies, publishing deals, appreciative integrity of reticence that’s hard for most of game, that an adoring public can easily turn readers, star-struck fans, movie deals, audio us to comprehend. And that, I would argue, Subscription information: See page 9. into one that devours its objects of adoration Friends of Coast Community Library is a books, video books, Internet books, literary more than anything he wrote, is what made nonprofit, tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization. and revels in their destruction. The famous festivals, creative-writing programs, writ- his death such a big deal. Tax-deductible donations may be sent to are craved for what they give us, the thrill of ers’ conferences, writerly rivalries, all the Coast Community Library, PO Box 808, Point their talent, the beauty of their art, but when excitements of the public stage. Like other Arena, CA 95468. The library is located at they fall the masses take perverse pleasure wounded yet tough-minded creators (Emily 225 Main Street in Point Arena. Telephone Stephen Kessler is the editor and principal in the spectacle, reassured that the gifted Dickinson, Robinson Jeffers), he declined to 707.882.3114. and the brilliant and the lucky and the loved translator of The Sonnets by Jorge Luis Thank you for your support! be an entertainer and went his own way into Borges (Penguin). He is the author of The are punished for their achievement and are a welcoming and welcome obscurity. really no different from the rest of us. An Mental Traveler, a novel. Spring 2010 The Redwood Coast Review Page  prizes And the Winner is... On the and its recipients Daniela Hurezanu

very year I expect the announcement of the Herta Müller been a victim of one of the regimes American Nobel Prize for Literature with the curiosity and intellectuals are more familiar with, say the Iranian regime, excitement of a spectator at the track: by now it The Land of Green Plums is or a victim of Pinochet, or had she been a Holocaust survi- has become evident that this is foremost a po- one of the greatest books on vor—that is, had her suffering belonged to one of the brands litical prize, and only secondarily a literary one. Americans value—fewer people would have questioned the EThis has been clear for quite a while if one looks at the list dictatorship I have ever read. award even if they had never heard of her. Like everything of recent recipients, of whom the majority are not only very else in this society, suffering must have a brand name, a leftist, but often Marxist (Jean-Marie Le Clézio, Elfriede Müller’s experience comes stamp of approval on it, and belong to a category we are Jelinek, ). But even those who are more at the through by way of the intense familiar with. center of the political spectrum are associated with some kind of political cause—see Orhan Pamuk, who got the prize feeling of alienation emanating f American reactions to the news of Müller’s prize can be after his statement about the and at a Iqualified as provincial, unfortunately the reactions com- time when the Western world was desperately looking for a from every single line. ing from her birthplace aren’t any more enlightened. In my “rational” voice from the Islamic world. Internet search, virtually every Romanian who discusses her Pamuk’s political involvement was minimal, and he these authors in their original language). When a member prize is first of all concerned with the impact of “Romania’s himself has declared numerous times that he is not interested of the Nobel committee (infamously) stated that they aren’t image” as a result of this prize. The obsession with its im- in politics, but our thirst for such a voice was so strong that considering an American writer because Americans don’t age is a specifically Romanian problem. Like other small in the end Pamuk was propelled to international stardom and participate in the dialogue of cultures, this is what he meant. nations with a history people had endured rather than made, today he is one of the most-read authors of non-Western ori- The members of the jury may be Eurocentric and anti-Amer- Romanians see plots against them everywhere. If Herta gin. Some might say that this doesn’t really matter as long ican—as most American journalists hastily concluded after Müller was awarded the Nobel Prize it must be because she as we are dealing with a great author—but are we? Now, said something bad about Ro- before I make the following statement I have to breathe mania. Well, she did: most of deeply because I find myself here in a position I was in only her novels are about the com- after the release of Seabiscuit. Everybody (of all political munist dictatorship in Roma- persuasions and cultural backgrounds) just loved Seabiscuit. nia, arguably one of the worst I had to see it in spite of my apprehensions, and what I saw of the 20th century. The fact confirmed what I anticipated: a typical cheesy, cliché-ridden that, although at origin from movie at one of Hollywood’s highest moments of self-indul- Romania, she is ethnically gent mediocrity. German and writes in German I confess that I didn’t get too far when I tried to read puts her in an ambivalent Pamuk’s , but what I read made me think of position vis-à-vis her former Seabiscuit. It may be unfair to put Pamuk in the same cat- fellow citizens. She was “one egory with Hollywood directors or producers—after all, they of them” while at the same come from entirely different worlds—but it is certainly not time an Other, which makes my intention to imply that he has the moral ambiguity of the her highly suspect. But what latter category. My comparison is simply made on esthetic makes her even more suspect

grounds. We all have our tastes, and though mine are rather is the fact that she was one of men eclectic, one kind of novel I have little patience for is what o the very few dissidents in a I would call “the literate housewife novel,” that is, a novel country in which, according

written for a more sophisticated audience than a romance to some statistics, one in four

r st k E as n o novel, but which displays certain characteristics that usually J people might have been an satisfy the same audience: twisted plots, many characters, informant. What makes her an atmosphere of “mystery,” a “colorful (or should I say (a) suspect was the very fact ‘lush’—a word that seems to be favored by many review- that she refused to collaborate ers?) landscape,” and of course, an archetypal love story. with the secret police. Not What I read of My Name Is Red made me think of a big that the Romanian people wedding cake in which the baker has thrown all the colors loved the secret police. But at his disposal. True, the harmony of colors is a question when you are a coward and of esthetic systems, that is, a combination of red, green and yellow may be considered gaudy in one system, while in an- your neighbor isn’t, the only other one it is simply “vibrant.” In my system it is definitely way of protecting the image gaudy. But maybe I am unfair with Pamuk because what I you have of yourself is by dislike even more than My Name Is Red (and it is possible convincing yourself that that I might find his other works entirely different, since he your neighbor’s behavior seems very versatile) are his fans, who are often in love with is grounded not in a higher a certain kind of exoticism—the world as a “picturesque” dignity and ethics but maybe bazaar. in a hidden agenda. Of the Nobel Prize recipients in recent years, Pamuk, Do- Of course, some Roma- ris Lessing and Harold Pinter are probably the most famous nians are happy that Herta ones, and Pamuk is certainly the most read. Of these, Pinter Müller won the Nobel, but too was awarded the Nobel prize very likely for political they are happy for reasons reasons—not that he didn’t deserve it; he is a great writer, that have nothing to do with but he was awarded the prize after he became a vocal critic her: maybe this prize will of the war in Iraq, and his acceptance speech is probably one now put our literature on the of the most anti-American texts ever written. radar; maybe now everyone

Vincent Bruno will understand how much we Nobel Prize winners (clockwise from top left) Herta Müller, Jean-Marie Le Clézio, he choice of Herta Müller this past year followed a suffered under communism; , Harold Pinter Tpattern of selection we are now accustomed to: it was maybe now our image will easy to make the connection between the celebration of 20 change. years since the fall of communism and a Romanian-born hearing that ungenerous remark—but as far as the “dialogue “I didn’t win anything. My books won this prize,” Mül- author who was persecuted by the Ceausescu regime and of cultures” is concerned they do have a point. ler said to the press shortly after the Nobel announcement. emigrated to West Germany, where she became one of its So, when Herta Müller was awarded the Nobel Prize this Yet almost no one seems to be interested in the books most prestigious contemporary writers. Like Jelinek and Le past October, the word “obscure” was uttered again. Noth- themselves. What most people care about is the status Clézio, Müller was relatively unknown in the English-speak- ing surprising about that. But other words were uttered as conferred by this “literary” prize, what the prize could do ing world. Which, as far as the English-speaking world is well, words and statements that deserve some scrutiny. Of for them, or in what way it conforms to their political as- concerned, means that they must be unknown everywhere: her background, most people on the Internet seemed to focus sumptions. “obscure,” as each of them was described in various publica- on the fact that her father had been an SS officer, and were indignant that a person with such a background could get the tions, and especially in chat rooms on the Internet. confess that, although I knew Herta Müller was very Nobel Prize, as if Herta Müller should pay for her father’s In reality, often someone’s obscurity is simply our respected in Germany, I hadn’t read her until after she sins. The fact that she had, in fact, strongly criticized the I ignorance. For example, it was amusing to see Le Clézio de- won the prize. The Land of Green Plums, first published scribed as “obscure,” when in Europe and the French-speak- political and moral complacency of her German ancestors, in English in 1996 by Metropolitan Books, and reissued ing world his books are annoyingly ubiquitous. I remember or that she had lost her job at a Romanian university because in 1998 by Northwestern, is one of the greatest books on attending two Francophone conferences several years ago, she refused to collaborate with the secret police and subse- and in both places about half of the books in the book quently had to work in a factory, or that she was harassed dictatorship I have ever read. It is also one of the most exhibit were by him, and the proportion of the conference and threatened until she left the country and immigrated to authentic books. What do I mean by that? It would have papers on him was close to that. In fact, if there is anything West Germany, were things that most people either were not been easy for this book, inspired by the author’s personal that can be said about Le Clézio it is that his name is every- familiar with or didn’t care much about. trauma, to fall into the confessions-of-a-victim mood that where: he is the darling of French departments, but he is also Having lived for a quarter of a century in a communist characterizes a certain kind of literature today. But Herta well represented in European airports (and this was before country (Romania), I believe that this attitude expresses Müller’s style couldn’t be more different. Her personal he was awarded the Nobel Prize!). several things: first of all, the fact that, in spite of the experience comes through not by way of a revelation of a Now, regarding the question of obscurity in general, this Reaganite rhetoric embraced by most Americans (“commu- specific event, but from the intense feeling of alienation is a subject on which, unfortunately, not many Americans nism is evil,” etc.), very few people in this country (and this emanating from every single line. It is as if the book had are qualified to pass judgment. Since in this country only 2 includes intellectuals) know anything about what it meant been written by someone whose heart was ripped out of to 3 percent of the published books are in translation, and of to live under communism. The knowledge most Americans her chest, pounded with a hammer, and then put back in a these, less than 1 percent is literature—a percentage at least have about communism’s evil resides in a couple of slogans way that barely holds the body together. Every single sen- twenty times smaller than that in most other industrialized and, as the above situation proves, this ignorance doesn’t countries—it follows that most readers are not in a posi- trigger a desire to learn more about something they are so tion to judge who is obscure or not (unless they can read confident in labeling. Second, I am convinced that had See winner page 4 Page  The Redwood Coast Review Spring 2010 shadow from page 1 books Angling for Brautigan

