The Redwood Coast

Volume 10, Number 4 Review Fall 2008 A Publication of Friends of Coast Community Library in Cooperation with the Independent Coast Observer

Habitat ist politics, he was the wealthiest writer of his era and he owned large tracts of land in Sonoma County. Breast-fed and raised by an African-American nursemaid (the Fire Season ex-slave Daphne Virginia “Jennie” Pren- tiss), he was an unabashed white suprema- cist capable of churning out the crudest C. Kevin Smith formulations of racial bigotry. It’s often been said that histori- My house is made of wood so old, so dry cal figures attract the biographers they From years beneath the pilot-light blue sky deserve, but I’m not so sure that is the A stranger’s idle gaze could be the match case with London. His is a unique situa- That sends us all to blazes—Where was I? tion in which many of the artifacts of his life were long sequestered not only from —James Merrill , “Home Fires” the public, but from scholars as well. Although a veritable academic industry am standing before my shelves has risen up around London and his writ- of books—hundreds of books. A ings over the last three decades, there has I lifetime of books. Hundreds more not been a definitive biography published nestle in boxes in the basement. My eyes in the 90-odd years since his death. Jack race across the rows of spines. I must London has yet to meet his match. be fast for we are evacuating, the fire is uncontrolled and is burning this way. My ondon was born to an unmarried mind feels laser-sharp, focused and clear, Lmother in San Francisco in 1876. It almost empty. I scan the familiar titles, is believed that his father was William speed-reading my floor-to-ceiling shelves. H. Chaney, an itinerant writer, lecturer My fingers pull out three volumes. I exit and astrologer, who lived with London’s my office, books in hand, turning once mother, Flora Wellman, in the year to let my eyes rest upon the shapes of its preceding his birth. Before her son’s first many objects, the walls and windows, birthday, the troubled Flora married Civil the unfinished projects on my desk, the War veteran John London, who raised the

books on my desk, the stacks of books on sy GeoffreyCourte llection Dunn Co young boy as his own, along with other the floor. I look at the chair, the table, the Jack London at Bohemian Grove, Sonoma County, August 1904 siblings from his previous marriage. The lamp. I leave. I shut the door behind me. London clan moved throughout the Bay I do not know when, or if, I will return. Area, living at various locales in the East Earlier that morning, a Wednesday, Bay and as far south as the San Mateo I had sat at my desk and sent an email Lone Wolves Coast, then finally back to Oakland, where to my worried family about the fires in “Jack” attended grammar school and sold Big Sur. I told them what the authorities The many lives of Jack London newspapers from street corners to help his had told us the previous evening at the family make ends meet. community fire meeting, that there was no London’s childhood poverty may have immediate danger, no evacuation foreseen. Geoffrey Dunn been somewhat exaggerated by the author Highway 1 would remain open, businesses in later years, but the young London most would remain open. Thirty minutes after n The Silent Woman: Sylvia Plath London wrote about love and sport, certainly worked various jobs in canner- my reassuring email, we were notified that and Ted Hughes (1994), Janet literary ambition and alcoholism, betrayal ies, jute mills and laundries. He cleaned our side of the highway, the west side, Malcolm brilliantly illuminated and political assassination. He wrote saloons and shoveled coal, worked as a was under an advisory evacuation. (The the constructive nature of biogra- travelogues and futuristic potboilers. In ship hand and became an oyster pirate fires were burning only on the east side phy and called into question both his brilliant maritime epoch, The Sea on San Francisco Bay. Later, he hoboed of the highway.) Within a few hours the Ithe arrogance and intellectual duplicity Wolf (1903), he paid personal homage to across the country, was imprisoned in advisory would be changed to mandatory. of any claim to packaging human life so Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. And in a Buffalo for a month, returned to Oakland By the end of the day we would be miles neatly between two covers, be they paper series of books like The People of Abyss High School, dropped out, went back to from home, unsure if we would ever see or cloth. “Biography can be likened to (1903), War of the Classes (1905), The try college at the University of California, it again. a book that has been scribbled in by an Road (1907), The Iron Heel (1908) and then dropped out from there, too, before We: myself, my partner Jeff, two cats, alien,” she observed. “After we die, our Revolution and Other Essays (1910), embarking on a yearlong venture in search Misha and Pearl, and Emile, the 90-year- story passes into the hands of strangers. London laid bare the evils of “predatory” of gold in the Klondike. old artist and friend we take care of. We: The biographer feels himself not to be a capitalism, promoted the possibilities of Through it all, London was a voracious my notebooks and journals, boxes of let- borrower but a new owner, who can mark democratic socialism and warned against reader, as literature and historical texts ters, family photographs; Jeff’s computer and underline as he pleases.” the coming tyranny of centralized govern- provided him with imaginary escapes and camera equipment; our art, so much So it has been with the life of the ment. He was as revolutionary as he was from the tedium of his workdays and the of it created by people we know; Emile’s American novelist and adventurer Jack prolific, a legacy that has been lost on emotional vacuum of his family. He had art, as much as we could pack in the time London. For nearly a century now, various many of his conservative biographers, but returned to California from the Yukon in allowed. Two trips to Carmel, first with strangers have marked and underscored which has been superbly reclaimed in The the summer of 1898, essentially broke, yet Emile and the cats, then with a car and a his life as they pleased. Indeed, some have Radical Jack London: Writings on War determined to become a writer. U-Haul we’d rented several days before, ripped out entire passages, while others and Revolution (2008), edited by Sonoma By then, London had also become an in the event, which seemed unlikely at the have speculated—and even fabricated— State University professor Jonah Raskin ardent advocate for socialism. He had time, we would have to evacuate. what may have appeared between the lines [see review, page 9]. joined the Oakland chapter of the Social- Evacuate: e = out + vacuus = empty. of his life. It makes for an interesting, if London’s was a life full of Whitman- ist Labor Party as early as 1896 and had To evacuate is to empty your home of troubling, biographical mosaic, which esque contradictions. In spite of his social- become a well-known regional figure on yourself. This is physically possible; it is from a distance takes on something of the stump for socialist causes, twice run- emotionally impossible. It is not possible shape and definition, but from close-up ning unsuccessfully for mayor of Oakland to empty “home” out of your self—the bears little resemblance to the life at all. Certainly no literary on the socialist ticket. The San Francisco home that lives inside you. Even if ev- Certainly no literary legacy in the legacy in the history Chronicle dubbed him “the boy socialist erything remains intact, there is breakage. history of American arts and letters has of Oakland” and reported that the hand- What once was whole—the constellation been more distorted, more diminished, of American letters some and athletic London was “holding of objects and bodies and memories and than London’s. While he was America’s forth nightly to the crowds that throng desires that comprise your experience of (and perhaps the world’s) most popular has been more dis- City Hall park.” home—is split apart into pieces, into the novelist, short story writer and journal- torted than London’s. London’s work ethic matched his piecemeal fragments of your evacuation. ist during his lifetime, his reputation has ambition. He adhered to a rigorous writing You take what feels most precious and been reduced over the years to being While he was perhaps regimen of one thousand words per day. leave behind the rest, abandoning the sud- the author of juvenile “dog stories” and By the spring of 1900, the 24-year-old denly haunted shell of your household to “Klondike tales.” While London’s two the world’s most popu- author had already landed several of his the gods of fate or fortune. You hope your canine classics, Call of the Wild (1903) lar writer during his stories in leading literary magazines, home survives whatever catastrophe has and White Fang (1906), have undoubtedly including Harper’s Weekly, The Atlantic precipitated your evacuation so you can contributed to that reduction, his col- lifetime, his reputation Monthly and McClure’s. In April, his first feel whole again. You promise yourself lected oeuvre of more than 50 books and book, The Son of the Wolf, a collection that when—if—you return home, never hundreds of essays and short stories spans has been reduced over of short stories set in the Klondike, was again will you take its shelter for granted. a remarkably wide range of subject mat- the years to being published by Houghton, Mifflin & Co., to I felt the first premonitory brush of ter and locales—from the barrooms and both critical and popular acclaim. danger the Sunday before we evacuated. oyster beds of his native San Francisco the author of juvenile London was also exploring the com- The fires had been burning a week, one Bay Area, to the down-and-out streets of plex dimensions of turn-of-the-century week since a savage wave of summer sol- London, to the Russo-Japanese war on the “dog stories.” romance and sexuality. He would later stice lightning had touched down across Korean Peninsula. See fire page 4 See london page 10 Page  The Redwood Coast Review Fall 2008 editor’s note Movie Lust: Woody Isabel Philip Barcelona New York Stephen Kessler