Jonah Raskin

Downstream From Trout Fishing in America: A Memoir of Richard Brautigan by Keith Abbott Astrophil Press (2009), 169 pages

he 1960s counterculture killed the culture of the book. That’s what TLawrence Ferlinghetti, the poet, bookstore owner and publisher of City Lights, would tell me over coffee in North Beach. When I begged to differ, he qualified his remark. “There were two countercul- tures,” he said. “One of them was literate; the other didn’t care about books or reading

Julian Hoffman and just wanted to listen to rock and roll and watch movies, stoned.” Well, yes, Ferlinghetti had a point and ing us forever back, either in memory or meticulous ritual and gracious hospitality still does. Hippies were often aliterate; they actuality, even dreams, to landscapes that that characterize many Balkan houses. The knew how to read but chose not to. Still, Richard Brautigan articulate something of our selves. entire mountainside was their hearth. in the 1960s and 70s, you could walk into Our hosts were probably in their mid to We were on holiday in the north of an urban commune, a head shop or a rural Abbott argues that Brautigan had a late fifties, and had been grazing their flocks England when I first glimpsed what would encampment and find hippies reading—usu- powerful imagination, and that he was a on these same summer slopes for as long become my own shadowing landscape. A ally short books, with short sentences, such craftsman, too, who cared about language as they could remember. Twice a year they flat gray sky sheeted above the mysterious, as Richard Brautigan’s Trout Fishing in and revised his work. Brautigan’s short sto- set out to cross half a country in concert treeless moors as we drove a narrow road America or A Confederate General from Big ries, which were published in Rolling Stone with the seasons—both directions bring- in North Yorkshire. On either side of us the Sur. They also enjoyed reading those books. in 1970, were brilliant, Abbott insists. But ing them closer to home. They said their heather unrolled like bolts of rough, dark Keith Abbott did. he also argues that the quality of Brautigan’s hearts belonged to the mountains, though, cloth, its dull purple flowers scattered like Now a writing teacher at Naropa Univer- prose quickly declined, and that he turned a fall of ripened berries. I remember the sity in Boulder, Colorado, and a longtime into a bad writer, and a victim of his own pockets of spectral mist that dissolved the Giorgos and Anto- poet, Abbott has written a lyrical memoir success. Moreover, ironically, the hippies, second they were seen; the solitary, wind- about Brautigan, whom he first met in 1966 who had helped to boost Brautigan’s fame, stooped shrubs; the beautifully forlorn light. nia weren’t passing in San Francisco. Downstream from Trout soon gave up on him and it wasn’t long be- I was almost twelve that summer, and while through. Despite the Fishing in America is an affectionate tale of fore he complained, along with Ferlinghetti, I stared through the windows transfixed, male friendship, and the devastating effects “They don’t read,” a remark Abbott repeats in the land began tilting me away from the seasonal nature of of fame. It also offers an endearing portrait these pages. He adds, “What he really meant enclosed space of the car toward a different of San Francisco, the city that was at the was that they no longer read him.” kind of interior: luminous, revelatory, con- their dwellings they epicenter of the hippie flowering in letters, This memoir offers emotionally charged fiding. As I watched the ghostly moorland had welcomed us with music and politics. Abbott includes the descriptions of Brautigan’s life in San dimple away into nothingness, eventually poets and artists of the era—Allen Ginsberg, Francisco, and a heartfelt portrait of him as merging with the solemn proclamation of the same meticulous Ron Loewinsohn, Jack Spicer, Stan Rice a young man growing up in Tacoma, Wash- sky, I became aware of a close and immedi- and Stan’s wife, Anne, author of Interview ington, where he was physically beaten and ate attachment, a need to return. The place ritual and gracious with the Vampire—and the era’s radical emotionally abused by a series of stepfathers. had been sealed like a secret in an undis- hospitality of many groups, including the Diggers, who recre- Abbott shows how much of Brautigan’s fic- closed part of me. ated anarchism, and Americanized it. The tion was influenced by his childhood in the Balkan houses. The Diggers also published Brautigan’s work Pacific Northwest. His book does not make I lived on the moors for a short, before he became famous; when he did they exaggerated claims for Brautigan’s artistic ge- but emotionally rich, period of time. entire mountainside dropped him. Fame never sat well with the nius or literary greatness, but it does suggest that readers ought to give Brautigan’s books Although in the end I left them, I think of Diggers. was their hearth. another chance, and to appreciate why they them often and they sustain me still. Instead, The hippie culture helped to create my partner and I made another home, in a were so beloved by hippies, and for a time the Brautigan, and he, in turn, helped to shape anarchist Diggers of the 1960s. village in the mountains of northern Greece. even if the encampment was now only a hippie culture. A bestselling novelist in his A few summers ago a friend and I set off at reminder. A decade earlier and there had day, he paid a heavy price for his popularity dawn to climb amongst those mountains. been as many as sixty or seventy people among the young. New York critics panned Jonah Raskin is the author of American We used the river, which winds between spending the season here; on feast nights his work; Walker Percy parodied it in The Scream: Allen Ginsberg’s “Howl” and the boulders and beech, as our guide. By early musicians played the Sarakatsani songs until New York Times, and Garrison Keillor did Making of the Beat Generation, and For morning we had edged beyond the tree line dawn, while their kinfolk danced beneath an the same in The New Yorker. It was awfully the Hell of It: The Life and Times of Abbie and were walking over pale tussocky earth umbrella of bright stars. I looked around in easy to make fun of Brautigan, and they Hoffman. He teaches at Sonoma State Uni- that sloped sharply toward the rising sun. As the drenching daylight, wondering how far were unfair. versity and is an RCR contributing editor. we rounded a fold in the high grassy hills the raw wails of their clarinets would travel I pointed out the Sarakatsani encampment. in the measureless mountain dark. Home is We stopped to admire it, a rare and unlikely a concordance with place, I saw, as elegant as a simple weave. bloom. The hamlet comprised seven or eight winner from page 3 thatched huts set in a mountainside scrape “Unfortunately there aren’t enough of us as neatly as inlaid stones. The elegant sum- to celebrate now,” said Antonia. tence rings true. There is neither self-pity knows that no one can be good in hell; mer dwellings had been fashioned from “What about your children?” I asked. nor “poeticizing” of the experience, though that’s why uplifting Hollywood films à la tall reeds hauled up from the fringes of the They both looked at me and smiled. nearby lake, and each wicker dome was “Young people want other things,” said the book, translated by Michael Hoff- Spielberg about historical tragedies are encircled by an earthen yard marked out by Giorgos, matter-of-factly. “Our son is man, is written in a style that reads almost so inadequate). Everyone, including the the braiding of thin branches. studying political science at the like poetry. It is written in fragments, victims, wants to hurt the others. Herta While we stood there, a man and woman School of Economics.” which are chronological for the most part, Müller’s world represents one of the most stepped out of their beehive home and be- We raised toasts to each other’s health though in some cases time suddenly goes degraded humanities ever depicted by a gan waving us over. Before we could even and laughed at the strangeness of things. forward or backward. Something specific writer: the slaughterhouse workers drink introduce ourselves we’d been seated at a to Müller’s style, which may make her blood regularly, the town’s demented rough wooden table in their yard, unexpect- Some of the Sarakatsani returned harder to read, is that she doesn’t explain dwarf woman is repeatedly raped without ed guests at a mountain breakfast. Antonia in the following years, but I didn’t see things; she never “analyzes,” she puts anyone paying any attention, the young brought a plate of tomatoes to the table, Giorgos and Antonia again. Each autumn down scenes and impressions, but these are woman who is eventually killed by the followed by cucumbers, olives and creamy there were fewer animals brought down off always meaningful, never simply descrip- secret police goes to the park where she slices of her handmade sheep’s cheese. It the high surrounding slopes, and the village tive. To give one example among many sleeps with a different man every night, the hadn’t been pasteurized yet, and still carried square became a quieter place. As we’d others: when the narrator is a guest in a narrator’s best friend (whose father works the wild, musky tang of the hills in its taste. sat there that morning beneath a pitched friend’s house, the friend’s grandmother for the secret police) accepts the secret Giorgos brought a clear plastic bottle of summer sun, sharing breakfast and listening immediately places a bowl of food before police’s offer to visit her friend in West fiery, grape-distilled spirit, and poured each to the distant meadow-bells of the herds, a her without asking her anything or even Germany and to steal her apartment key. of us a glass. He then withdrew an un- way of life was being whittled down into being introduced: “Her grandmother didn’t The Land of Green Plums is an ex- opened pack of cigarettes from the pocket of memory. A few months further on, with the need my name: she saw a mouth in a face, traordinary novel written by a writer who his shirt; I watched him strip its cellophane first frosts glittering across the hills, our so she gave me soup.” In this simple scene was awarded the highest literary honor, and crumple off the foil, then tease out a hosts would have loaded their animals into we have the essence of a grandmother as a yet whose work is still overlooked and single cigarette so it poked obligingly above trucks, closed up the reed house we had sat woman who feeds any mouth she hap- undervalued. the others when he ceremoniously laid the outside, and then set off down the valley. pens to see. The meaning comes from the As they journeyed south that day over the packet before us on the table. overall sensorial and visual experience— lowland plains the spirit of the mountains There is a tendency to equate shepherd- though, paradoxically, because of the would have stayed quietly close, shadowing ing with rootlessness, the absence of a intense feeling of alienation, the narrator’s them home. RCR contributing editor Daniela Hurezanu is home. What struck me as we sat together sensorial experience often seems to be that the translator, with Stephen Kessler, of Eye- that morning was the realization that Gior- of a living corpse. seas, by Raymond Queneau (Black Widow gos and Antonia weren’t passing through. No one is “good” in this novel (and Press). Despite the seasonal nature of their dwell- Julian Hoffman is a writer and organic- anyone who ever lived under a dictatorship ings they had welcomed us with the same market gardener living in Greece. Spring 2010 The Redwood Coast Review Page  writers & writing More Is More Ed McClanahan’s clear moments Daniel Barth

f Tom Robbins writes the way Dolly Parton looks, as one reviewer has suggested, then Ed McClanahan’s prose resembles Dolly’s more voluptuous sister. McClanahan is the anti-Hemingway, a man who There’s something never met an adjective—or digression, aside, simile, sweet and friendly Iextended metaphor, or play on words—he didn’t like. Here’s a representative passage from his latest book, O the Clear and welcoming about Moment: “It was just at that exact moment, as I was stuffing his prose and his pres- the last bite of my third triangular half of a grilled cheese ence. His mixture of sandwich into my mouth, that I fell utterly and irretrievably in love. Now the attentive reader may have observed that I humor, humility and tended, at that period of my young life, to fall in love rather readily: In addition to the omnipresent Betsy and her bevy pathos is hard to of predecessors there had been, in rapid succession, two or resist. A big part of three teenage Yosemite nymphets, Jayne Mansfield (a mere dalliance), my friend Jay’s lovely sister in Oakland, a couple his appeal is that he more nymphets back in Yosemite, a dark-eyed señorita by the name of Marta in Juárez just three days ago (who, I was to doesn’t come off as an discover a few days later, had presented me with a small but important person but rapidly multiplying family of tiny migrant stowaways), and finally, only fifteen or twenty minutes ago, Mary, the goddess simply as one of the who quite possibly existed only in my own fevered imagina- tion and in the wily machinations of a one-armed, stone-drunk gang, one of us, who Standard Oil distributor from Arbuckle, Oklahoma.” happens to be very McClanahan’s style is a rich mix, no doubt. Take one part Mark Twain, one part American tall-tale tradition and good at telling about one part carnival-barker spiel. Mix with dollops of James Thurber, Lord Buckley, Hunter S. Thompson, Neal Cassady what’s been going on. and . Dose with marijuana, laughing gas, magic mushrooms and Kentucky bourbon. Shake and stir. Pour Ed McClanahan generously. Garnish with mint. I first heard of Ed McClanahan in 1974 when I moved to Palo Alto and rented a room from Evelyn Barnes, a literary I did eventually meet McClanahan, in Louisville in 2003 prose and his presence. His mixture of humor, humility lady with a house full of books. When I told her I was from at an Insomniacathon produced by Ron Whitehead and and pathos is hard to resist. A big part of his appeal is that Kentucky, the first thing she asked was if I knew Ed Mc- Andy Cook at a club called the . Both Ed he doesn’t come off as an important person but simply as Clanahan. I had to admit I had never heard of him. She told and I were among the many writers and musicians invited one of the gang, one of us, who happens to be very good me he was a writer and that she had taken a creative writing to participate. I got a chance to chat with him after he read at telling about what’s been going on. He’s a thoroughly course from him at something called the Mid-Peninsula Free from a book he had just edited, a tribute to his late amigo undeconstructed raconteur who, if he never was really at University of Palo Alto. From the books in that house and Kesey, Spit in the Ocean #7. He was amiable and we talked the Red-Hot Center of American letters (who would want the people I met, I found out more about McClanahan and about writers and California and whatnot. Several months to be?) has nevertheless put together a very respectable other members of “the Kentucky Mafia”—, later he was in California promoting that same book along body of work. His books sit comfortably on my Kentucky and —who had preceded with Kesey’s Jail Journal for which he wrote the Introduc- writers shelf alongside volumes by Robert Penn Warren, me to Palo Alto. tion. I drove to Sebastopol to see Ed and other pranksterish Jesse Stuart, Wendell Berry and others. A few years later I came across a book called One Lord, folk perform skits and readings in the Kesey spirit. I talked One Faith, One Cornbread, edited by McClanahan and Fred with Ed again that night and with Ken Babbs, Mountain ld Ed’s latest book, O the Clear Moment, is another Nelson. It was an anthology of writings by Richard Brauti- Girl, Zane Kesey, David Stanford and good old Wavy Gravy, Ocollection of memoirs in varying lengths. It includes gan, Ken Kesey, , Vic Lovell, Judith Rascoe, but the highlight was getting to go aboard and on top of the “Fondelle, or the Whore with a Heart of Gold,” from which Thom Gunn, Berry, Norman, McClanahan, Nelson and bus Furthur—not the original, which still rusts content- the passage that opens this piece is taken. Fondelle Fon- others, selected from The Free You, the literary magazine edly in Oregon, but its more serviceable and very appealing taine, “a showgirl from New York City,” slowly devolves of the now defunct Free U. (By the time I got to Palo Alto, namesake, a genuine work of art. Here’s how McClanahan into Arletta Skeens from the hills of West Virginia as young as Lovell later told me, “the circus had already left town.”) describes it in his piece “Furthurmore” in My Vita: McClanahan learns a lesson or three in New Orleans and The two pieces by McClanahan included in that book were “. . . an hallucinogenic little cream puff featuring every- on the road. In “Hey Shoobie” and “Dog Loves Ellie” Ed laugh-out-loud funny. They had the quality that Salinger’s thing from a man-sized Sistine Adam to a spotted owl to a takes aging and death head on, fondly evoking the simple Holden Caulfield talks about in Catcher in the Rye: “. . . you radiant Sun God to Pogo to a school of surreal fish to the pleasures of small Kentucky towns during his formative wish the author that wrote it was a terrific friend of yours obligatory Grateful Dead death’s head to Oz-inspired lions years, and viewing the changes time and fate have wrought and you could call him up on the phone whenever you felt and tigers and bears to Buddhas to totem poles to seagulls to through a sympathetic psychedelic lens. like it.” the Silver Surfer—an eye-popping panorama of intertwined The book takes its title from Robert Graves’s “Fragment Yes, that was the way I felt about McClanahan’s writ- images and icons, all rendered in meticulous detail (‘Holy of a Lost Poem,” used as an epigraph to “Great Moments in ing. I didn’t call him up (by that time he had moved back shit!’ marvels a tiny Tin Woodsman, standing agog on the Sports”: to Kentucky) but I did keep an eye out for other books by Yellow Brick Road), all varnished to a shimmering high him. Unfortunately, in the 1970s there were none. In spite gloss, all interrelated to an extent that declares, in no uncer- O the clear moment, when from the mouth of the fact that a 1963 Esquire article had placed him in the tain terms, that what you see is the product, Gulley Jimson- A word flies, current immediately “Red-Hot Center” of contemporary American literature, like, of a single, unifying vision—Ken’s, of course—yet Among friends; or when a loving gift astounds McClanahan’s publishing credits were limited to magazine in such a wild array of styles and techniques as to make it As the identical wish nearest the heart; pieces and anthologies. It was not until 1983 that his novel abundantly apparent that every artistic talent within hailing Or when a stone, volleyed in sudden danger The Natural Man found its way into print, to very good distance had a hand in this paint job. Earl Scheib need not Strikes the rabid beast full on the snout! reviews if not universal acclaim. This was followed in 1985 apply.” by Famous People I Have Known, a collection of nonfiction Since meeting McClanahan, it’s hard for me not to think The clear moments occur, certainly, but just as apparent pieces that showcases what I see as McClanahan’s greatest of him as Ed, or, again with a nod to Salinger and to the strength, memoir as , with the author as self-ef- vernacular usage of our native state, old Ed. The bumbling is the clarity and ability with which they are recounted. The facing narrator-protagonist. If you’ve never read “The Day but successful “nostalgic nitwit” persona he cultivates in technical skill with which McClanahan tells his anything the Lampshades Breathed” or “Ken Kesey, Jean Genet, the print is not much different from the man one meets. There’s but straightforward tales is impressive. He has learned his Revolution, et Moi,” seek them out and give yourself a treat. something sweet and friendly and welcoming about his lessons from Faulkner and Stegner and others about the use of parentheses, space dashes, ellipses and the occasional or quite a few years McClanahan, with an MA in English semicolon. Behind the convoluted style and casual manner Ffrom the and a Stanford Univer- is the artistry of a master. His erudition is also easy to over- sity Fellowship on his résumé, supported look. The ride is so enjoyable that the passenger may fail his writing habit by working as a teacher of creative writing. Books by Ed McClanahan to notice references not only to contemporary culture and He was on faculty at Oregon State, followed by Stanford, the literature but to Shakespeare, Dickens, Byron, Dr. Johnson and the King James Bible. University of Montana and Northern Kentucky University. The Natural Man In the early 1980s he quit the education racket and since McClanahan is now 77 years old. He has never been Farrar, Straus, Giroux (1983) then has managed to survive as a writer and occasional guest prolific. (“Writing is like performing brain surgery on your- lecturer, even though his two-book publishing spree was self,” he says, “you definitely don’t want to do a rush job followed by another lengthy lull. In 1996 Counterpoint pub- Famous People I Have Known with it.”) I can’t help but wonder if O the Clear Moment lished his A Congress of Wonders, comprised of two longish Farrar, Straus, Giroux (1985) will be his farewell effort. But he has pulled rabbits out his short stories and a novella. This was followed in 1998 by hat before. Word is that he is working on another novel, a My Vita, If You Will: The Uncollected Ed McClanahan, A Congress of Wonders sequel to The Natural Man he’s calling “The Return of the which tracks his development as a writer, mostly through Counterpoint (1996) Son of Needmore.” With the combination of savvy and luck very enjoyable memoirs and gonzojournalistic efforts such that has gotten him this far, old Ed is even money to last as “Visions of Neal” and “Grateful Dead I Have Known,” My Vita, If You Will: The Uncollected Ed McClanahan and get it into print by, say, 2015 or so. the former containing, to my knowledge, the best sample Counterpoint (1998) in print of one of Cassady’s legendary “throwing hammer” monologues, and the latter an award-winning Playboy piece O the Clear Moment Daniel Barth is an RCR contributing editor and a poet, very much in the Hunter Thompson vein. Counterpoint (2008) critic and teacher who lives in Ukiah. Page 6 The Redwood Coast Review Spring 2010 books Worlds Apart, Together Jane Merryman