merican movie critics and a sizable entertaining comedies of his middle period, slice of the filmgoing public have most notably Manhattan and Annie Hall. Aevidently been seduced by Woody It is as if in his compulsion to make a film Allen’s latest effort, Vicky Christina Bar- every year he can only return obsessively to celona, in which the great Javier Bardem an eternal theme we all love to explore but and the half-baked Scarlett Johansson and into which we also expect our artists to offer the cute newcomer Rebecca Hall and the some original insight, not just the jokes of mercurial Penélope Cruz join forces to act 14-year-old boys. out the auteur’s fantasies of a hispano- The theme is desire and what to do about bohemian four-way ménage set against the it, and obviously there are no easy answers. scenic background of the Catalonian capital. But some kinds of questioning penetrate Every romantic, sophomoric and touristic more deeply into the mystery than others, cliché—from the Latin lover to the existen- and those deeper questions are the kinds I tial dialectic of freedom vs. security to the find most satisfying, even as entertainment. postcard-worthy vistas of Gaudí’s melting As it happens, another recent film provides architecture—is squeezed for every last a striking contrast to Vicky Christina in drop of its sweet juice, and the audience, several interestingly symmetrical ways. The bathing in the Mediterranean light, laps it up with belief-suspended pleasure. Ben Kingsley and Penélope Cruz in Isabel Coixet’s Elegy I must admit I too enjoyed the movie. It It is perhaps unfair to satisfies any escapist voyeur with its vision compare Woody Allen greater New York (Roth grew up across the creations as two-dimensional embodiments of easy love and guilt-free sex, and the river in Newark), and both have recurrently of stock ideas (the prude, the adventuress, actors’ individual and collective beauty is a to Philip Roth—it’s like explored with varying degrees of comic ge- the libertine, the hysteric), Roth and Meyer gift to behold. Bardem is a suave Adonis, nius the sexual fixations of their youth—and and Coixet take the vaguely unsavory Cruz is a hot-blooded nightmare of desire, comparing a wood- in Roth’s case the more grave fixations of character of Kepesh and infuse him (via Hall is sexy in a reserved intellectual way pecker to an osprey— older age. During my own neurotic Jewish Kingsley’s superb performance) with a sad and Johansson—though she can barely yet darkly rebellious youth I would have humanity, one too interesting for him to be act—has a soft radiance adored by the but in this case the nothing to do with either of these guys dismissed out of hand as merely a randy caressing camera. Like Marilyn Monroe because from everything I heard and read geezer. Could it be that Kepesh/Kingsley’s without the talent, Johansson’s curved body parallels are too obvi- about them they sounded like the kind of advanced age disqualifies him from the and lovely face unspoiled by experience are ous to ignore. Both schlemiels I wanted to get as far away from hedonistic pursuits of Juan Antonio, with a screen on which almost any man’s fanta- as I could. The smash bestsellerhood of whom the moralizing Holden seems to have sies can be effortlessly projected. Allen are about the same Roth’s 1969 novel Portnoy’s Complaint no problem? Is there a whiff of ageism certainly enjoys projecting his, and for the was not enough to make me want to read embedded between Holden’s otherwise third time in as many movies he casts her age, both are neu- it; it sounded to me like the self-lacerating politically correct lines? as his female lead and unobscure object of rotic Jewish boys from lament of some kind of Woody Allenish Critics like Holden give Woody Al- desire. untermensch. len a pass on such questions—except The problem with this movie is the greater New York, and Imagine my amazement, then, when I when Woody himself plays the dirty old writing. From the opening moments the finally picked up a copy in 1990 from a man—surely because Allen is merely a voice-over narration spells out the story’s both have recurrently sidewalk paperback vendor in New York, to writer of comedies, light entertainment to be exposition rather than embody it in drama. explored with vary- discover on reading Portnoy that it was the simply enjoyed and not taken too seriously. And the so-called philosophical questions flat-out funniest book I’d ever read. Poor Besides, we love him for being so lovably raised by the characters’ speeches are the ing degrees of comic Woody—Phil outdoes him even when it Woodyish all these years, spreading his neu- kinds of things my friends and I were talk- comes to jokes about masturbation! See- roses across the screen with self-deprecating ing about in high school, or maybe early in genius the sexual fixa- ing Allen’s Barcelona movie and Coixet’s charm but no apparent shame. Woody is college. This is no doubt because Woody tions of their youth. Barcelonese adaptation of Roth’s New York even more screwed up than we are, and we Allen, now in his low seventies, is still a week apart, I couldn’t help noting the adore him for letting us off the hook. Roth, in nearly every way an adolescent. His resemblances and contrasts—not just the on the other hand, laugh-out-loud funny as arrested development has been evident in Spanish or more precisely catalán direc- presence of Cruz and Patricia Clarkson in he can be at his most manic, forces us to most of his movies of the last 20 years, tor Isabel Coixet of Barcelona has, with both casts but the thematic overlaps (mainly face uncomfortable truths—like the moral some more embarrassing than others, but a screenplay by Nicholas Meyer, adapted sexual hedonism vs. the alternatives) and ambiguities of sex and the unjust finality none showing much maturation beyond the Philip Roth’s 2001 novel The Dying Animal the obtuseness with which some critics man- of death—with no easy escape. Meyer into a most involving movie called Elegy. aged to look at the two films. and Coixet have taken some of the hardest While Allen the grizzled New Yorker imag- Stephen Holden of The New York Times edges off Roth’s source material, yet they ines a sun-washed Barcelona (a city which, (normally someone whose angle of critical have retained the moral and philosophical The Redwood Coast in my experience, for all its architectural vision I respect) was most egregious, and gravity of Roth’s investigation into late-life beauty is rather dark and grimy, at least perhaps representative, in his knee-jerk adult male lust. The maturity of this inquiry in its most interesting parts), Coixet the reactions. Holden described Vicky Christina into a problematic topic naturally makes the Review 40-something catalana evokes a gloomy yet as a “warm-blooded” movie “set in the hap- average moviegoer squirm, but you’d think sensuous New York City where her protago- py European city of Barcelona” where the a critic from The New York Times would be Stephen Kessler nist, Rothian doppelganger David Kepesh, a triangular relationship between the Bardem tough enough to deal with such discomfort. Editor minor intellectual celebrity, faces his mortal and Johansson and Hall characters “gives twilight with a lusty effort to seize his last off heat.” I don’t know what makes Barce- hat really gets to me about all this Barbara L. Baer chance at sexual satisfaction. Ben Kingsley lona happier than any other big city—per- Wis that a promiscuously prolific and Daniel Barth plays Kepesh with smoldering desperation haps its exotic difference from Manhattan intermittently funny filmmaker like Woody Daniela Hurezanu and rage at his aging body, and the body where both Allen and Holden reside—but Allen is taken so seriously and indulged as Jonah Raskin the only real heat in the movie is Cruz’s some kind of creative genius no matter how Contributing Editors against which he hurls his with last-ditch passion and possessive obsession is that temper. The sexual tension is flaccid and hackneyed and superficial his work, while the “sex” scenes, such as they are, are more an obviously earnest and skilled direc- Linda Bennett of Penélope Cruz, who in this incarnation like pantomimes of seduction than anything tor like Isabel Coixet—whose feminine Production Director is a rather reserved cubana of upper-class descent. truly erotic—although Bardem is arguably empathy and compassion allow her to find and reveal the soul of her hypermasculine The Redwood Coast Review is published Consuela, Cruz’s character, is Roth’s sexier than all the women combined. quarterly (January, April, July and October) idea of an object of desire, but she has About Elegy Holden wrote of Kingsley’s protagonist—can be dismissed so casually by Friends of Coast Community Library in a complexity that makes her more than character as “a selfish, entitled rat” who by those who should know better. cooperation with the Independent Coast a blank blonde screen or stereotypical “manipulates the affections” of women The rampant inanity and mindless may- Observer. The opinions expressed in these tantrum-throwing fire-breathing Latina. In and “is the morally repulsive embodiment hem that dominate the cinematic landscape pages are those of the individual writers and addition to being beautiful in an unconven- of masculine privilege.” Now, if someone and marketplace may never be superseded do not necessarily reflect the views ofF oCCL, tional way, Cruz is a fine actor and invests wants to trot out this kind of boilerplate by thoughtful mature drama of Chekhovian, the ICO or the advertisers. Contents copyright Consuela with persuasive depth. Kingsley feminist rhetoric to denounce a fictional or even Rothian, subtlety. The masses of © 2008 The Redwood Coast Review. All rights people enjoy explosions and violently cho- revert to authors and artists on publication. is extraordinary as a not-very-sympathetic character, fine; but between Kingsley’s We welcome your submissions. Please character whose existential distress, beneath Kepesh and Bardem’s Juan Antonio, it is reographed chases and pretty faces and silly send essays, reviews, fiction, poetry and letters his hedonistic surface, allows the viewer to the latter who is by far the more manipula- situations more than they do the nuances of to the Editor, The Redwood Coast Review, c/o ICO, see him as a suffering human being facing tive and privileged and morally dubious great drama or the soul-cleansing catharsis PO Box 1200, Gualala, CA 95445. Manuscripts the end of his erotic road with a kind of in his free and breezy fucking of—and of tragedy. But unless movie critics can see should be typed, double-spaced, with the dread that elicits sympathy. The chemistry with—come who may. Perhaps because what’s in front of their eyes and defend real author’s name, address, phone and email at between Kingsley and Cruz is intense, and Bardem is young, handsome and Latino and art over frivolity and kitsch, what’s left of the top of the first page. Postal mail only. A while their story plays out more gently and lives in the wonderland of happy Barcelona, truly sensitive filmmaking will be more and self-addressed, stamped envelope is required softly than in the novel (an adaptive deci- he is exempted from the moral scrutiny more marginalized, and the prospects for for our reply. credible human stories onscreen increas- On the Web: stephenkessler.com/rcr.html sion of the filmmakers to which some critics and judgment applied to late-middle-aged Subscription information: See page 9. have objected, as if a movie can ever repli- New York Jewish Casanovas like Kepesh ingly diminished. Friends of Coast Community Library is a cate the texture of a text), its drama kept me (and Roth and Allen for that matter) who nonprofit, tax-exempt 501(c)(3) organization. riveted right to the end. can’t keep their minds or hands off nubile Tax-deductible donations may be sent to young women. The problem with Holden’s Stephen Kessler is the author, most recently, Coast Community Library, PO Box 808, Point t is perhaps unfair to compare Woody reductive criticism is that its simpleminded of Moving Targets: On Poets, Poetry & Arena, CA 95468. The library is located at Allen to Philip Roth—it’s like comparing self-righteousness shrinks the character to 225 Main Street in Point Arena. Telephone I Translation (essays, El León Literary Arts), a woodpecker to an osprey—but in this case a mere type, obscuring his psychic anguish which will be launched with a reading and 707.882.3114. and the true pathos of his situation. Thank you for your support! the parallels are too obvious to ignore. Both booksigning Thursday, November 6, 7 pm, are about the same age (Roth is two years While Allen, with admittedly admirable at City Lights Books, 261 Columbus Ave., older), both are neurotic Jewish boys from lightness of touch, in this case toys with his San Francisco. Fall 2008 The Redwood Coast Review Page  music Dave Music Late Bloomer Back when we lived on the island There was a house in back Made entirely of stone At 100, Elliott Carter keeps on And in this house Lived a black man Marc Hofstadter And his name was Dave The windows in the house Were covered by boards ecember 11, 2008, will be a very special day in our energy. One doesn’t need to be a musician to enjoy Carter. Nailed together and arranged so country’s cultural history: classical composer Elliott One only needs to be open and give him a chance. They could swing open in good weather DCarter will turn one hundred years old. Elliott Carter Music is at once the most technical and most emotional The tarantulas liked our front porch is not a household name. The United States does not value of art forms. It has a mathematical side, being based on So I had to leave the house running its great classical composers as it does rock and roll singers scales of notes physically related to one another, obeying Every time I wanted to go outside or rap artists. Being a contemporary classical composer strict rules of harmony and/or counterpoint, being written One other thing was involves swimming against the current. To be a major figure down in special notation. (It’s perhaps for this reason that There was a bridge there in this rarefied world one must have the intellect to grasp mathematicians are often talented at music.) It also has a So we could ride in my father’s car the technical demands of complex modern composition, the very emotional side, and can be thought to exist primarily to Back to America aural skill to hear pattern and meaning in it, and the heart convey deep feeling. Elliott Carter’s music, if approached But we never went with him much to feel deeply and move the listener. These qualities Elliott technically, is extremely sophisticated, complex, and de- To America I mean Carter has in spades. Who is he? manding. But, listened to over and over, it yields great emo- It was mostly just me and my brother Well, for one thing, he was a late bloomer. He wrote his tional and sensuous rewards. Carter’s notes move me as only And my mother and the tarantulas first great works—the Piano Sonata (1946), Cello Sonata a couple of other recent composers do—the late Russian And Dave in the stone house out back (1948) and First String Quartet (1951)—when he was composer Alfred Schnittke and French master Pierre Boulez. The old man was a sign painter and so already in his late thirties and early forties. But he has more You don’t have to understand the professional aspects of We moved a lot and after about a year than made up for that by continuing to compose energetic, Carter’s work to be touched by it in your heart. We moved back to Alabama or Florida exciting pieces well past the age of ninety. Never in the Carter’s music is deep. Aaron Copland, by comparison, I forget history of Western music has a major composer created so seems simple and superficial. Samuel Barber appears too But every prolifically at such a late stage of life. Carter’s wonderful easily Romantic. Milton Babbitt seems dry, over-intellectual. Time blues Dialogues for piano and chamber orchestra (2003) was writ- Carter’s music is an almost ideal mix of intellect and feel- Came on ten at the age of ninety-five, his Boston Concerto (2002) at ing, complexity and beauty, richness and tenderness. Few The radio ninety-four. At ninety-nine, he continues to compose every twentieth-century composers are as expansive and deep as I would day. The man has a phenomenal vitality. Carter. One characteristic of his music—the fact he often has Tell my different instruments play different melodic lines, rhythms Mother that’s or timbres at the same time, so that the piece resembles a Dave Carter’s music is an almost discussion or even an argument—makes for complexity Music ideal mix of intellect and feel- and drama. Another side of his music—the way it embod- —Greg Hall ies change, process, metamorphosis—means that his notes ing, complexity and beauty, are transformed from second to second, rarely repeating richness and tenderness. Few themselves, forever evolving, just as life—modern life, especially?—moves rapidly from one moment to the next. It lood ance twentieth-century composers takes a lot of listening, and ideally some study, to compre- B D hend the structure of a Carter composition, but one can, as are as expansive and deeply I’ve said, enjoy this music even without grasping its formal The way Indians do a Rain Dance hoping for rain attributes. One can live in the moment of his works if one is Earthworms do a Blood Dance hoping for blood, searching. sufficiently open and receptive, can thrill and move to it. It Hoping for blood to drain down to them from above soars, grumbles, screeches, bubbles, scrapes, moans, provid- Not realizing it’s from human warcorpse carnage, Not only has Carter’s creative output increased over the ing a seemingly endless flow, like that of a churning, rushing thinking it’s just a different kind of rain— years. His music has become more innovative, colorful and river. It is, as the author of the wonderful book about Carter For the corpses on the battlefield are like clouds joyful. Carter began, at the age of forty or so, to be heav- by David Schiff called The Music of Elliott Carter (Cornell blood comes from instead of rain ily influenced by the expressionist music of Schoenberg, University Press) has put it, “color, gesture and motion.” and there’s so much blood Berg and Webern, and his subsequent work often embodied it trickles down an anguish and strangeness characteristic of those com- arter’s oeuvre has evolved over the years. His Piano posers—though always with a slightly optimistic, open, CSonata is a bit reminiscent of Debussy and Copland. His and drips through the ceilings American twist. Some of his works—for example, the Varia- Variations for Orchestra echo Schoenberg and Alban Berg of underground worm tunnels tions for Orchestra (1953-5) and the Second String Quartet in their expressionist dissonance. His Piano Concerto (1965) And the worms don’t see the corpses (1959)—are full of discord and suffering. Yet much of his is dense, prickly, contentious, his Night Fantasies for piano but hear bombs and guns and groans recent music, while atonal as ever, can best perhaps be de- (1980) free-ranging, associative, inventive. His Violin Con- and think it thunder scribed as “ebullient”—light, lively, witty—in somewhat the certo (1996) is lyrical and passionate, his Symphonia: Sum and gorge and engorge themselves way Mozart’s music is. Here is a man for whom life, with Fluxae Pretiam Spei (1997) alternately exuberant, brooding in the blood-soaked loam advancing age, has become happier and happier! and airy, his Dialogues dramatic and terse. Transformation And drunk on the blood of youngmen I am not a professional musician. My mother was a and metamorphosis are key in Carter’s music, both within war has turned to dung concert pianist and my father briefly studied musical com- each work and within the arc of his career. This makes his worms become cannibals position before deciding to give it up for philosophy but, music quintessentially of our time. Differently from the and devour each other apart from studying the piano from age seven through age music of, say, Bach, Schubert, or Wagner, Carter’s work and the shit of worms that ate blood thirteen, and taking one college music class, I have no musi- does not embody a vision of order, a stable structure. It bod- and that ate worms that ate blood that ate worms cal training. I mention this because I want to suggest that it ies forth movement and change. Every motif, every chord doesn’t take special education to appreciate dissonant mod- cluster, every rhythm is in a continual state of variation, and that ate blood ern music like Carter’s. All it takes, truly, is familiarity. The the listener finds him- or herself constantly surprised. This for them is a delicacy, first work of Carter’s I heard, back in 1965, was his Double doesn’t mean that Carter’s music is chaotic or disordered. While for days on end, for weeks on end, Concerto for Harpsichord and Piano, which had been He creates his own, very modern versions of traditional For months on end, for years on end, composed in 1961. On first hearing I was baffled. The piece forms—sonatas, quartets, fugues—and, in fact, when one For centuries on end, for millennia on end, seemed chaotic, fragmented, unsatisfying. But, as I contin- studies them, one sees his works are very carefully struc- For geologic ages on end, for Big Bangs on end, ued to listen, the work came alive for me and is now one of tured. (Schiff describes these structures brilliantly in one millions of war wounds my favorite pieces of music—vital, beautiful, bristling with section of his book.) make a small newspaper article Elliott Carter’s place in musical history is assured. or a sentence in a history book Famous and frequently performed in Europe, he is by now, no one reads anymore, finally, the most highly regarded classical composer in the While enough blood from war dead through time United States. He has won the Pulitzer Prize twice. He is floats all the battleships ever built, often considered a major figure in the tradition of modern Yet the entrance and exit wounds of every bullet music which began with Schoenberg, Bartok, Stravinsky, still haven’t been photographed Ives and Webern, and was continued by Schnittke, Gubaidu- lina, Boulez, Stockhausen, Berio, Nono, Ligeti and others. and shown to gradeschool kids Some schools of contemporary classical music are unlike so they can identify them these composers in being melodic, harmonious, conserva- and draw them with craypas tive—I’m speaking notably of the Minimalists John Adams, from memory— Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Terry Riley—so that Carter, a What other ways are there great innovator, may seem paradoxically a relic of the past. to keep Death young? Yet he has proven to be still at the forefront of contemporary Every time a young soldier is killed music. His recent works embody what writer Italo Calvino Death thanks God and is happy (cited by Carter in some program notes) has elsewhere For the more corpses the merrier, called “a lightness of thoughtfulness,” a quality that puts me For the more corpses the more blood for worms, in mind of Shakespeare’s late, great comedy The Tempest, in For the more corpses the younger Death gets, which a master similarly treats light, even humorous themes Till Death becomes a child with poise, depth, a perfect touch. I know of no other music who no longer remembers of our time with the somber poetry of 90+ (1994) or the improvisational fecundity of the Oboe Quartet (2001). This dead men envy maggots in cheese, modern genius is a national treasure, an icon of the twentieth Till Death becomes a baby century who has marched vibrantly into the twenty-first, suckled by the war wounds blessing us all with his brilliance and humanity. of all time, Till Death becomes a fetus in the womb not knowing blood or bombs or bullets or worms or rain meredith huer Marc Hofstadter is a poet living in Walnut Creek whose lat- and having no idea in a million years Elliott Carter est book is Luck (Scarlet Tanager Books). tomorrow it will be born. —Antler Page  The Redwood Coast Review Fall 2008 fire from page 1