Elegy for a Fabulous World when my mother taught me to break off the by Alta Ifland end of a pale yellow honeysuckle blossom Ninebark Press (2009), 180 pages Her gypsy children, and suck out its sweetness. And I still keep her raggedy, stutter- on file that day I stood in the shadow of the iving into Alta Ifland’s collection of great hedge next to that same house and short stories, Elegy for a Fabulous ing gravedigger and watched the firemen do a controlled burn of DWorld, I meet a woman who hasn’t the gatherings of the the grassy lot next door. One of them came spoken in forty years and when she does over and knelt in front of me. He opened speak she flies away on a comet’s tail, while Hungarian aunts and his hands to reveal a cup of grasses holding Aunt Rajssa shouts, “Come back right a nest of baby mice. I held my breath as he away! This is no proper way for a lady to uncles are as real as if shifted the nest into my own little hands. behave.” I encounter a man who grows a they had arisen from Later . . . Mother was horrified and threw lime tree in his left lung; an unscheduled my treasure in the garbage can. She could bus that roams the dark and slumbering my own life. wipe out the mice but she could not wipe streets at midnight; and a town where on from my memory that bearer of a fabulous Wednesdays the rain falls upward and Fri- world, the fireman who introduced me to the day is upside-down day where parents be- that Uncle Otto cries all the time, especially hidden life that existed around me. come children and children become parents. over colors like yellow and orange. Elegy for a Fabulous World urges me to As I visit these towns and villages of Part of Ifland’s magic is her language, not pass by the extraordinary in my world. America and Ukraine, of long past and pres- which floats like breeze-tossed blossoms After reading the chapter called “The ent-day, they seem as real and prosaic as my across the pages. An empty LA parking lot Random Bus,” I decided to form a second own town and as strange and fascinating as isn’t desolate but “heavy with nothingness, opinion about the buses in my town. They the unravelings of a wild-haired story-spin- as only Sunday silence can be.” Women’s don’t arrive or depart in relation to the ner in front of the ancient fire ring. chatter becomes “a river of interrupted printed or online timetable. As I step aboard Through these stories winds a slender voices, whose source was in a faraway un- that my childhood contained none of these when one finally does appear, I fully expect thread stitching together the real and the known country they all dreamed of reaching wondrous elements. it will take me to the postal facility on North hyper-real. This intertwining of the ordinary one day.” A Ukranian student learns English Or so I thought. McDowell, but now I find myself daring to and the extraordinary pursues Mrs. Adams, so well his “words followed each other with hope it will deposit me in an enchanted part whose officemate disappears one day only the dumb joy of a herd of sheep . . . preposi- erhaps I need to view my life through a of town where the people and animals act in to have her place taken by her Mother, who tions in incestuous entanglements . . . .” Pless literal lens. My Quaker grandmoth- strange and wonderful ways—if only. disappears and is replaced by the Sister, While engaged with these tales, I came er, whom I met only twice, was the only A thought-provoking insight, “You who summons the other Sisters, which ne- across this quotation by Angela Carter: person, with her thee’s and thou’s, who did bring your life to your reading,” but I can cessitates the Adamses leaving for Canada “Reading a book is like rewriting it for not fit neatly into my white-bread childhood just as wisely say, “You bring your read- and vanishing without a trace. yourself. You bring to a novel, anything and adolescence. She could have been a ing to your life.” The Girl in “The Girl, the I’d be tempted to call these stories “mag- you read, all your experience of the world. messenger from another world calling to me Professor, and the Wife” thinks reading ical realism” were it not for my inability to You bring your history and you read it in in her archaic tongue. I still search for news too much stands between us and reality. To pin down the term’s meaning. One defini- your own terms.” I happen to have a history of her, proof perhaps that she was more than me, Ifland’s tales illustrate the interaction tion that fits these stories speaks of illogical laden with prepositions and Ifland caught I thought. between my reading and my life—a contra scenarios that appear in otherwise realistic their antics perfectly. Her gypsy children, As a child, I accepted everything and dance between fabulous worlds. settings. The characters, the narrator, and I her raggedy, stuttering gravedigger and everyone as neither fantastical nor com- the reader accept without objection, without the gatherings of the Hungarian aunts and monplace, but as just what happens. Now, disbelief, that Aunt Clarice attends the Inter- uncles, as real as if they had arisen from more than half a century later, I recognize Jane Merryman lives in Petaluma and con- national Witches Congress in Budapest and my own life, fill me, however, with regret as magical that warm summer afternoon tributes often to the RCR. Spring 2010 The Redwood Coast Review Page 7 B i b l i o t e c a News, Views, Notes, Reviews, Reports and Exhortations from Friends of Coast Community Library

President’s Desk Library lines ian regimes have compromised Grisha’s integrity. Desperately seeking carpe diem, the man does tend to overindulge in vicious cycles of misbehavior and finally even It’s Not Just risks re-incarceration by playing a serious Our World game with counterfeit passports and false identities. But for those readers capable of the Money imagining themselves in poor Grisha’s situ- Wide Web ation, there is the prospect of embracing his distress and cheering for the small victories Alix Levine brought about by his survival tactics—vic- Laura Schatzberg tories won not in spite of his problematic personality but because of it. Jerusalem here is good news among all the Given the periodic flare-ups of ever- s I write this am about budget woes that have curtailed li- incendiary relations between the Russian 10,000 miles from our library and Tbrary services in many places. Coast and Georgian states, it seems timely to wish Ait seems very far away. Seems is Community Library has been improving, Barbara Baer’s novella a wide readership the operative word here because with the throughout these United States—and cer- thanks to community support. In the past Michael Morey Internet I have been able to communicate year our library has received grants or gifts Barbara Baer tainly better treatment by its publisher. The with friends in Point Arena nearly every day from Good Buy Clothes, Soroptomists and printers might have followed a consistent for free, add items to my library wish list, the Community Foundation of Mendocino course in their paragraphing of the text; know that the rain has been nonstop on the County. Our library has installed new the proofreaders might have corrected an- coast and much more that even that august shelving in the children’s room, a children’s other dozen typos and called several of the invention of Alexander Graham Bell had not computer carrel, acquired a display for Gone author’s dubious usages into question. The made possible. DVDs and CDs, and installed a large white- editors, too, might have included a simple Communication is the other opera- board in the meeting room. glossary of key foreign words and phrases, tive word. Isn’t the library itself all about It is the contributions of hundreds of in- Rogue especially the slangiest. Still, it will reward enabling the transfer of information? And dividuals, however, that have made the big- the vigilant, diligent reader to overlook isn’t what happens from that transfer com- gest difference in our operating budget and these annoying obstacles, as well as to sus­ munication? The lines of connection that allowed us the luxury of making improve- Peter Boffey pend judgment on our protagonist, at least radiate out from our library are infinite, ments to our services. We thank those who long enough to grasp the great imaginative boundless and unquantifiable. The building scope of this bittersweet tale. on Main Street may be just a place to hear responded so generously to our fund drives. Grisha the Scrivener Poor Gregory Gregorovich Samidze, a story for a 2-year-old or a place to listen We also owe thanks to the many who have by Barbara Baer donated books for use or sale. kindly world-weary cynic who would to someone’s experiences collecting fossils Ghost Road Press (2009), 112 pages With the donations added to our collec- dearly love to plead the Tin Man defense at and you may think nothing more of it. But tion and the new items we purchase we have every turn: “ ‘What do you mean, Grisha? we can never know how a seemingly chance already outgrown the new-last-year CD risha the Scrivener may win, We all have hearts. You’ve touched mine encounter or casual comment can begin a and DVD rack, and have ordered another or lose, your attention largely and will be here forever,’ she said, as if chain of events that will go somewhere else to accommodate their growing numbers. depending upon how you offering to show me the beating organ entirely. Our bookshelves are so full that another respond to the author’s hav- beneath her sweater. Tears were coming A small example from this trip: A friend tall shelf unit is on order too. This should ing entrusted the storytelling to her eyes. Mine threatened to leak salt I haven’t seen in 20 years reconnected with relieve overcrowding of the books. We’ve Gto her protagonist, Gregory Gregorovich also. I gathered my beret. ‘This man has no a mutual friend he hadn’t had contact with also added a rack of teen magazines to our Samidze, raconteur extraordinaire. It’s a heart. I am tin man. Cannot hurt tin man in five years. She asked him if he had heard teen corner. gamble indeed to have events related almost without heart.’ I rapped my chest with my anything about me. She and I hadn’t been It’s not just money, whether a big check exclusively from the point of view of a fist. My lungs cooperated and gave out a in touch for almost 20 years. He looked me to FoCCL or spare change for the donation man who, from his opening lines onwards, bad sound.” up on the Internet and found the Redwood jar on the circulation desk. Our commu- comes across as one over-the-top, card-car- Like the tilted rooms of post-earthquake Coast Review connection and contacted the nity is full of library lovers who give of rying, oft-defeated antihero. The stakes Tashkent where, in 1966, we first meet editor, who contacted me. their time, energy and skills to keep Coast are high: many a reader may reject this Grisha during the second (and softer) phase And just by coincidence I happened to be Community Library operating smoothly. seemingly sexist boozehound at first brush, of political exile from his native Tbilisi in visiting Israel, which I hadn’t visited in 13 The county is able to provide only one paid abandoning him to his permanent identity the Soviet Socialist Republic of Georgia, years, and we all met and had a great time professional staff person (our Terra Black). crisis before ever allowing for the possibil- all is askew in society at large and in the catching up and remembering the follies of She could not run the library single-handed, ity of co-conspiring with poor Grisha in his life of this citoyen. The numbing effects youth. doing everything that needs to be done to struggle to survive. of a brutal, violent, oppressive police state Without my connection to the library I operate. That’s where volunteers come in. Grisha does have an attitude, or two, are brought home in convincing, quotid- may have missed this reunion, the impact of Friends of the Library in library branches all or twenty. Alcoholism skews the compass ian details. Under Stalin as well as during which I already feel and know will continue over the state (nation?) have assumed duties of his nights and days, and his compulsive perestroika, the whole social dis-order to affect me further. This friend has recom- to support professional staff to keep their womanizing falls to one lop side of outright proves hostile to this especially sensitive, mended some books and films, some of libraries going. sexist chauvinism. Yet hear him out and you sensuous, free-spirited offspring of Parisian which are available through the library and Of course, the desk volunteers are highly may not begrudge him all of his all-too- libertarianism, orphaned son of a man which I have put on my wish list. I may be visible, but behind the scenes others are human shortcomings; to the author’s credit, eliminated for having perpetrated public profoundly affected by one of the books and covering and repairing books, labeling, given time, you may even entertain the acts of free thinking—that is, publishing then recommend it to someone else, who getting the audiovisual items labeled and possibility that the beleaguered guy’s sins his poetry. This mismatch of individual may also find it enlightening. The threads boxed. Some folks come in to help shelve aren’t so unforgivable after all. organism and social environment makes for of this complex web can loop out and back books. Another group sets up, manages, After all, hasn’t life in the USSR taught constant conflict, internalized cross-moti- and cross on themselves and tie events and and staffs our monthly book sales and the Gregory to believe that he is a contempti­ vation, and a general confusion between people together that can not have been even big Labor Day Sale. ble outsider, another intellectual déclassé sensible self-use and self-abuse. remotely imagined, and somewhere at the It’s volunteers who do our building to be kept under surveillance along with It is the psychically damaged Grisha’s heart of it all is our small library. repairs and maintenance for the most part. Jews, bohemians and political dissenters, savvy internal and external rap which Involvement in this enterprise is fulfill- FoCCL’s bookkeeper and accountant are all such barely tolerable burdens to Mother draws us into a political reality which might ing on many levels. The library needs input volunteers. Retired librarians volunteer Russia become the Soviet State? There’s no otherwise remain abstract. By applying from many sources, of which the most their time to do collection development, denying that the cumulative consequences considerable ventriloquist skills, Baer trans- important are the volunteers. It is in need navigating the cataloguing system to apply of living just inside the margins of totalitar- forms her main actor into an impassioned of capable, interested folks to staff the front bar codes, choosing items to add and weed- and credible porte-parleur for the author’s desk and take on other tasks. Many of those ing the collection for items to withdraw own transparently strong convictions and volunteers you see all the time have been when they are no longer useful. But for those capable perspective. When moving about in the at it for 10 years or more. They should be It’s volunteers who run our very popular “near abroad,” Gregor needs an Internal able to take time away from the library and story time and the summer reading program of imagining themselves Passport, “that little book of vital statistics not feel as if their absence will necessitate for kids, as well as facilitate our Sundays that every Soviet has to carry wherever closure. @ the Library and Lectures in the Library in Grisha’s situation, he goes….” No wonder he is not alone I encourage you to ask about volunteer- classes. The “baking ladies” come up with there is the prospect of in the widespread craving after emigra- ing so that you can be a part of the com- refreshments for events and for our Fourth tion yet, like so many without proteksia, munication and maybe even contact an old of July bake sale. Even the editor of this embracing his distress must disavow that dream of joining those friend or two, or make a new friend. award-winning Redwood Coast Review residing in the “far abroad—that is, beyond volunteers his efforts. and cheering for the socialism.” Grisha the Scrivener might be So a big thank-you is due to all the small victories brought useful as a survival manual for living any- library lovers who have contributed to the where once any Big Brother has moved into welfare of Coast Community Library. We about by his survival your household and become the bullying depend on your continuing support as the member of a dysfunctional family. WRITE TO US budget crisis cuts county library funds each tactics—victories won year. not in spite of his prob- aer’s would-be bon vivant gradually The RCR welcomes your letters. I encourage you, reader, to consider vol- Bdisarmed this reader of facile moral Write to the Editor, RCR c/o unteering to help in the library. It’s fun, you lematic personality but judgments upon the fellow’s blatantly ICO, P.O. Box 1200, Gualala, will meet a great group of people, and you bad behavior. Consider what strategies will have the satisfaction of knowing how because of it. are available to our reckless self-parodist. CA 95445 or by email to much you are doing to enrich our Exile? Been there, done that: 10 years in [email protected]. community. See grisha page 8 Page  The Redwood Coast Review Spring 2010