California. In those first days of the fire, husband’s fury, bigger than Ar- from the vantage of our roof, the plumes of tur Schnabel, bigger even than smoke still appeared as distant phenomena, Beethoven. faraway smoke signals of warning. Then But not bigger than a wild- on Sunday we awoke to find an enormous fire. I needed to protect it from mass of smoke rising up behind Mt. Manuel the fire—all of it, the signature, and rapidly moving north. This was the first the footnotes, the unhappiness, time we saw flames. We stood on the roof the passion, the aspiration, the as planes and helicopters filled the sky with deep love of music that flows the shrieking sounds of emergency and we through my family’s blood like a watched a persistent band of bright orange creek that will never run dry. fire lick a long edge of the mountain hori- We were evacuated a week. zon. We knew a dozer line had been plowed Already that time is blurring there, knew the fire was on the other side of across my memory, days of the mountain. But it no longer felt far away. numb blankness, a flat mental Even more worrisome were the smoky space hazy with smoke. I was “hot spots” scattered throughout the vegeta- physically exhausted from the tion to the southeast of us, in the dense, packing and loading of boxes of brushy slopes around Ventana Inn. Where fragile art all day; the morning the smoke on the mountain was stark, after the evacuation I awoke monumental, a single massive shapely with every muscle sore, as if I column of gray and pink and yellow, these had trekked up a tall mountain. thin, isolated hot spots buried in the woods Worse was the mental exhaus- were more insidious, steadily crawling their tion, the stress of displacement, way to the highway. In the end, both fire the constant anxiety about the areas would burn west, burn clear through safety of our home. There were a Médaille the oaks and redwoods, the bay laurels and rumors of looting. Our caretak- pines and madrones, through the weedy er, his son, and two other men arbar undergrowth and across the tan-colored had remained on the property, hillsides, burning up the scrubby chapparal to protect its structures with fire plants, burning all the way to Highway 1 retardant gel, if necessary. They and in the direction of hundreds of homes had to deal with power outages, inting by B Oil pa and businesses. a dwindling food supply, and loss. Somewhere, right now, a fire is burn- years pass, the solid fact of my dissertation, aving so little time to evacuate did What, from my deepest ing in someone’s life, and the ashes of what as a complete work, begins to grow in my Hforce us to choose quickly what to take is lost rise and blow and spread across the estimation. Perhaps I will learn to heed its and what to leave behind. As I hurried from past, could I not bear skies and fall upon us all. subject—how stability of meaning eluded one room to another, I felt myself move to lose? What belong- Every day our lives are full of danger, the monuments of nineteenth-century Par- through a strange awareness of time. What, though we do not like to think so. Time is—and accept the unfinished, the unsettled, from my deepest past, could I not bear to ings and supplies would passes, trees fall, objects break, people die. the imperfect in my own work. Perhaps all lose? What belongings and supplies would Mountains burn. James Merrill, whose those years of study still have something to I require to get through the days or weeks I require to get through lines introduced this essay, wrote a lifetime teach me. It turned out I could not bear to ahead? All day long my mind was swept the days or weeks of poems about the danger of living. A lose my dissertation to the fire. back and forth, between the long shadows of Scattering of Salts, his last book, came out There was another change in my life the past and a brittle, uncertain sense of the ahead? All day long one month after his 1995 death of a heart in 1999, when Jeff and I moved into an immediate future. Present time was almost attack resulting from AIDS. The book’s apartment together. For Valentine’s Day nonexistent. During such trauma one is my mind was swept be- title echoes a scriptural concern with time, that year I purchased a handsome volume of not aware of the present moment except as tween the long shadows memory, and mortality, and serves as the Shakespeare’s sonnets, in order to memorize deadline. We had a few precious hours. We dying poet’s epitaph. Yet even when Merrill a sonnet I would speak aloud to my beloved had to get out. of the past and a brittle was a young man and AIDS not yet a rumor on that special day devoted to lovers. I have Some of my evacuation choices surprised from the future, he sounded the persistent done this every year since, the atmosphere me. Days before, I had made a mental sense of the immediate theme of loss. One of his best poems, “An and feeling of each year finding its own checklist of what to gather, should the order future. Urban Convalescence,” from his 1962 col- appropriate sonnet. And in the upper corner to evacuate come, but as Jeff and I moved lection Water Street, begins: of the page, I note in black ink the year. For things to the car that Wednesday morning, I ten years, the sonnets have been a living found myself reaching for things that were a sheriff’s department pointedly hostile to Out for a walk, after a week in bed, testimony to our love for each other. I could not on my checklist, items I rarely used, the small number of residents and business I find them tearing up a part of my block not bear to lose this volume to the fire. owners who chose to defy the evacuation looked at, or even thought about. And, chilled through, dazed and lonely, Edgar Bowers was a rare and cherished Some of these items had belonged to order. Controversy about this aspect of the join the dozen friend. Winner of the Bollingen Prize in Po- my maternal grandmother, then my mother, firefighting effort continues to smolder in In meek attitudes, watching a huge crane etry, he died in 2000 of lymphoma; I spent and now me. For example, a Metlox china Big Sur. the last month of his life caring for him in Fumble luxuriously in the filth of years. plate with a loopy, Jackson Pollockish fifties But the fire never crossed the highway. his beautiful San Francisco apartment that design, which recalled for me the story of The firefighters held the line. Our house, Her jaws dribble rubble. An old man looked out onto the Golden Gate Bridge, how my grandmother, aware of her teenage and countless others, remained safe. Every- Laughs and curses in her brain, onto the glassy blue water of the bay and daughter’s unhappiness, bought an odd- one in Big Sur will be forever grateful to the Bringing to mind the close of The White the pale brown hills of Mt. Tamalpais. I looking Metlox china plate shaped like a firefighters for their hard work. Goddess. treasure the memory and still vital pres- lopsided V (my mother’s name is Vieva). The day after we returned home, I went As usual in New York, everything is torn ence of his friendship as much as I do the My mother had declared how dull, how for a walk in the woods near our house. down remembered joy of loving my grandmother. square, her parents were; that evening, her Everything was littered with a fine coating Before you have had time to care for it. Both her and Edgar’s ashes lie in California mother served her dinner on a plate that was of ash, even the spider webs, white flakes of Head bowed, at the shrine of noise, let me earth; their spirit remains vivid in my life. I meant to convey, for she could not bring soot suspended symmetrically between the try to recall could not bear to lose this book, its poems, crooks of twigs and branches as if floating herself to say the words, that she understood What building stood here. Was there a its signature, its witness to an irreplaceable her daughter’s unhappiness, and wished she in air, as if part of nature’s design. Every building at all? friendship, to the fire. could make things better. few hundred yards I would bend over to I have lived on this same street for a Many of Edgar’s poems are about the I also brought the two heavy volumes pick up a burned leaf, fragile yet perfectly act of witness, about fragile stories surviv- decade. of Beethoven piano sonatas edited by Artur whole, burned to a shiny mahogony brown. ing the ceaseless rush of time. With every Schnabel that my grandmother had given These leaves had been crisped on the other reading the poems reenact that survival, as Merrill’s Collected Poems (2002) is a to her husband as a Christmas gift in 1940, side of the highway and hurled into the air a place where the myths we invent about favorite of mine, but I did not take it with a little over a year before my mother was by smoke and heat, to fall finally into the our lives are rescued and preserved from the me when we evacuated. Like most books, born. My grandfather was passionate about shade of unburned trees. I have saved many fire of our mortality. In “Chaco Canyon,” it is replaceable. When I stood before my the piano to the point of unhappy obsession, of these leaves. In them I glimpse some he imagines Plato’s presence in the New shelves and scanned its rows of titles, I and was burdened all his life by what he dark essence of the fire, preserved and as if Mexican desert, where the poet and a lover gathered as if by instinct the three books perceived as his failure as an artist, a burden baked into their veins and fibers, as if nature and the young sons of friends are camping I could not bear to lose. This act was that poisoned the atmosphere in which my were one enormous kiln. Someday these amid ancient ruins. “Though Plato’s eyes unplanned. All my books are precious to mother breathed the first twenty years of frail relics will help me remember the fire. were open,” the poet writes, her life. “May this volume bring you much After the fire, we drove past mountains me (well, most are), but on the day of the happiness,” my grandmother wrote to a scraped raw by flame, mountains gray with evacuation I did not have time to think of them. There was only time—my mind only in a dream man who did not know how to be happy. sooty ash. In some places the effect was Remembering the canyon, he foresaw lunar, unworldly, except that it was not made the time—to think of three books. Why did I save these piano books? They That, in the time to come, a man, en- are impossible to play from. Overbearing another world, it was our world, our familiar If the house should burn down, I knew I camped footnotes in three languages crowd nearly surroundings, leveled and transformed by would have this: my doctoral dissertation, every page, long paragraphs of editorial re- fire. a collection of Shakespeare’s sonnets, and For years beside a ruin once a city marks heavy with a certain type of Prussian We were transformed, too. How could an inscribed copy of the Collected Poems of Exposed to the indifference of the sun spirit—rigid, unyielding, unforgiving—that we not be, when the ashes continued to fall Edgar Bowers. And moon, inquiring of the breathless dust leaves little room for spontaneity or kind- even after the fire was out, finer and finer That covers all things made of it, one day, ness or compassion or wit. grades of snow-like particles that still car- he choice to rescue my dissertation Among the ashes, bones, and sherds, will And yet I could not bear to let these ried the acrid scent of char? Ash of earth, Tfrom the approaching flames surprised find pages burn, for as miserable as that part ash of bone . . . What is not made of ash? me. When I left academia, in 1999, I was Preserved by an egyptian air a memoir, of my heritage is, I grew my own love of Ash fills the sky, always. Ash rains down eager to put the structured formality of those And, bringing it to the light, will read of years behind me. I wanted to write, to write piano, my own passion for music, from that upon us even when we do not see it or smell us, same family plot of rich, troubled soil. And, it or taste it. It is the ash of what we must a novel, to grow wings and become what I thought of as “a real writer,” to evolve Dazzled by time and by what time pro- too, there is my grandmother’s distinctive lose, the ash of our lives, our possessions, vides. signature below her hopeful dedication, our stories. The governor of California tells into a new and better version of myself. and in this signature I admire her spirit us to acknowledge that every season has be- Yet finishing a novel, one that meets my of patience and strength, bigger than her come a fire season in our state. He is right. impossibly anxious standards, has proved a C. Kevin Smith is a fiction writer who lives Every season of human life is a season of larger challenge than I anticipated. As the in Big Sur and contributes often to the RCR. Fall 2008 The Redwood Coast Review Page  writing nature