Grisha from page 7 pelicans from page 1 the Siberian Gulag followed by another the mile posts before the outer edge of the decade of forced relocation in Tashkent. Baer employs all the atmosphere and, 500 miles out, the begin- fogged in on this blowy edge of the ocean. Silence? Not an option, at least not for this tools of the fiction ning of space. It’s like residing in a glass of milk. The guide to Soviet life, a man wordier than a The dogs return, stand shoulder to shoul- mercury was crazy-making, toxic. Hat mak- drunken poet. Well, he is a drunken poet and writer’s trade to raise der and contemplate the sinkhole before ers used mercury to secure hatbands; hence amateur of architecture, lover of jazz and running off again. the term “mad as hatters.” enthusiastic consumer of Western, espe- a brazen, disturbing You walk on, discussing a recent experi- cially American, literature. Indeed, it is as a tone of voice challeng- ence with a psychic in Willits. How did ou turn and walk back, past the vernal word-man, albeit one constrained to earn his the psychic know about your cancer scare? Ypool at the edge of a cliff. Water livelihood as a toe-the-Party-line reporter ing readers to look About the dead boy in the pink house? cascades down into an inlet in the foam- for Voices of , that we can apprehend About the Ducati motorcycle? What do you ing ocean, where hundreds of giant sea Grisha’s foremost strategy for survival, for into our own mirrors. do with information like that? How do you cucumbers lie tangled together, hairy heads it is his very way with words and around tune in to or tune out other bandwidths out words—and Baer’s conjuring up a peculiar resembles and is mistaken for, although he there? Suddenly, a cry comes yet effective version of spoken English-as- remains far too canny to spend much time You come to a line of scrub pines, buried a-Foreign-Language smacking of transla- in the common drunk tank. However, even up to their necks in duff and covered with from somewhere in the tionese—which makes cunning the way to if black-market vodka leaves him closer a delicate hanging moss. The grass, which go for this tooth-wrecked big mouth with to stupor than ecstasy, even if his sex life last week contained dog-violets and iris, grass around you. You the “nothing left to lose” blues. repeatedly leads him back into tantaliza- now holds mud-loving flowers: fringed fall back and disappear. In five interrelated stories spanning 32 tion without love, even if his shoot-from- downingia (bluebells). years, Baer cleverly handles historical time, the-hip sarcasm lets him lapse, by default, The surface changes, day by day, season managing her segues so deftly that even Rap from pathos into bathos at the slip of the by season, layer by layer. What you think and long bodies surging and ebbing with the Master Grisha’s extended detours only serve tongue—this is simply the best that, under of as “the land” or “the cattle ranch” is re- tide like drowned dolls. The dogs step into to shore up the forward movement of her the circumstances, our man of cunning can ally a roll of sod laid out over the sandstone the quiet pool to drink; gulls spray out into overall narrative. The author’s choice of the do. “It’s Gregory Gregorovich Samidze on and shale. You imagine living horizontally the sky. novella form supports the overarching tra- my Internal Passport. Grisha if you share a across the earth, traveling south to San Toward the AT&T houses, the grass jectory of her story well: Grisha the Scriv- drink with me. City of residence: Tashkent, Francisco or east to Boston—but this is a grows denser and taller, in clumps, between ener displays the condensation of the stand- Uzbekistan, the middle of nowhere but I’ve kind of fiction. In fact, you live vertically which lie muddy troughs wide enough to alone short story’s reliance on imaginative known worse….” as much as horizontally. To travel from the pass through. The going is slow, though—a language, economical yet rich incident, and Grisha the Scrivener may not satisfy coast to the ridge is to move across more knee-high thicket. Suddenly, a cry, a scream one vivid main character. At the same time, those seeking a tale of full-blown redemp- antisocial layers of sandstone, shale, schist, comes from somewhere in the grass around the main character’s empathetic underpin- tion, but readers willing to give the guy a limestone. The pygmy forest at the crest of you. You fall back and disappear into the nings profit from the novel’s chronological break may be tempted to let loose with a the ridge a few hundred feet above sea level grass, nowhere familiar. You are down, longevity allowing for changes—in his celebratory “Salud!” And congratulations is made of lime, of oyster shells. gone. You assume that you have been behavior and in our response—which ac- to Barbara Baer for crafting a provocative You come to the midway point of the taken, and might be eaten. company the passage of time. work which enables us, although living in walk, at Lighthouse Road, the lighthouse Instead, you have stepped over a baby Baer employs all these tools of the fiction the relative freedom of American democracy winking a quarter mile away. (The great doe so new she’s still wet, her mouth still writer’s trade to raise a brazen, disturbing and “growing up in Berkeley bohemia, Fresnel lens was removed from the cupola open from her cry of surprise. You back tone of voice challenging tough-skinned North beach, jazz clubs and love-ins”—far, last year by a crane, and installed in the away—unsteady, hulking. Then, when the yet thoughtful readers to look into our own so far from Grisha’s daily world—to imag- museum downstairs). Your first job in fawn is safe from the dogs and from you, mirrors—objects which Grisha habitually ine that, at least for the duration of our read- Point Arena was as a lighthouse “keeper,” you hightail it toward the gate, embarrassed, avoids—in order to reflect upon what we ing, we have become genuine engagés. sitting for four hours at a time on a vat of past the cows. ourselves might do under similar circum- mercury which served as a bearing for the stances. We can well imagine how—were it lens, and telling the story of the lighthouse, not for his sense of humor, his fantasy life, the French lens, the families who lived here Peter Boffey lives in Walnut Creek and Carolyn Cooke’s novel, Daughters of the and his passion for clandestine literature before the 1906 earthquake damaged the writes from time to time for the RCR. Grisha Revolution, will be published next year by —poor Grisha would become the fulltime original lighthouse and the tower had to be the Scrivener is available at Coast Commu- Knopf. homeless alcoholic which he at times nity Library. rebuilt. People used to go crazy living here,

Book Box Some Recent Arrivals at Coast Community Library Adult Books

Alexander, Floyce. Bottom falling out of Catanzaro, Raimondo. Men of respect: a Macomber, Debbie. Mrs. Miracle Hampton, Wilborn. Babe Ruth the dream: poems social history of the Sicilian Mafia Neggers, Carla. Cold pursuit Hann, Judith. How science works Allingham, Margery. The case of the late Cernuda, Luis. Desolation of the chimera: Pelecanos, George P. The turnaround Herzog, Brad. H is for home run: a pig last poems Perlman, Melissa. Bikini bootcamp: two baseball alphabet Bahrami, Beebe. Provence Chafe, Paul. Destiny’s forge weeks to your ultimate beach body Kinney, Jeff. Diary of a wimpy kid: the Berger, John. A fortunate man Child, Julia. My life in france Prechtel, Martin. The disobedience of the last straw Blazek, Douglas. Exercises in memoriz- Chodron, Pema. When things fall apart: daughter of the sun: ecstacy and time Krull, Kathleen. Albert Enstein ing myself heart advice for difficult times Ramos, Jorge. Tierra de todos: nuestro mo- Lange, Karen. Nevermore: A photobiog- Bonhoeffer, Dietrich. Ethics Christopher, Thomas. Water-wise garden- mento para crear una nacion de iguales raphy of Edgar Allen Poe Bowling, Tim. The witness ghost ing: America’s backyard revolution Rasp, Richard. Redwood Magsamen, Sandra. Peek-a-boo I love Bronson, Po. Nurtureshock: new thinking Contoski, Victor. Broken treaties Richo, David. The power of coincidence: you! about children Coulter, Catherine. Knockout how life shows us what we need to know Marrin, Albert. Years of dust: The story Brown, Dan. The lost symbol Crystal, Billy. 700 Sundays Rothchild, Matt. Dumbfounded: a memoir of the Dust Bowl Brown, Tom. Awakening spirits DeLint, Charles. The mystery of grace Schorr, Daniel. Staying tuned: a life in McPhail, David M. The story of James Burciaga, José Antonio. Spilling the Dolane, Erin. Unclutter your life in one Miles, Victoria. Pup’s supper beans week Shumaker, Peggy. Esperanza’s hair Nelson, Michael Alan. Fall of Cthulu. Burroughs, Augusten. Sellevision Dudley, Ellen. American discoveries: Siegel, Katy. Money [1], The fugue Bushby, Karl. Giant steps: an American scouting the first coast-to-coast recre- Stevenson, Jay. The complete idiot’s guide Owen, James. The search for the red odyssey from Punta Arenas to the edge ational trail to angels dragon of Alaska Durrell, Gerald. My family and other Townsend, Ann. Dime store erotics: poems Pilkey, Dav. Captain Underpants and Carroll, Ricki. Home cheese making: animals Turner, Robert. The fire and the rose: hu- the attack of the talking toilets: an- recipes for 75 homemade cheeses Evanovich, Janet. Plum spooky man core needs and personal transfor- other epic novel Cassidy, Carla. Broken pieces Feniger, Susan. City cuisine mation Reeve, Philip. Larklight, or, The revenge Garland, Max. The postal confessions White, Karen. The lost hours of the white spiders!, or, To Saturn’s Goldstein, Laurence. A room in California Woolf, Virginia. A room of one’s own rings and back Hanff, Helene. Apple of my eye Young, Toby. How to lose friends and Rey, H. A. Curious George goes fishing Heyer, Georgette. The Corinthian alienate people Reynolds, Peter. The north star Library Hours Hillier, Malcolm. Malcolm Hillier’s Christ- Sakai, Stan. Usagi Yojimbo Book 3: The mas wanderer’s road Monday 12 noon - 6 pm Hislop, Victoria. The island Silvey, Anita. I’ll pass for your com- Tuesday 10am - 6 pm Kamkwamba, William. The boy who Juvenile Books rade: women soldiers in the Civil War Wednesday 10am - 8 pm harnessed the wind: creating currents of Stiefvater, Maggie. Shiver electricity and hope Blume, Judy. Friend of fiend? Stone, Tanya Lee. Almost astronauts: 13 Thursday 12 noon - 8 pm King, Stephen. Under the dome Bray, Libba Going Bovine women who dared to dream Friday 12 noon - 6 pm Kline, Benjamin. First along the river: a Burnie, David. How nature works Stork, Francisco. Marcelo in the real Saturday 12 noon - 3 pm brief history of the U.S. environmental Cabot, Meg. The princess diaries world movement Carlson, Maureen. Clay characters for kids Thaler, Mike. The school carnival from Coast Community Library Kohl, Herbert. The discipline of hope: Chadda, Sarwat. The devil’s kiss the Black Lagoon is located at learning from a lifetime of teaching Cooper, Michael. Theodore Roosevelt White, Linda. Cooking on a stick: camp- 225 Main Street Koontz, Dean. Fear nothing Cornish, D. M. Lamplighter fire recipes for kids Point Arena Kramer, Clara. Clara’s war: one girl’s story Doyle, Malachy. Horse Wollard, Kathy. How come? (707) 882-3114 of survival Gaiman, Neil. Odd and the Frost Giants Spring 2010 The Redwood Coast Review Page  books Quiet, Please McCabe Coolidge