Eternal Sunrise Skeletonydipping As we delight in skinnydipping John Muir’s love affair with wilderness in the wild lake at night under the moon Stripping off clothes in a rush William Zehringer and taking a dip in the dark So the skeleton wants to take off the flesh and inner organs covering it Just before the alpenglow began to fade, two crimson clouds his biographers, Frederick Turner: “I suppose I must go into And be naked and free at last came streaming across the summit like wings of flame, ren- society this winter,” he wrote to his beloved sister, Sarah, in its pure white birthday suit of bone dering the sublime scene yet more intensely impressive; then adding that “I would rather go back in some undiscoverable And plunge plunge plunge came darkness and the stars. corner beneath the rafters of an old garret with my notes and into the still lake at night under the moon —John Muir, The Yosemite books and listen to the winter rapping.” And lie on its back and float Perhaps Robert Burton, had he known a man with John and dream merican literature has been enriched, from its very Muir’s personality, would have found a secure place for How all skeletons should be free him in the pages of The Anatomy of Melancholy, along with beginnings, by the writing of gifted observers of na- and wild and naked at last ture. From the hazardous sea voyages and awestruck scholars and sundry other lovers of solitude. Indeed, Burton A And plunge in the cool dark lake encounters of Walter Raleigh in the Age of Exploration, affirms, “from these melancholy dispositions no man living and the pathbreaking expeditions of Lewis and Clark in the is free.” under the moon alone nineteenth century, to the impassioned explorations of a Nonetheless, it could only have been sheer joy that And emerge a shivering skeleton free and naked and wild much-diminished natural world by Rachel Carson, Edwin animated Muir, that tireless, solitary walker, when he first in the moonlight Way Teale and Annie Dillard in the twentieth, the descrip- viewed the lush reaches of the great forested valleys and For when a skeleton goes swimming alone in the dark tive power of their narratives has given form to the wonder crystalline cascading streams of Northern California. it feels great they felt as they found their own paths into the heart of the How else may one explain John Muir’s ability to capture To have water sluice between the ribs American wilderness. in words, time and again, the supernal beauty of unbounded and around all the bones In the long series of tales that serves to preserve for later nature, as he does here, in The Yosemite: “Now and then one and in the empty eye sockets generations the adventures of our poet-naturalists, the jour- mighty throb sends forth a mass of solid water into the free little affectionate whirlpools neys and testimonies of John Muir (1838-1914) have an en- air far beyond the others, which rushes alone to the bottom and where the brain was during value. For that Scottish immigrant has also the honor of the fall with long streaming tail, like combed silk, while inside the skull the others, descending in clusters, gradually mingle and lose of having successfully preserved much of the landscape that to feel minnows he wrote about so indelibly. their identity.” swimming and nibbling— John Muir, who seems to have lived awake through what In such a manner did John Muir offer his readers stun- William Blake once called “the lost traveler’s dream under ning portrayals of a still wild and unblemished American Yeah, in the mind, skeleton goes boneydipping the hill,” was changed forever by his many startling encoun- landscape, which he set out to save for all generations to skullydipping skeletonydipping ters with the wild and vivid splendor of the North American come. And so he did, throughout his long life, working with So hot when it took off its flesh and organs continent. unceasing labor to protect such natural wonders as the Grand and leapt into the lake We know, from the marvelously crafted pages of his Canyon, the redwoods and the Petrified Forest, and winning it hissed and a big cloud of steam went up— journals, that Muir, who waded through marsh, prairie grass over his friend and woodland companion Theodore Roos- As you dip an apple into caramel and bogs, and ascended mountains, came back to the haunts evelt to the cause of national conservation. to make a caramel apple of men with a singular and determined vocation: to save Or a cherry in chocolate from all spoliation that untamed, vibrant country which had To read these musings of the to make a chocolate-covered cherry, enthralled his heart. So you dip your skeleton How did he go about painting that land for all those who aged naturalist, recalling his in wild lake night cool water alone wished to view, if only in his books, the most splendid vistas And float on your back with your skull of their country? Here, as one example of his “rough mag- changing cast of mind as a looking up at the stars ic,” is John Muir, ensconced among the towering Sequoias, young man, is to become aware as he fuses precise powers of observation with a wonderful So when your skeleton gets out at last sense of place: “Imbedded in these majestic woods there that Muir, almost from the be- and lets the wind dry it off are numerous meadows, around the sides of which the Big ginning, “had begun to discover It shivers and glistens in the starlight. Trees press close together in beautiful lines, showing their —Antler grandeur openly from the ground to their domed heads in for himself a way of living not the sky. For every venerable, lightning-stricken tree, there is one or more in the glory of prime, and for each of these, on the land but with it, so that many young trees and crowds of saplings.” he might receive its gifts of the Muir’s ability to capture and hold in mind such a Hetchy Valley in California, a decision made at the highest well-focused picture of the teeming world before him was, spirit.” levels of government. apparently, already present in his early life. In his memoir If we wish to fathom John Muir’s sense of what was (and The Story of My Boyhood and Youth, as he recalls growing is) truly lost by the promotion of such calamitous policies, up as a young man on a Wisconsin farm, he tells how, after rom his own testimony, it is possible to gauge that Muir we need only look at the exquisitely rendered remembrances hearing the songs of the birds, “We boys often tried to inter- Fmust have possessed an extraordinary inner strength in that he set down of his early life. There he demonstrates pret the wild ringing melody and put it into words.” Such order for him to pursue such a dedicated and austere voca- a remarkable appreciation of the qualities that inhere in brief and telling vignettes, placed beside his most inspired tion, despite many setbacks and considerable opposition. creatures of the field and woodland, and a fascination with musings and his unrivaled views of lofty pines and soaring For, then as now, a number of powerful special interests had the teeming, multifaceted life he saw disporting along the peaks, can present us with a fairly accurate idea of John little sympathy for Muir’s spirited, pugnacious defense of riverbanks, in the swamps and on the prairies. Of the oxen Muir’s way of approaching the natural and human world. our imperiled natural heritage. In fact, the long, protracted on his father’s farm, he wrote, “We recognized their kinship, We may also gather further insight into his thought from his struggle that Muir and like-minded allies waged to win over by their intelligent, alert curiosity, manifested in listening correspondence, as in the following letter, quoted by one of leading public figures to policies of conservation and wise to strange sounds; their love of play; the attachments they stewardship of land and resources finally made; and their mourning, long continued, when a compan- drove him to affirm that the virtually ion was killed.” unspoiled tracts that, at that time, still To read these pensive musings of the aged naturalist, re- lay across America, should be placed off calling so well his changing cast of mind as a young man, is limits to public use, even for camping and to become aware that John Muir, almost from the beginning recreation. of his career as a defender of America’s imperiled natural That view, in the end, was to put treasures, “had begun,” as his biographer notes, “to discover John Muir at odds with one of his most for himself a way of living not on the land but with it, so that cherished confreres, Gifford Pinchot. Al- he might receive its gifts of the spirit.” though, to be sure, theirs was but a merry Thus, of John Muir it can justly be said that he antici- quarrel, after all, between two far-seeing pated, far in advance of Aldo Leopold in A Sand County Al- men, who had shared many a campfire manac (1949), the valuable and far-seeing concept of a “land under the stars. ethic.” Here is yet another example of his reverent regard Judged by Stuart Udall, John F. for the sylvan realm that lay in his all-encompassing view: Kennedy’s Interior Secretary, to be among “When I entered this sublime wilderness the day was nearly the most distinguished of all the men who done, the trees with rosy glowing countenances seemed to be have held that office, Pinchot knew, from hushed and thoughtful, as if waiting in conscious religious his hard but successful struggle to have dependence on the sun, and one naturally walked softly and nature preserves set aside in his home state awe-stricken among them.” of Pennsylvania, that the public must be So did John of the Mountains strive, with his finely enlisted in the cause of conservation. crafted prose poetry, to engage his contemporaries, and later And so they should certainly have ac- generations to come, in saving the patrimony that is part of cess to our great natural sites, under the our “goodly heritage.” responsible vigilance of those charged “This grand show is eternal,” Muir wrote. “It is always with the care of preserved lands. sunrise somewhere; the dew is never all dried at once; a As an inspired but practical bureaucrat, shower is forever falling; vapor is ever rising. Gifford Pinchot foresaw that, were that “Eternal sunrise, eternal sunset, eternal dawn and gloam- not so, then the entire enterprise for which ing, on sea and continents and islands, each in its turn, as the they had so long toiled could come to be round earth rolls.” viewed as the genteel hobby of an elite leisure class, “tree-huggers” in current parlance. In saying so, Pinchot surely must have had in mind the terrible reverse William Zehringer, who lives in Pennsylvania, is the author for the cause of natural conservation that of Paths to Writing, a college textbook, among other works he, Muir and others had suffered in the of fiction and nonfiction. John Muir in Yosemite catastrophic flooding of the pristine Hetch Page 6 The Redwood Coast Review Fall 2008 books Under the Boardwalk Daniela Hurezanu

The Knife Thrower If one wants to find out more about by Steven Millhauser Whether realist or fable- Millhauser’s understanding of art one Phoenix (1999), 200 pages should read the story “The New Automaton like, all Millhauser’s Theater,” an ars poetica that should be com- In the Penny Arcade pulsory reading in all so-called “writing” by Steven Millhauser stories seem to be born classes. The narrator distinguishes between Washington Square Press (1987), 164 pages out of a desire to re- a “Children’s Theater,” built on a naïve real- ism that wants to keep the illusion of fiction everal months ago I found at a book create the world. at any price, and a theater for adults—the sale of the Santa Cruz Public Library “new automaton theater”—in which the ar- a marvelous (in all the senses of the Oriental bazaar, which is best represented tifice of fiction is exposed for what it is, and S the realist characters become “automatons.” word) collection of short stories, The Knife in the story “Flying Carpets.” The new automatons lack the grace of the Thrower by Steven Millhauser, probably the It is no accident that the dream store in realist ones from the Children’s Theater, but biggest discovery I’ve made since I read W. “The Dream of the Consortium” and the they are “profoundly expressive in their own S. Merwin’s The Miner’s Pale Children. dream amusement park in “Paradise Park” disturbing way.” Millhauser’s technique is very particular are extremely similar. Both utopias are in that it uses a realist-psychological ap- built on the desire to replicate life, that is,

ur proach only to better thwart it by infusing a fter discovering The Knife Thrower, I to transform everything into a copy that found in a small used-book store with it with elements of fantastic fiction. For ends up taking the place of the original. A example, in “A Visit,” the narrator is intro- BJerry the picturesque name Westside Stories For the business people in the dream store another book by Millhauser, In the Penny duced to his friend’s wife, who happens to Steven Millhauser there is no distinction between a wristwatch be a gigantic, ugly frog. A different writer Arcade. Published in the early 1980s, this even notice that the stories “The Dream of and a Roman villa. In the dream store one is a collection of short stories that prefigures would have described the scene in a surreal- the Consortium” and “Paradise Park” are can order and buy an entire European city, ist style, but Millhauser’s character ponders The Knife Thrower, though it’s more eclec- essentially two critical essays on American which is, of course, more convenient than tic, as it includes both parables and stories with a straight face the implications of his lifestyle done in the guise of storytelling. traveling all the way to Europe. Sound friend’s marriage to a frog. This encounter written in a more realist vein. He manages to weave his ideas so smoothly familiar? A cross between Las Vegas and The first story, “August Eschenburg,” is a between the means of psychological realism into the fabric of the story—indeed the Disneyland, Millhauser’s dream store and and fantastic literature creates a disruptive variation on “The New Automaton Theater” ideas are the story—for two reasons: 1) the paradise park remind us of Jean Baudril- (or rather, the other way around, since “Au- tension and provokes in the reader a feeling narrator doesn’t judge from the outside, but lard’s reflections on technology and simu- that transcends the literal description. gust . . .” was written first)—a reflection on is himself one of the crowd and, like the lacra. In “The Dream of the Consortium,” the act of creation written from the perspec- Millhauser has the very rare genius crowd, goes through a series of conflicting the entire world, or rather its replica, can of giving us the pleasure of reading that tive of a late-19th-century artist. It also feelings, from nostalgia for the charm of the be bought, sold and possessed by consum- captivating stories usually arouse in us, includes elements present in “The Dream old department stores to being seduced by ers. In “Paradise Park,” the consumers of while reflecting and engaging the reader of the Consortium” and “Paradise Park,” the new world of mega-malls, in which the increasingly titillating forms of entertain- in a reflection not only on the story itself in which the utopias of the mega-market old stores and pretty much everything on the ment descend into labyrinthine structures and on the act of storytelling, but also on and the amusement park are conflated into planet is copied and transformed into a rep- that imitate the real world from which they some serious topics, such as the relation- a Magic World that is as close to hell as it lica that can be purchased and sold; 2) the are trying to escape. But the search for ever ship between technology and morality, the is to heaven. The tone of this story and the child in Millhauser is fascinated by all the more titillating amusements eventually turns American obsession with technological reflections on creation are reminiscent of incarnations of amusement parks, which, in on itself like a snake biting its tail, and Para- progress and the extremes to which this certain German novels of ideas by early- turn, are incarnations of old fairs and freak dise Park becomes a sort of Devil’s Park in obsession is carried. Yet he does this in shows—a magic world reminiscent of an which the ultimate pleasure is pain. such an oblique way that the reader may not See millhauser page 8 Fall 2008 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 Oklahoma migrants, a boy and his mentally retarded uncle, who is small and delicate as Library lines a “doll,” look for work. They offer to do chores for an Oildale matron of the comfort- able middle class. The Oildale summer is My Library sketched flawlessly and we are immersed in Libraries the intense summer heat, while we hear the voice of the needy migrants and hear also Journey the thoughts of the respectable Mrs. Hollis, Gone Digital who cannot understand what is in front of her eyes. Judy Hardy Haslam writes: “The day was oppres- Lori Hubbart sively hot, even in the shade of the porch, but the Okies stopped in full sunlight on the y connection to libraries started front lawn. The larger boy, lean with dirty he give and take between good, old- many years ago as a page shelving Gerald Haslam looking yellow hair that contrasted with his fashioned books and advanced infor- Mbooks at the Shaker Heights Public deeply sun-browned skin answered in a flat Tmation technologies can be strangely Library in Cleveland, Ohio. I worked there nasal voice: ‘Lookin’ fer work lady. Kin we beguiling. The pundits still can’t figure out from the age of 14 and continued through mow yer law of anythang?’” what it means for libraries. high school, college and finally after college Haslam continues: “Although her lawn Public libraries were created to support while earning a Master of Library Science Pride was indeed shaggy, she didn’t want this democracy by making information easily degree from Case Western Reserve Univer- drippy-nose Okie near her any longer than available and free to all. The concept of sity. I then moved to Washington, DC, and necessary . . .” “information” has grown wings, scales and worked at the National Institutes of Health When she relents and hires the pair, she multiple arms, but libraries remain stead- Research Library. Then, back to Cleveland of Place refuses to let the boy and his uncle use her fastly true to their founding principles. and the Allen Memorial Medical Library bathroom. When the uncle can no longer In practice, though, providing informa- and work on the first Regional Medical Marek Breiger hold his urine and “pisses hisself,” the tion technology to the public can be tricky. Library Program in the country. After many woman, who ironically considers herself to If librarians can’t agree on what services the years of being a mother and volunteer I re- be religious, shows no humanity or compas- public might need or want, neither can the turned to Shaker Heights Public Library as a Haslam’s Valley sion. business leaders who provide the technolo- cataloguer and eventually head of Technical by Gerald Haslam Haslam’s ending is devastating because gies. Services. Heyday Books (2005), 320 pages he bases his short stories on character and Steve Jobs of Apple famously declared, Since retiring to The Sea Ranch almost thus allows the readers to draw their own “Forty percent of the people in the US read four years ago, I have volunteered at Coast one book or less last year.” In my heart, in the deepest part of me where conclusion: “Jesus didn’t mean them,” raced Community Library, primarily doing collec- through her mind. “He didn’t. He wouldn’t. Responding to the debut of a digital tion development and database work, even- I really live, I remain very much a product reading device from Amazon (known as the of my family and my region . . . I found that He didn’t.” tually becoming a member of the Operating Mrs. Hollis does not understand Chris- Kindle), Jobs went on to say, “It doesn’t Committee, Finance Committee and the the Great Valley grasped my innards like matter how good or bad the product is, the tree roots wrapping around and through so tianity. And thus Haslam’s exposure of Friends of Coast Community Library Board hypocrisy could not be more exact. fact is that people don’t read anymore.” of Directors. that it is difficult for me to tell if one exists Amazon’s Jeff Bezos obviously thought independent of the other . . . Writing in the years after The Grapes of As I begin my term as President of the Wrath, Haslam refuses to see the “Okies” the other 60 percent would appreciate a —Gerald Haslam Board, I would like to thank the three previ- as mere stereotypes. Of Anglo and Latino portable reader on which they could easily ous presidents with whom I’ve had the most download some 6000 titles from Amazon’s People are places. background, and a Roman Catholic, Haslam contact—Pearl Watts, Beth Knoche and is very aware of the prejudices of his home- Web site. —William Saroyan Laura Ishimaru—for their leadership, dedi- town—against blacks and Asians as well as As for that putative 60 percent, library cation and commitment to Coast Commu- Mexicans and Jews and Catholics. He also staffers in rural or economically depressed nity Library. I would also like to voice my any of my students are first-gen- areas can tell you one thing: The readers eration Americans. Their parents appreciation for their friendship and support Gerald Haslam is a among us can’t all afford the $300-plus as I have discovered the wonders of a small Mare from China and India, from price tag for a Kindle, much less the ongo- public library on the California coast. Pakistan and Afghanistan, from Russian and major regional writer ing expense of downloading books. There have been significant changes in Korea and Vietnam. If the economic downspin continues, that the library during the tenure of these three They are now Californians, children of in the tradition of unknown percentage of high-tech shutouts past presidents. Most particularly, Coast the Bay Area, whose earliest memories are will just keep growing. There we have Community Library has become a branch of Fremont. Their ancestral roots are both Steinbeck and Sar- a built-in library constituency, for whom of the Mendocino County Public Library, thousands of miles away and embodied oyan. Yet he is in the downloadable books may be in the library’s which has meant giving up some of our through their parents in a specific Califor- future. independence but has brought us a wealth nia place. Immigrants and first-generation line not only of those The information in books and periodicals of materials available through the Horizon Americans now define Fremont as much used to be slanted toward accomplishment System. It also brought us Terra Black, our as Saroyan’s Armenian immigrants defined California giants but and progress. Even the women’s fashion wonderful branch manager, and her terrific Fresno, as much as Gerald Haslam’s Texas- also of other regional- magazines were self-improvement tracts in assistant, Laura Schatzberg. Their hard and Oklahoma-born neighbors defined the the guise of fluff. Today’s information ex- work and positive approach to everything Oildale and Bakersfield of the Great Depres- ists—Sherwood Ander- changes are more often about entertainment help make it all work. sion and World War II era. and socializing. In future columns I’d like to intro- The power of regionalism in literature son, William Faulkner, An article in Libraryjournal.com tells duce you to some of the many volunteers is that the writer’s immersion in a specific Eudora Welty and us that librarians have “adapted social net- who make Coast Community Library the time and place and people allows the reader working tools to their library catalogs, e.g., special place that it is. Without them we to find meaning in his or her own locality. Flannery O’Connor. enabling patron reviews and LibraryThing would never accomplish the things that we If the regional writing has depth the student tags . . .” Now social networking I can do—Fionna and Richard Perkins, whose reader will find essential meanings in his or understand, but LibraryThing? I’d like a her own surroundings. is aware of working-class whites who belie vision and support helped found the library the easy categorizing of too many educated demo, please. and sustain it for many years; Greg Jirak Gerald Haslam is a major regional writer If our patrons start demanding this in the tradition of Steinbeck and Saroyan. people who talk about “Okies” in a dismis- and his hardheaded, warmhearted approach sive way they would never employ when service, our staff and volunteers will have to finances; Bea Aker, our hospitality chair- Yet Haslam is in the line not only of those some learning to do. Sometimes Coast California giants but also of other regional- talking about African-Americans or Asians man, who truly cares about volunteers eat- or Hispanics. Community doesn’t attempt to offer the ing well; Ruth Cady, also a retired librarian, ists—the Sherwood Anderson of Winesburg, latest digital services because patrons don’t Ohio, as well as William Faulkner, Eudora In “The Great X-Mas Controversy” who is a voice of experience and wisdom to a drinker at the Tejon Club discovers a request them. Maybe patrons don’t ask all; Jeff Watts and his helpers who keep our Welty and Flannery O’Connor. because they don’t know about them. In Haslam’s Valley Heyday has collected Hmong family living as his family once building in such good shape. Something had—in tents and in poverty. He realizes Still, there need not be a dichotomy also should be said about the town of Point nearly forty years of quality writing set in between books and digital information. I Haslam’s terrain, the Oildale of Okies and that the Hmong father, in his dignity and Arena and the entire coastal community, desperation, is only looking to find work in read of an old American Indian woman which have so wholeheartedly supported the Mexicans and blacks and Asians who work explaining her simultaneous belief in the hard for a living and struggle for respect and order to feed his hungry wife and children. library since its inception 19 years ago. The narrator of the story, thinking of his old religion and Christianity: “The two run dignity. As always, Haslam illustrates that together. When one fails, the other helps.” to write with love of one’s region is not to own past, grows articulate. The vernacular, recorded at perfect pitch, exposes great It’s not digital technology per se that be uncritical. worries librarians and their cohorts, but the Powerful regional artists like Haslam are depth of understanding and an empathy that is both understated and totally sincere. potential for the diminishment of language Join Us not cheerleaders. They look at their home itself. Languages do change, sometimes place and can see, in that place, the coward- “They also looked real familiar. When- Coast Community Library ever my folks come out here from Okla- rapidly, but we hope there will be no net ice as well as the courage of a whole world. loss of richness, of colorful words and needs you. Volunteer. Send When Haslam exposes prejudice, as in homa, and I wasn’t but a little kid, we’d camped right here in these same woods. evocative phrases. Today’s libraries must be money. Every cent and ounce a powerful early story called “The Doll,” it keepers of language—but then, they always would be a mistake to think that he is point- We’d built a shelter outta whatever we could of energy helps keep the find, just like these folks done, and me and have been. library humming. ing a finger only at Central Valley bigotry. For Haslam’s writing, which is in the tradi- my brothers and sisters we was hungry a tion of Mark Twain, punctures human hy- lot, just like these kids. I have to tell you, Come to 225 Main Street. it grabbed me damn deep to see folks livin’ Call 882-3114. pocrisy wherever it is found, and hypocrisy is, of course, found everywhere. like that in California in the 1990’s. And Write to CCL, PO Box 808, “The Doll” is about all of the comfort- me with a well fed family, two cars, two Subscribe Point Arena, CA 95468. able and self-righteous who are insensitive See page 9 to the suffering of others. In the story two See HASLAM page 8 Page 8 The Redwood Coast Review Fall 2008 HASLAM from page 7