One Square Inch of Silence Top Five Ways to by Gordon Hempton Quiet Yourself in Free Press (2009), 112 pages the Wilderness, Top Five Ways to Quiet Your Neigh- ’m writing this in the false dawn on the borhood, Top Five eve of the winter solstice. The is At the National Ways to Quiet Your Iswooping down the valley and spiral- Home or Office ing along the banks of the river, a foot of it Sounds Program in and The Single and now drifting. Because of this snowfall, Most Important there is something missing, the caravan of Fort Collins, Colo- Thing You Can Do cars and trucks heading north toward I-81 rado, he interviews a to Save Silence. and then on to Blacksburg or Roanoke. It’s 10 o’clock I can hear the gurgle of the river but the staffer who tells him, and a pickup truck dim shadows of cows grazing on the pasture is jugging up the are absent. There is complete quiet. As I “The loss of quiet is hill, but still no finish this sentence, there! A noise. A jet is literally the loss of graders. I can hear flying south. the river, louder It’s almost 7 o’clock and I’ve just filled awareness. Quiet is now, ice floes the woodstove and have started a fire in our pitching forward little fireplace. My partner and I have just being lost without downstream, the eaten some hot oatmeal and two pieces of people even becoming sizzle of snow- my famous bread, now toast, slathered with covered red oak in honey. We sit back and wait for the slow aware of what they’re the wood stove, a sweep of the eastern light to cross over the sigh or two from bluff next to our house and give us enough losing. It’s tragic.” my sweetheart as light to see what has happened during the she sips her tea. night. Stephen But now it is 8 o’clock and Kathy is her Graham writes, yellow bus has not rumbled down our one- tried to persuade the FAA to change the in the September lane dirt road and the farmer in his growling flight patterns, leaving Olympic National 2009 issue of The diesel truck has not delivered any hay to Park as an oasis of silence, but he failed. Sun: “And as you

his cows in the lower pasture. Our lawn Next he takes the ferry to Seattle and sit on the hillside,