TVs , a nice house, a good job. It got me to write, come hell or high water, about what hauser calls, in opposition to Nietzsche’s thinkin.” he named the “Other California.” Übermensch, “the Untermensh” (the Under- J.B., the narrator, organizes the men at He has been true to his place and his man). It is gratifying to see that there are the bar and their wives to help the migrant people: “As a result my stories are about in- still writers, like Millhauser, who believe in ittle merica family with food and offerings of friend- dividual characters who are not generaliza- such naïve things as Beauty (as passé as that L A ship. tions. I want those creations to be faithful might seem for the Untermensch). There is “Well, I felt funny, like my throat has to their times and places and to the human a character, Hausenstein, who reminds me We stopped for the night went soft and my eyes were warm. But condition and to be distinct. If that is ac- of (let’s call him) The Academic (though at Little America. to tell you the truth, I was semi-proud of complished, I’m satisfied.” he could very well be the Successful Art- It was nothing more myself.” Someday writing students in places all ist or Publisher), who is intelligent and than an expensive motel Other stories in Haslam’s Valley include over California and the West will no longer talented enough to see August’s genius, can with a small restaurant, much-anthologized classics. One such piece be talented beginners. In five or ten or analyze his art in a way that he would never a bar, and a post office is “Mal de Ojo,” about an Armenian poet fifteen years, they will write of their place be able to do so himself, yet Hausenstein so it could call itself a town. and his wildman “one eyed” brother and a and our regions. Out of their published would always embrace the latest fashion I drank a beer, half-Mexican, half-Anglo boy and his suspi- stories and essays and poems, readers will against August for the simple reason that watching Kit swim cious grandmother. The story is both a nod encounter a region on the map that, like the latest fashion is always right. Thus, in the length of the pool, to Saroyan and a literary slice of California Haslam’s Valley, will also be a place of the what appears to be a paradox but is in fact away and back, that is entirely Haslam’s own. For Haslam, human heart. quite logical, Hausenstein, who could write away and back, one of so many Californians who are both a brilliant paper on the corruption of the her blonde hair shining Anglo and Hispanic, has not chosen one masses and the Untermensch, is himself an in the straw colored light. Marek Breiger’s essays about California ethnicity at the expense of the other. He has Untermensch: a man of the here and now, Gradually, the light faded, literature have appeared in The San Fran- embraced an identity that is inclusive and for whom anything that transcends the pres- until she was only a shadow, cisco Chronicle, California English, Inside real for thousands of Californians. ent, like Beauty, has no other value than its but we refused to be lost English, Western American Literature, and use for his personal success. in the vastness of the prairie, the critical anthology Updating the Literary he essays that conclude Haslam’s Valley Even the stories written in a more realist groping our way West. He teaches English at Irvington High are especially meaningful. Haslam’s style have something uncanny, like the ugly toward each other, T School in Fremont. tribute to his mother and father and his wife, women described in “Cathay”—a fabulous one in the water, Jan, are a reminder of Saroyan’s statement universe modeled, one might say, on Henri the other poolside, that “people are places.” In Oildale Haslam Michaux’s imaginary worlds—whose ugli- in the darkness. Finally, grew up with a mother who read to him and millhauser from page 6 ness resides in a disturbing element that I helped her, dripping, who encouraged him to explore the realm of triggers the Emperor’s desire just as much out of the water. literature. Just as important, Haslam’s fa- as his beautiful women do. Whether realist 20th-century writers, in particular Thomas ther, a former All-American football player, or fable-like, all Millhauser’s stories seem Mann and Hermann Hesse. —Arthur Winfield Knight taught the potential author to never give up, to be born out of a desire to recreate the If “Paradise Park” dealt with the insa- on the playing field or in life. world, to take the pieces scattered across the tiable desire for ever more spectacular and Now, over 70 years old, a grandfather universe after the original cosmic catastro- thrilling forms of entertainment, and “The many times over, Haslam writes of his phe when the vessels carrying the divine Dream of the Consortium” focused on father Speck, and his suffering at the end light broke, and to piece together whatever finding a total replica of the real world and of his life. “A rabbi once observed, ‘Not sparks of light might be left. to know suffering means not to be a man.’” ultimately transforming the latter into an ob- Wild Card Haslam continues, regarding his father: ject for sale, “August Eschenburg” is about “Afflictions purged him of many things but the transformation of modern art into ever not of tenacity or valor . . .” Haslam, too, more erotically titillating means of catch- Daniela Hurezanu’s essays and translations There is another me who with his wife took care of his parents ing the attention of the masses. Almost appear regularly in magazines and journals A mystery me in their final years and illnesses—and who seamlessly, Millhauser recreates for us the in the US and Europe. She lives in North- Watching myself live and die. himself has battled prostate cancer—is a modern history of this phenomenon in the ern California and is an RCR contributing brave man. He is also a courageous literary Western world—basically, the beginning of editor. —Greg Hall artist who decided early in his career to mass entertainment, which coincides with the advent of a human category that Mill-