n pto em H n o rd o reaches right down to the river covering begins the long journey in his ancient bus G or lie prone under up any trace of the road. Everything is all with a roof rack on top where he occasion- Gordon Hempton the trees of the white. I am thinking of going tobogganing. ally sleeps. His mission once he arrives in forest, or sprawl wet-legged on the shin- Potomac and the C. and O. canal are in the But it’s so toasty in here, I decide peruse Washington, DC, is to advocate for lower gly beach of a mountain stream, the great flight pattern for night jets owned by UPS One Square Inch of Silence. I finished read- noise limits in our national parks. He would door, that does not look like a door, opens.” and other mail carries landing and taking off ing it last night but this morning I am still like to see no more helicopters streaming Where is that great door? What’s behind it? from Dulles Airport. Also a surprise are the feeling inspired so I am going to stay put in around Grand Canyon, no more jet skis at That’s the invitation that is implicit in this freight trains passing by his campground at this chair and reflect on in my life Cape Lookout, no more snowmobiles in book. night. when I knew solitude and silence and the Yellowstone. The list goes on. A friend of mine, a quadriplegic poet, With the exception of US Senator Maria times when I was overwhelmed by noise. First stop in Seattle is an outdoor con- awakens at 4 o’clock each morning and lis- Cantwell, who took a singular interest in What comes to my mind is cross-country cert so loud that he and his friend have to tens for an hour, memorizing what he hears writing some new legislation, most govern- skiing, the backcountry, up old logging leave their front row seats and head back before the 5 o’clock door chime announcing ment officials had a myriad of excuses for trails and abandoned roads. I would pause to the outfield, far away from the multitude his aide has arrived to bathe and dress him. why they couldn’t change their approach every five or ten minutes and just listen. It of speakers. Next he drags his teenage I ramble out into the woods or sit by a to decrease the noise levels in the national might take five minutes to hear a freshwater daughter to a Seattle Sonics Game, and stream or lake, hunkering down and waiting parks. Most of the excuses focused on stream or the sharp retort of a cardinal. Or even before the game starts the announcer to see, waiting for the other side of silence. what noise levels humans could tolerate in when out sailing I would be the only boat has raised the decibel level to 90—an even the parks, not on what noise levels wildlife around, listening to how the waves hit the match with thunderstorms. Later on, Hemp- could tolerate. bow and notice how the wind twitched my ton interviews the sound man, who tells nose and swirled the hair on my forehead. him, “When there is no sound, it bothers inishing the book, I was inspired and McCabe Coolidge is a potter and writer liv- And of course the times when living on me; the worst is the sound of silence.” overwhelmed. What to do? Fortunately ing in the mountains of southwest Virginia. a corner of a busy street, in Raleigh, with Onward to attend a symphony in Bena- F Hempton includes in the appendices: This is his first appearance in the RCR. the daybreak of rush-hour traffic drifting roya Hall, where the decibels range from upstairs to the bedroom of my babies, wak- 30, a quiet interlude, to 94. By now his ing them up, in tears. daughter, who had joined him for this cross- Gordon Hempton has turned his passion country trip, has bailed out taking her iPod into his life’s vocation. He travels around with her. France, at that time, was trying the world measuring noise. Did you know to limit the decibel level of personal music your refrigerator makes more noise than players at 100! a meadowlark? We moved a couple of He heads east toward the windblown months ago to this old home from a little plains of Montana, then to the National cabin some 15 miles up the mountain, S U B S C R I B E Sounds Program in Fort Collins, Colorado, perched along the Blue Ridge Parkway. where he interviews staffer Kurt Firstup, If you live beyond the Redwood Coast and don’t get the Independent Coast We lived there for five winters and when who tells him, “The loss of quiet is literally it snowed or iced up, the Parkway would the loss of awareness. Quiet is being lost Observer, now you can subscribe to The Redwood Coast Review and not miss be closed and so we would be shut in. No without people even becoming aware of an issue of our award-winning mix of essays, reviews, poetry, fiction and traffic noise and we had no neighbors. After what they’re losing. It’s tragic.” graphic art. For $24 a year you will be guaranteed quarterly first-class de- any snow or ice storm, our lives were filled Next stop, the Indianapolis Speedway, only with the presence of the crow, the decibel reading, 120+. In case you are won- livery of the RCR and at the same time support Coast Community Library buzzard, the sparrow, the redtail, the snort dering, anything over 120 heading toward in its ongoing operating expenses. Please use this coupon to subscribe of the whitetail and the tracks of coyote. 130 decibels is deafening. or renew now. You won’t be disappointed. Silence ruled. A good friend gave me this book because he and I have trouble in most restaurants ow we live close to Highway 8. The and big dinner parties. We cannot hear Yes, I want to subscribe to The Redwood Coast Review. I am Nprevious owners told us, “Well, each other because of the noise surrounding you will get used to traffic.” But we us. I suffer from tinnitus, a ringing in both enclosing a check for $24 to Coast Community Library. haven’t. Especially the thundering downhill ears, sometimes with the added attraction of run of semis and their belching diesel farts. crickets chirping in my right ear. I am making an additional donation to the library in the But now we work in town and the commute I’ve gotten used to jet skis circling me is quick and I love rivers. So I am putting up while I sail on a nearby lake. I’ve grown amount of $______. with the noise. accustomed to the vulgar backfiring of The narrative of One Square Inch is Harley Davidsons as they follow the leader Total enclosed $______the journey Hempton takes from Olympic into my small, one-stoplight town, barely National Park in the state of Washington, crawling off their bikes dressed as antique where he has recorded a place unencum- pirates. And now I am getting used to semis Name ______bered by human noise, to the nation’s Capi- barreling down the hill, squatting on their tol. His is a journey of measuring noise and brakes as they approach the bridge. I am searching for silence. His sound meter tells adapting. Address ______us that the noise level here is 25 decibels at To complete his crisscrossing journey, the One Square Inch, which comes from a Hempton is going to walk the final 100 City, State, ZiP ______nearby stream and sound of birds singing. miles along the C. and O. Canal, measuring This is the benchmark for all other sound- decibels, preparing himself for the ap- ings. But just as he puts on his backpack to pointments he will have with government hike the three miles back to his VW bus he officials who are responsible for measuring Copy or clip this coupon and send, with check or money order, to Coast hears a noise, a jet coming in for a landing and reducing the noise levels in the national Community Library, PO Box 808, Point Arena, CA 95468. Thank You! at nearby Sea Tac airport. He has already parks. He soon discovers that the nearby Page 10 The Redwood Coast Review Spring 2010 travels A Visit to the City Brian Jay Stanley A great city is the school for studying life. —Samuel Johnson he first time I visited San Francisco, after a long drive through the Central Valley and a cursory cir- cuit around the Bay, I headed straight into the bow- els of the city, for a close-up first encounter. To see a city up close is not so much to see it as to feel it. TPeople talk of things making an impression, but the clamor and pandemonium of a great city does more than merely etch and imprint the senses; it jolts and clobbers them dizzy. Immediately I found myself under an ambush of sights and sounds: honking horns and the angry yelling of men, the ringing of bells and cell phones, the pounding of jackham- mers from one street and the beating of steel drums from another, the shutting and opening of windows, the hum and buzz of streetlights and electrical boxes, the whirring of sirens, droning of engines and barking of dogs, the smell of exhaust and of perfume. It seemed as though the data of a thousand experiences had been pulled from their meaning- ful contexts and jumbled into one great sensation without sense. The outdoor cafés were a discord of dialects, and the streets were a Brownian motion of red taillights veering and merging without pattern. The sidewalks were hopelessly littered—not with trash, but with the mess and jumble of urban paraphernalia. There were hydrants and newspaper stands and benches strewn all about, parking meters and fire escape ladders to dodge, patio chairs and potted plants left lying in the way, while overhead ran a tangle of telephone wires and power lines. Signs and billboards of every color purposive design. The street stretched away in an unbend- and script hung on the storefronts, raining down a bombard- ing line, the towering walls at its side plunged vertically glimmering white-capped ocean at city’s side, lapping at its ment of information and advertisement. In their contest to down and met the sidewalks in sudden right angles, the rows perimeter—the ineluctable limit of urban development. The win the passerby’s attention, each building declared itself the of rectangular windows receded in parallel lines toward a wide blue waters were spread out in unobscured immensity, most important in San Francisco. The neighborhoods were distant point of convergence—until the entire scene began the view westward restricted by nothing except the curva- a brilliant spectrum of clashing colors and uncoordinated to feel like some gigantic lesson in geometry. This was the ture of the globe. I watched the waves as they rolled in and architectural styles. There were sumptuous Victorian dwell- world as the human mind had willed it to be, conceived it beat against the cliffs before turning back out to the open ings next to plain Art Deco complexes, neo-gothic hotels then created it according to its Euclidean desires. It was sea, where, rolling over the horizon and out of sight, they set thoughtlessly alongside neo-classical ones, magnificent a world in which nature had no place and no right to be, would not stop rolling until they broke halfway round the cathedrals whose spires soared heavenward over seedy pubs except where expressly invited by sovereign man. Thus world. On a low rocky bluff at ocean’s edge was an antique next door. The city had been built the way children paint the only green I saw were the small trees planted along the lighthouse, weathered by wind and waves yet seemingly in- pictures, full of vibrance and creativity and imagination, but streets, evenly spaced and neatly pruned, their tangle of domitable. I imagined the many ships it had guided to safety, with too many different figures upon the page and no unify- roots invisible beneath the ground, their trunks disappearing ships seeking the shore’s haven from winter squalls yet ing theme to tie them together. through encircling iron grates. It seems odd now, thinking fearful of breaking to pieces on that same shore, exchanging back, that a world so entirely of human making should have for death by storm this death by rocks, and in reaching their One of my first tasks upon arriving was to check felt so eerily strange and inhuman: somehow cold, surreal, goal, meeting the very doom from which they had fled. in at my hotel. To the uninitiated newcomer, an elementary alien, robotic, monstrous. The hour was early evening and undertaking turns into an epic campaign. I had bought a the massive skyscrapers had eclipsed the lingering daylight, I thought again of my feelings of the prior day. map of the city and, with naïve faith, had picked out and bringing nightfall early to downtown. Their black silhouettes I had had such a sense of the city’s momentous reality, a neatly highlighted my chosen route. In the attempt to retrace against the pale sky and the street’s darkness beneath their sense of being at the center of things, where weighty mat- that route on real pavement, I discovered with dismay the heavy shadows gave a menacing air to their huge size. To ters were decided daily and judgments handed down whose mapmaker’s many omissions and loose interpretation of my imagination, already vexed by the hectic day’s events, shockwaves rattled outward to the world’s four corners. It facts: that there were no left turns allowed onto this street, they looked like angry giants into whose unwelcoming lair had made me feel, by comparison, that my small-town life no through traffic onto that one, no U-turns at this or the I had intruded, an Odysseus in the cave of steel-framed was not really living at all, and that while I had been mark- next light, no stopping here, no merging there—bits of Cyclopes. Such an impression seemed a fitting conclusion to ing time on the outskirts and fooling around with what I information that the cartographer finds too slight for his a day that in numerous ways had conspired to make me feel thought was real, the world had been happening here. There inclusion, but that to the first-time driver are of the utmost small and inferior. Weary of noise and big buildings, I made had been a quality of necessity about everything I had seen: relevance. Forced to find my way ad lib, I wound a labyrinth my way back to my hotel room, where only an occasional every street had been immovable, every building had stood through the city to go a half-mile down the street—seeing siren penetrated the muffling walls. The day being over, I there forever, every custom had seemed inevitable. Now nearly as much, however, on this accidental trip as on my could finally enjoy the day’s adventures, from the safe and nothing seemed inevitable except the sky’s expanse, the later premeditated outings. sheltered distance of recollection. hawk’s cry, and the white surf crashing against the rocks. The feeling of being lost—or rather the fact of it—is a Humankind seemed a pioneer in this rugged province; principal feature of any first visit to a city, and what makes The gods of Homer’s Iliad were mainly spectators. the city was a grand encampment chiseled into the hills. it more distressing is to realize that you are alone in your Though they sometimes descended briefly to the battle- Roads had been laid down, structures raised up, boat docks confusion. Everyone else I saw seemed to know what he fields of men, where the air ran thick with blood and the hammered into the shoreline, and the bay itself eventually or she was doing, and everything moved with sureness of clanging of steel, they greatly preferred the cloudy retreat spanned with bridges, in the effort to carve out an enclave purpose except me. The cable cars were clacking down the of their Mount Olympus, where they looked down on the of human order within the rough lap of nature. Not only the street toward their next stop, and trucks were turning into human spectacle from afar, stretching wide across the plains virgin spaces around it but the city itself was a reminder of alleys to make deliveries. A man was hurrying to a meeting, of Troy. I too am often happier observing a scene than wilderness, for I saw in its accretion of concrete and steel and an ambulance to an emergency, both in full knowledge participating in it. In crowded malls or airports, the gen- the attempt to make a livable home of the turbulent earth. of how to get there. Suburban commuters, without anxiety, eral noise of the innumerable conversations spares me the We tend to regard nature from within the sphere and com- were boarding appropriate buses to return home. A group inconvenience of having to listen to any one of them, and I pass of civilization. As a result, we do not think of nature of girls in hiked-up skirts and high heels was clip-clopping am free to lose myself in pure observation. Likewise at the as the great primordial wild in which we have pitched our down the sidewalk to a club, laughing and talking as they beach, from beneath the cover of an umbrella, I see people precarious tent, but instead as a kind of decorative fringe and went. Even the homeless man knew which bench he wanted talking and carrying on but do not hear what they say above drapery of civilization, a pretty green lace wrapped around to curl up on for the evening and was making his way there the ocean’s roar, and the shouts and screams of children are our cities. Nature is a place to escape and relax, a place to to claim it before someone else. As I wandered aimless amid no more jarring than the far-off cry of seagulls. My favorite breathe fresh air and refocus for another workweek—like a such universal confidence, it occurred to me that what I had place to be is on the periphery of activity, anonymously very large city park outside city limits. I suppose there were earlier called chaos was not really chaos at all, but a coher- watching some spectacle of life near enough to draw my many San Franciscans living next to that roaring ocean who ent order, even a supreme order, which only felt like chaos interest, but far enough to leave me to my thoughts. only thought of it as a place to go on a Sunday afternoon. I because it was an order unknown to me, whose patterns and Accordingly, the next morning after breakfast I drove suppose that I too, walking the crowded piers of Fisherman’s movements I could not follow. Each person in the city had north over the Golden Gate Bridge to a nearby overlook on Wharf, had thought of the sea as one more part of the city, his or her own special role to play, and each was acting it out the Marin Headlands, across the channel from San Francis- one more of its must-see attractions like Chinatown or Lom- with instinctive skill and automatic resolve. Some drove the co. The city I saw when I stepped from my car was worlds bard Street or Alcatraz. taxis others rode in, some waited the tables others dined at, removed from the one I had seen the day before, its garish some swept the sidewalks others walked on: each participant countenance transformed utterly by my lofty vantage. Up I keep a world atlas on my bookshelf. Its most the perfect complement of the others. The city no longer here, all the dizzying racket had given way to the peaceful fascinating feature is its section of satellite images and Earth seemed like the swirling maelstrom it had at first, but instead calm of mornings on mountains. There were no sounds but photography. Whoever has no access to mountaintop views a huge interlocking system—in which I was a loose piece the rustling of a breeze, the distant cry of a hawk, and the of cities, and to the thoughts that arise there, may substitute getting ground in the gears. occasional faint tone of a foghorn, rising up from a barge in such photographs instead. In the closer-range images, our the water below. Distance had softened the frenetic mo- metropolises appear as spots and streaks of gray amid the Near day’s end, I rode a cable car amid the sky- tions of urban life. Cars moved methodically through the textured greens, browns and blues of the earth’s surface. scrapers of the financial district. I watched as huge walls of streets, boats left the harbor in no particular hurry, and the From higher up, the evidence of humankind disappears alto- glass and steel passed slowly and prodigiously by. At each city’s pounding downtown heart was now a quiet palpita- gether, both the gray spots of our cities and the checkerboard street intersection, a gap in the walls of the urban canyon tion. Before such a placid scene, my intimidation of the prior fields of our farms, and there is only the Earth, looking the revealed a vast grid of side canyons branching off from the day appeared superfluous. The once towering skyscrapers same as it always has, the same watery ball with floating one I was in. I felt astonishment at this strange universe of now dwindled amid the vastness of their surroundings. The islands of green and huge stormy swirls of white clouds that buildings and pavement. There was nowhere to rest the eye land rose out of the water at slopes and gradients of its own was here before Euclid’s race ever made its appearance, and but on concrete or metal surfaces, nothing to touch or to choosing, and the city, like a sheet draped over furniture, lay that will still be here when we are gone. walk on except structures set in place by human hands—by obligingly on top of it, compelled to take the contour of the claws of machines controlled by human hands. Every object ground. My eye passed from the downtown skyline and the and arrangement of objects bore the unmistakable marks of mottled gray hues of the houses spreading out from it, to the Brian Jay Stanley lives in Asheville, North Carolina.