Desk Volunteers wanted Book Box Join a fun but no-nonsense Some Recent Arrivals at Coast Community Library team at Coast Community Library. Meet and assist Adult Books the public in accessing and using our resources. Call Barr, Nevada. Winter study Hart, Carolyn. Death walked in Stein, Garth. The art of racing in the rain 882.3114 and ask to speak Campbell, James. The ghost mountain Heimann, Judith. The airmen and the head- Stewart, Marian. Mercy street with Terra Black or Laura hunters Thayer, Nancy. Moon shell beach boys Schatzberg. Child, Lee. Nothing to lose Henderson, Harold (translator). An introduc- Urrea, Luis. The hummingbird’s daughter Clark, Mary Higgins. Where are you tion to Haiku Vertosick, Frank. The genius within: discov- now? Hillerman, Tony. Finding moon ering the intelligence of every living thing Lies, Brian. Bats at the library Coben, Harlan. Hold tight Howard, Linda. Death angel Weinreb, Michael. The kings of New York Lock, Deborah. Garden friends Collins, Billy. The trouble with poetry Hughes, Ted. Tales from Ovid White, Jenny. The sultan’s seal Markert, Jenny. Cheetahs and other poems Isay, Dave. Listening is an act of love White, Stephen. Kill me Martin, Rafe. The rough-face girl Dalton, David. A year in the life of Andy Jackson, Lisa. Whispers Williams, John. Stoner Meyer, Stephenie. Breaking dawn Warhol Jardine, Lisa. Worldly goods: a new history Woodruff, Lee & Bob. In an instant: a Munsch, Robert. The paperbag prin- Davidson, H.R. Scandanavian mythology of the Renaissance family’s journey of love and healing cess Deaver, Jeffery. The broken window Johansen, Iris. Quicksand Yehoshua, A.B. Mr. Mani O’Connor, Jane. Fancy Nancy Fielding, Joy. Charley’s web Johnston, Joan. A stranger’s game Young, Sara. My enemy’s cradle Parker, Steve. Eyewitness pond & river Gloss, Molly. The jump-off creek Jordan, Neil. Shade Young, William. The shack Paulsen, Gary. Hatchet Goudge, Eileen. Domestic affairs Kellerman, Jonathan. Compulsion Zweig, Stefan. The world of yesterday Penn, Audrey. The kissing hand Green, Bob. The best life diet Kinsella, W.P. Brother Frank’s gospel hour Repanshek, Kurt. Frommer’s national Gudmundsson, Einar Mar. Angels of the and other stories parks with kids (park guides) universe Langton, Jane. Steeplechase: a Homer Kelly Juvenile Books Robinson, James. The golden age Hall, Parnell. With this puzzle I thee kill mystery Santoro, Christopher. Open the barn Martin, Roger. The responsibility virus door McKenna, Terence. Food of the gods Barrett, Judi & Ron. Cloudy with a chance Scotton, Rob. Splat the cat McLoughlin, Tim. Heart of the old country of meatballs Shea, Therese. Wild cats: big bad biters Meyer, Stephenie. The host Boynton, Sandra. The going-to-bed book Shone, Rob. Graphic dinosaurs: Tyran- Library Hours Michael, Todd. The twelve conditions of a Brown, Lisa. Baby fix my car nosaurus the tyrant lizard miracle Carle, Eric. Have you seen my cat? Sierra, Judy. Born to read Monday 12 noon - 6 pm Parker, Robert. Stranger in paradise Dungy, Tony. You can do it! Stern, Sam. Cooking up a storm: the Tuesday 10am - 6 pm Patterson, James. Sail Fegredo, Milligan. Enigma teen survival cookbook Wednesday 10am - 8 pm Perkins, John. Confessions of an economic Grant, Alan. Batman: the abduction Symes, R. F. Eyewitness rocks & hit man Thursday 12 noon - 8 pm Grell, Mike. Green Arrow: The long bow minerals Rendell, Ruth. End in tears hunters Voake, Charlotte. Ginger Friday 12 noon - 6 pm Rice, Christopher. The snow garden Saturday 12 noon - 3 pm Horaced, Petr. Beep beep West, Tracey. How to draw Pokemon Salvatore, R. A. The orc king Jimenez, Francisco. Reaching out Wilson, Karma. Bear feels scared Schell, Orville. Virtual Tibet Katz, Karen. Ten tiny tickles Yaccarino, Dan. Go, go America Coast Community Library Sedaris, David. When you are engulfed in Kesel, Barbara & Karl. Hawk & Dove is located at flames Landau, Elaine. Alligators and crocodiles: 225 Main Street Spangle, Linda. Life is hard food is easy hunters of the night Point Arena Steel, Danielle. Amazing grace Levine, Gail Carson. Fairest (707) 882-3114 Fall 2008 The Redwood Coast Review Page  books Jack Outside the Box Daniel Barth

The Radical Jack London: During his most radical phase, Lon- Writings on War and Revolution don wrote the essay “Revolution,” which edited and with an Introduction by Jonah During his most radical calls for assassination and other acts of Raskin violence when necessary to bring about California (2007), 285 pages phase, London wrote the overthrow of the ruling class. It is his strongest, most direct and coherent radical the essay “Revolu- statement, his manifesto. “The comradeship ack London was born in 1876 and died of the revolutionist is alive and warm. It in 1916. For the second twenty years tion,” which calls for passes over geographical lines, transcends Jof his Roman-candle life he wrote assassination and other race prejudice, and has even proved itself religiously, 1000 words a day, six days a mightier than the Fourth of July, spread- week. By anyone’s standards that is really acts of violence when eagle Americanism of our forefathers. cranking it out. For most literate people The French socialist workingmen and the London’s name will immediately bring to necessary to bring German socialist workingmen forget Alsace mind The Call of the Wild and White Fang, about the overthrow of and Loraine, and, when war threatens, pass and after that maybe The Sea Wolf and resolutions declaring that as workingmen Martin Eden. But how many have read or the ruling class. and comrades they have no quarrel with even heard of The People of the Abyss, The each other.” Road, Iron Heel, Burning Daylight and The Of course World War I proved this Star Rover, much less his numerous stories, and his suicidal tendencies. He also places wrong, and it can’t be an accident that essays and articles on socialism, war and London in his time and among his contem- London’s socialist activities waned as the revolution? This new anthology of London’s poraries, making connections to many other classesi cin icmag . Great War dragged on. His late solution work is a reminder of just how prolific writers and socialists, Ina Coolbrith, George Jack London, 1876-1916 to the problems of industrial society was he was, and an opportunity to explore Sterling, Upton Sinclair, Eugene Debs and not political but agrarian. He and his wife aspects of his life and work that have been Anna Strunsky among them. Charmian (1871-1955) retreated to their underplayed or forgotten. Raskin also mentions some of the Beauty Ranch in Sonoma County where As he did with his books on B. Traven subsequent writers who have written about essays and polemical pieces, sometimes London became a respected agricultural and Allen Ginsberg, editor Jonah Raskin London: H. L. Mencken, George Orwell, with a marshaling of statistics, can be a experimenter. digs deep to find material that has been Anatole France, Jorge Luis Borges and Jack bit difficult to wade through. They come The shame is that London died so young. buried or overlooked. He does not reinvent Kerouac. To this list add Philip Jose Farmer, off as 19th century—overwritten, stilted, It would have been more than interesting London here, giving credit to biographers, Loren Eiseley, E. L. Doctorow, Eugene dated—though they often show acumen in to see what phases his thinking and writing scholars and anthologists who have preced- Burdick, Primo Levi and Carl Sandburg reading the signs of the times, and they do would have entered in the 1920s and 30s. ed him. In fact Raskin continues a tradition and you get an idea of London’s ongoing provide insight into London’s development But he was apparently played out at age 40. of Sonoma State University professors writ- influence. as a writer and socialist. Though photos taken only a few days before ing about and collecting London. Clarice He perhaps overstates his case a bit when his death reveal a seemingly robust indi- Stasz is the author of American Dreamers: he writes: “Throughout much of the second ondon’s fiction, on the other hand, has vidual, his kidneys were failing to the point Charmian and Jack London and Gerald half of the twentieth century, London’s Lenergy and power, and is almost always where uremia and a large dose of morphine Haslam edited Jack London’s Golden State. American biographers and critics belittled written in concise sentences. It points the caused his death. The Radical Jack London has a good or ignored his radicalism.” He goes on to way to Hemingway. In reading the stories The Radical Jack London is a timely and deal in common with the latter, and with find fault with the editors of The Portable and novel excerpts I get the same feeling valuable book. It reminds us not only how another anthology, Fantastic Tales, edited Jack London and the Library of America that I often do from Hemingway stories, prolific London was, but how successful by Dale L. Walker. All three use some edition of London’s work, taking them to almost as if I am dreaming as I’m reading. both commercially and artistically. How of the same material, intersecting and task for not including enough of London’s I think it has to do with the writer tapping many writers have work in print and still be- complementing one another in quite a few radical writings. This seems a bit unfair. In deeply into mythic and archetypal elements. ing read and discussed a hundred years on? places. But in focusing on London’s radi- fact these and other books do acknowledge The story “War,” included here, is a good London is among the few, and with good cal socialist activities and writings Raskin London’s radicalism and include representa- example of this. It reads like an Ambrose justification. His variety of subject matter finds an organizing principle that opens tive writings. One can just as easily question Bierce Civil War story, but never gets and his vigorous prose style make his work new windows on a writer whom almost Raskin’s exclusion of “The Mexican,” specific as to time and place. It’s war in the as readable and relevant in this century as in every commentator paints as complex and “South of the Slot,” “A Curious Fragment” dreamtime—timeless and powerful. the previous two. contradictory. and other stories that are very much in the London’s first-person narratives such The book starts with Raskin’s useful radical vein. Any anthologist has constraints as The People of the Abyss, The Road and Introduction. Marked by careful scholarship of space, permissions, costs and other edito- “How I Became a Socialist” also remain and an ability to digest a mass of material rial concerns unknown to most readers. very readable a century after they were Daniel Barth, an RCR contributing editor, is and write about it clearly and convincingly, The entries are arranged chronologically written. “One might well call London the the author of Fast Women Beautiful, a book he traces London’s brief and varied life, and are comprised of essays, journalism, father of gonzo journalism,” writes Raskin, of poems recently out from Tenacity Press. highlighting his radical activities, but not stories and novel excerpts. It is manifest making connections to Hunter Thompson, He lives in Ukiah. ignoring his many faults and contradictions, that London’s great strength was fiction Ted Conover, Norman Mailer, Tom Wolfe his racism and social Darwinist beliefs and first-person nonfiction narratives. The and Joan Didion. S U B S C R I B E The Mexican Circus If you live beyond the Redwood Coast and don’t get the Independent Coast Observer, now you can subscribe to The Redwood Coast Review and not miss an issue of our award-winning mix of essays, reviews, poetry, fiction and I went to a one ring Mexican circus in a tent yesterday afternoon. There graphic art. For $24 a year you will be guaranteed quarterly first-class de- were some trained sheepdogs and ponies and one horse that stood there while the ponies ran beneath it. Five men and a woman who was prob- livery of the RCR and at the same time support Coast Community Library ably in her 50s or 60s did everything. They doubled as clowns, jug- in its ongoing operating expenses. Please use this coupon to subscribe glers, musicians and magicians. It lasted just over an hour. It wasn’t or renew now. You won’t be disappointed. the greatest show on earth, but there was something very sweet about it.

I remembered going to see the Clyde Beatty Circus when it came to Peta- luma in the early 50s. It had three rings and a live band, and Clyde was Yes, I want to subscribe to The Redwood Coast Review. I am in the center ring wearing his bwana suit and pith helmet, snapping his enclosing a check for $24 to Coast Community Library. whip at the lions and tigers in the cage with him. There were elephants and trapeze artists and clowns with baggy pants and big shoes, and the ring smelled of popcorn and cotton candy, sawdust and sunlight. The I am making an additional donation to the library in the women were young and beautiful and they wore spangled costumes that amount of $______. were molded to their bodies. I’m sure they thought they were never going to grow old. Some of them rode the elephants, and the band played on. Total enclosed $______You could apply what one of the characters at the end of The Wild Bunch says about changing times to the circus. “It ain’t what it used to be, but it’ll do.” Name ______

—Arthur Winfield Knight Address ______

City, State, ZiP ______

Arthur Winfield Knight is the author, most recently, of Misfits Country, a novel (Tres Picos Press). He lives in Yerington, Nevada. Copy or clip this coupon and send, with check or money order, to Coast Community Library, PO Box 808, Point Arena, CA 95468. Thank You! Page 10 The Redwood Coast Review Fall 2008 london from page 1 recall many of his early encounters with women in a pair If London has yet to the get the biographer he deserves, not, by taking the London-Sterling friendship seriously. of delightfully rich, quasi-autobiographical novels, Martin Charmian surely got hers in the form of Irving Stone, fresh “Often emerging from behind their bombastic veneers were Eden (1909) and John Barleycorn (1913), but by the spring on the heels of his success as the author of Lust for Life, the sweetness and gentleness of their kindly temperaments,” of 1900 he had forged a peculiarly utilitarian view of love the best-selling biography of Vincent van Gogh. Infatu- Stasz writes. “Both were known for their generosity and and marriage. He had developed strong feelings for a bril- ated with the younger Stone, Charmian flirted to the point loyalty to friends and soon became most generous and loyal liant young Stanford student with socialist leanings, Anna of embarrassment and gave the author virtual access to all to one another.” Strunsky, with whom he was to write The Kempton-Wace of London’s letters, manuscripts, photographs and personal Later on, however, Stasz characterizes Sterling in 1916 Letters (1903), in which he boldly (if not naïvely) declared library. As her reward, Stone cast Charmian in Sailor on as “turning into a bitter, cynical, malicious man, more than that “I am not impelled by the archaic sex madness of the Horseback (1938) as childlike and self-absorbed, broke the a little envious of Jack’s apparent successes.” She recounts beast, nor by the obsolescent romance madness of later-day story yet again of London’s paternity (only in far greater the oft-repeated story that Sterling had stood London up for man.” and sordid detail), and asserted that London had committed a rendezvous in Glenn Ellen in October of 1916, a month be- It’s arguable that in Strunsky London had found the love suicide with a calculated dose of morphine. fore London’s death, eliciting a written rebuke from London, of his life. But he kept his romantic feelings for the Rus- From that point on, Charmian dug in. Along with his which he signed, “your loving but Sore-grieved, Wolf.” sian-born—and Jewish—beauty in check (it’s believed that stepsister Eliza London Shepard, she closely controlled According to Stasz “George took undue offense and their relationship was never consummated), and in April of London’s literary estate. Access to materials was denied and never responded” to London. All of the London biographies 1900 he announced with sudden notice that he was marry- the right to publish from letters and book passages severely make the same assertion, implying that Sterling left him to ing the self-effacing and undemanding Elizabeth “Bess” limited, even with London’s own daughter, Joan London, die without patching up their friendship. The comprehensive Maddern, only a few months his junior. Maddern had been whose well-received portrait of her father, Jack London and three-volume Letters of Jack London (1988), edited by Earle a platonic friend of London’s for the past three years and His Times, was published in 1939. Labor, Robert C. Leitz III and I. Milo Shepard, ends its Ster- had tutored him in math for his University of California Following Charmian’s death in 1955, control of access to ling-London correspondence on that “sore-grieved” note. entrance exams. As Sonoma State professor emeritus Clarice London’s archives reverted to Eliza’s son, Irving Shepard, This past spring, however, in the papers of the late Carey Stasz has noted in her intriguing work Jack London’s Women who maintained the same vigilance as Charmian. Even the McWilliams held at UCLA’s Special Collections, I found a (2001), both London and Maddern “acknowledged publicly distinguished California historian Franklin Walker was copy of a letter to Sterling, written by London on the day that they were not marrying out of love, but from friendship forced to knowingly falsify London’s paternity in exchange before his death, Tuesday, November 21, 1916, in which and the belief that they would produce sturdy children.” for permission to publish passages from London’s works in London proposes dinner with Sterling on the upcoming Sat- It was a bad idea from the get-go. The couple quickly had his otherwise superb Jack London in the Klondike (1966). urday, November 25, and concludes, “I am yours to do with two daughters, Joan and Becky, but within only a few short But the intellectual and financial quid pro quo demanded by what you please.” years London’s marriage to Bess would be in shambles, and Shepard, including half of all royalties, led Walker to aban- This letter fully betrays any claim to the contrary that the ensuing divorce and matrimonial transition would be don his larger biographical project. His first four chapters Sterling had not repaired the friendship in the month leading devastating to both parties. He had fallen in love with anoth- of that unfinished biography remain unpublished in the Jack up to London’s death. Indeed, it puts an entirely different er woman, Charmian Kittredge, the niece of a close friend London Archives at the Huntington Library in San Marino. closing crescendo to the denouement. But we know this only and five years his senior, and they would eventually marry This shameful, even scandalous, arrangement has compro- because the meticulous McWilliams had begun research for in 1904, immediately after the contentious legal battles that mised London scholars and biographers to this day. a biography of Sterling and had kept files on him long after dissolved his union with Bess. he decided to abandon the project. Had he not, we would London traveled the world with Charmian, embarking little more than a year ago I entered the London bio- have never known that a rapprochement between the two on a two-year journey to the far reaches of the South Pacific A graphical fray when I began preliminary research for a close friends had taken place. And Sterling would have been aboard his small sailing vessel, The Snark. They had a com- biography of London’s best friend, the poet George Ster- perpetually portrayed as bitter and cynical towards London plex, yet by most accounts, loving and egalitarian relation- ling (1869-1926), who met London in San Francisco in the in those critical days and weeks leading up to his death. ship (they called each other Mate-Man and Mate-Woman), This is but one small, albeit telling, example of the inher- although they had no children. One child died at birth, while ent problems in London biography. What of other letters Charmian lost another to miscarriage—surely a disappoint- and archival materials that have been lost or intentionally ment for London, who wanted desperately to have a son. destroyed? I recently discovered in the archives of the Hun- Jack and Charmian pursued their agrarian dream together tington Library a notarized document stating that on April in rural Sonoma County, at the famed Beauty Ranch, more 13, 1938, Charmian London allowed many such materials to than a thousand acres of rolling hills and meadows in Glen be burned at her direction. There is no record of what was Ellen. The land became a passion for London. “Next to my lost. wife,” he wrote, “the ranch is the dearest thing in the world Other pieces of the London puzzle continue to show up to me”—though by most accounts it was an economic failure on the open market. Only last November, at a remarkable throughout his lifetime. auction hosted by the PBA Galleries in San Francisco and London would die in November of 1916, at the age of 40, presented in the fine auction catalog Jack London and his of causes that are still clouded in controversy. His death cer- Circle: The Collection of Donald Bauer (2007), several tificate identified the cause of death as “uremia,” but others intimate letters from London to Charmian in 1905 were have wondered what role he played in his own demise. He placed on sale that revealed new details about their early drank heavily for much of his life, and had taken to self-in- relationship. Were these letters that Charmian thought were jections of painkillers—strontium sulphate, strychnine, and destroyed in 1938? I’ve been told by London family sources morphine, among others—to curb the physical anguish from who prefer to remain unnamed that more critical correspon- a variety of ailments that plagued him in his later years. dence will surface in the next few years.

harmian London kept a diary during her entire rela- ust this past month, I received an email from my friend Ctionship with her Mate-Man, and less than two weeks JDr. Joanne Lafler. She is working on a biography of her after her husband’s death, while she was busy answering a late father-in-law, the California journalist and poet Henry huge pile of letters that had accumulated in his wake, she Anderson Lafler, who was a friend of London’s (and even expressed the rather peculiar desire to “jump right into a closer to Sterling), and a central figure in the colorful Bohe- biography of Jack.” She was absolutely despondent in the mian scene in the Bay Area during the early1900s. Dr. Lafler aftermath of his death—“Widow! Widow! Widow! How can is a careful and dutiful historian and I am eagerly looking it be?” she wrote a few days later—and perhaps the project forward to her completed work. of writing a biography consoled her with the idea of bringing Lafler asked me if I had seen the recent allegation made London, at least in her mind, back to life. by Alexander Waugh, in his best-selling family portrait But she also wanted to control London’s legacy for rea- Fathers and Sons (2004), that “the American novelist Jack sons of self-interest. There were a myriad of controversies London” had raped a woman by the name of Ruth Mor- surrounding London during his lifetime—his paternity, his ris (nee Wightman) “in her youth.” Waugh’s great-uncle, divorce with Bess (and Charmian’s role in same), repeated the travel writer Alec Waugh, had conducted a three-year charges of plagiarism, his estranged relationship with his sy GeoffreyCourte llection Dunn Co affair with the married Mrs. Morris in the 1920s. Alexander two daughters, his alcoholism and drug use, whispers of Jack London and George Sterling, Russian River, 1915 Waugh provided no footnotes nor any other documentation extramarital affairs and, perhaps most important, rumors of for this claim. suicide and a will that left most of his estate to Charmian at early 1900s and remained his closest male companion until The charge of rape against London rather startled and the virtual exclusion of his daughters—and these controver- London’s death in 1916. While virtually all of the London upset me. Not only is this accusation never raised in any of sies would shape and define London biographical research archive has now been transferred over to public institutions, the London biographies, I have never seen it alleged in any for nearly a century. primarily the Huntington, much to my surprise many of the of my primary research at more than two dozen academic Charmian surely wanted to come out with her own biog- divisions and petty rivalries that marked early research of institutions across the country, nor in any of the private col- raphy first, before anyone else could, so that she could shape London’s life remained firmly in place. Even more sur- lections of London’s correspondence to which I’ve had ac- and refine what was then the wet cement of London’s life. prisingly, a good many of those divisions find a vortex in cess. More curiously, there’s no mention anywhere of a Ruth She most certainly didn’t want anyone sullying London’s Sterling. Wightman or Ruth Morris involved in London’s life, though reputation with charges of excessive drinking or drugging The colorful scion of a Long Island whaling family who London gave the name “Ruth Morse” to a central character or philandering or taking his own life—all of which might had come west in 1890 to work as a secretary in his uncle’s in Martin Eden. well impact the value of London’s literary estate in both the East Bay real estate firm, Sterling was handsome, athletic I found myself troubled by the fact that nearly a cen- immediate and distant future. and rakish. He was an extremely popular and beloved figure tury after his death Jack London was absolutely defense- Less than a year after his death, Rose Wilder Lane (the throughout Northern California and would come to be less against this heinous charge. Janet Malcolm was right: daughter of Laura Ingalls Wilder of Little House on the known as the “the poet laureate of San Francisco.” biographers can mark up the book of our lives however they Prairie fame) published a serialized biography of London By 1905, Sterling began addressing London as “Wolf,” please. in Sunset Magazine. For all its flaws (and there were many), with London addressing Sterling as “Greek,” in all matters I went through my massive London archive for any clues. Lane broke through the established façade of London’s life, of correspondence. Indeed, I don’t think that I’ve encoun- Finding none, I decided to email Alexander Waugh directly and questioned his paternity, portrayed him as a ruffian and tered any subsequent letters by either of them that did not requesting documentation for this disturbing allegation. I delinquent in his youth, and challenged the official version invoke these two nicknames. To read the breadth of their explained to him my scholarly interest in the matter and of his death. Charmian, who had originally taken Lane into correspondence—the letters as well as their presentation provided web links to my published works on London. I her confidence, was livid. She called the first magazine in- inscriptions to one another—is to encounter two men who received no reply. stallment “charming fiction” and then threatened to sue Lane held a mutual respect, admiration and deep abiding love for A few weeks later, a bit more irritated, I sent Waugh a and Sunset throughout the serialization. one another. London also made several literary acknowledg- second email, indicating that I was writing an article about Soon thereafter, Charmian took matters into her own ments to his “Greek,” including portrayals of Sterling as this matter and would appreciate some clarification. hands. Her sprawling two-volume The Book of Jack London, Mark Hall in The Valley of the Moon and as Russ Brissenden I have yet to hear back from him. published in 1921, tried to push the unwashed London, in Martin Eden. including his questionable paternity, back into a tidy box. In the London biographical canon, however, Sterling is Although there are moments of clarity and even revelation systemically disrespected and/or dismissed. Santa Cruz writer and filmmaker Geoffrey Dunn is working in The Book of Jack London, it is poorly written, uneven and Of all the London biographies, I favor Clarice Stasz’s on a biography of George Sterling and on a book about the often self-serving. American Dreamers (1988) as the one that best captures literary traditions of the Central California coast. His latest London’s spirit and persona. It also treads where others have film is Calypso Dreams. Fall 2008 The Redwood Coast Review Page 11 Page 12 The Redwood Coast Review Fall 2008