Books I Saved from the Fire, or Answers to Questions You Didn’t Ask

Books on your nightstand?

 

                  This is not curated.  These are the books that are actually there.

                  • The Art of Memoir, Mary Karr;

                  • The Use of Photography, Annie Ernaux and Marc Marie;

                  • Weekend Rock Oregon, Ron Horton.

 

 

Books You’d Save from the Fire? 

 

Books personally inscribed to me by their authors: 

• Steve Roper, Camp 4; 

• James Salter, Solo Faces;

 • Lou Whittaker, Memoir of a Mountain Guide;

• Chuck Sassara, Chuck Sassara’s Alaska: Propellers, Politic, People; 

• Eva Saulitis, Becoming Earth;

• Lives of the Saints, my Grandmother’s copy gifted to me and inscribed by my Aunt Katie Jackson.

 

Favorite Restaurants?

 

• Everyday: Bayview Thai, Depoe Bay. The owner, Wut, knows my order by heart (Green curry with chicken, medium spice).

• More upscale: Local Ocean, Newport.  When mussels are in season, get ‘em with curry, side order of toast.  

 

Beer?

 

• Block 15, Sticky Hands IPA (Corvallis).  But only one place in Lincoln City to get it on tap.

• More readily available standby: Deschutes Fresh Squeezed IPA, which Aisha and I first started drinking at the Rustic Goat in Anchorage.  Can’t go wrong, plus they make an NA. Now we drink it right from the source at their Portland brewpub.

 

Guilty pleasure?

 

Highway 101, Lincoln City. Cheeseburger (with grilled onions). Comes with a tray of sauce for the fries with your name spelled in ketchup.  Tres chic.

 

Book that did not stand the test of time?

 

It’s painful to say this, but after Tom Robbins died a few weeks ago I picked up Jitterbug Perfumeagain.  I read about a hundred pages and, sadly, concluded that for all its sparkle and wit it felt very very dated, a glittering star of its moment.  But the moment has passed.

 

Best person to eat aforementioned cheeseburger with?

                  

Nick Dighiera.

 

Street Food

Highway 1011 Mexican food truck at The Pines in Lincoln City.  They have a lot of food trucks there, but Aisha and I go back to this place every time for a la cart tacos with carnitas.  She orders the veggie tostadas.

 

Favorite Bookstore?

 

Writers Block, Anchorage. More than a bookstore: the home of a true literary community.

 

Just one?

 

Well, no.  I love Powells in Portland.  One of the things I like about it is that there are a ton of people there buying books. Makes me happy.  Two new bookstores I love, also in PDX: Bishop & Wilde on Thurman and the new Literary Arts bookstore on the east side.  Both of these are really nicely curated and welcoming.  John King in Detroit is like time travel; I love that place.  The Mecosta Book Gallery on M 20 between Mount Pleasant and Big Rapids is a really wonderful little place.  In Chicago I like Exile in Bookville, newish, in the Fine Arts Building right on Michigan Avenue.

 

Books you were really surprised to learn something from?

                                    

• Julie Hecht, The Unprofessional, a novel;

                  • Juliet Escoria, Juliet the Maniac.

 

I guess, I’d rather not say what I learned from these, but as the question states: I was surprised.

 

Favorite words?

 

A tie: “benign” and “clear margins.”

 

How are your books organized? 

                  

Organized?

 

Best books read recently?

 

I read these three memorable books in 2024:

 

                  • Emily St. John Mandel, Sea of Tranquility;

                  • Mariana Enriquez, Our Share of Night;

                  • Thomas Olde Huzevelt, Echo;

 

Just now noticed how these three are definitely not any kind of realism.

 

What’s new and noteworthy in mountaineering literature? 

 

I loved Lisa Roderick’s A Place Among Giants: Twenty-two seasons at Denali Basecamp. Instant classic of Alaska Range literature.  Really beautiful.

 

Books that influenced you?

 

• Rene Daumal, Mount Analogue;

                  • “Climber as Visionary,” Doug Robinson;

                  • “Night Driving,” Dick Dorworth.

 

These pointed the way when I read them as younger person.  I still stand by them (even if the last two are essays, not books.)

 

 

Favorite sporting event to watch?
                                    

Tour de France. By far.

 

Podcasts?

                  Nope.

 

Blogs?

                  • “Fuck the New Yorker,” Nick Dighiera (every Monday!)

                  • Dad Bod, Matt Komatsu

                  • Lofty Minded in Alaska, Teresa Sundmark

 

Book that made you cry?

 

A River Runs Through It, Norman Maclean, for sure.  A single line in Tomorrow and  Tommorow and Tomorrow by Gabrielle Zevin brought a tear. Others too, probably, but it doesn’t happen often.  Was surprised recently watching the film A Complete Unknown.  I started crying when he sang “A Hard Rain ‘s Gonna Fall” and wept quietly through much of the rest of it. 

 

Did you learn anything by answering these self-imposed questions?

                  That all I do is read and eat?

 

 

Where Rachel Kushner's Creation Lake Took Me

 

I really enjoyed reading Rachel Kushner’s newest novel Creation Lake.  I only read a book I like this much about once or twice a year (I read fifty or sixty books a year).  I had just come off binge watching both Slow Horses and Black Doves, the former is superb, the later . . . somewhat regrettable.  In any case, these unwittingly primed me for a novel about spies, in Kushner’s case, a spy-for-hire who narrates the book. Kushner’s character is smart and interesting, a likable sociopath (which should be an oxymoron but isn’t).

            I had read two previous books by Kushner, her debut novel The Flamethrowers and her more recent essay collection, The Hard Crowd, Essays 2000–2020. I preferred the essays. I may reread The Flamethowers to try to articulate how and why she happened to not one hundred percent win me over.  I liked her portrayal of the motorcycle world—about which I knew nothing—but had a hard time buying her descriptions of downhill skiing, about which I know a fair bit.   Maybe that’s it: a reader with any expertise is often hyper-critical of a writer who stakes claim to the same territory.  But Kushner’s love of motorcycles, cars, and speed is pretty damned convincing (even though in “Girl on a Motorcycle” she describes a harrowing accident that almost defies our belief).  Almost: I did believe it, but HOLY SHIT.  Also, I read somewhere that she is afficionado of the Ford Galaxy, which at first seems unlikely, but ultimately wins over any native son of Dearborn, Michigan, where it seemed everyone’s dad worked for Ford and a Galaxy sat in every driveway, or, in many cases the station wagon version, the Country Squire. These were conveniently equipped with an enormous 390 for when mom had to haul ass to the grocery store.

            In Creation Lake the narrator's task is to infiltrate a leftist commune of eco-terrorists in France and set them up for an assassination attempt, or at least, a fall. To put herself in position to do this she enters into a love affair––at least the partner thinks it is a love affair––with a French man at whose country estate she stays, alone, while infiltrating the group.  Late in her stay she initiates an affair with Rene, one of the members of the group.

    Rene had been a factory worker at a Daimler plant in Germany.  “Rene’s job was to stamp metal panels that would become car doors.” Further, she says, “in order to activate the compression for stamping . . . you had to have both hands on the outside of the machine. There was no way to accidentally bring the stamper down on your own hand or arm.”  The point of this explanation was that workers found a way to circumvent the safety mechanism and maim themselves by “sacrifice a functioning limb” in order to receive compensation enough to buy a new E-Class Mercedes (gotta love that it was specifically an E Class) and receive a lifetime pension.

            This is where the book and my life intersect (probably the only place) and now I leave the text and sink into memory. 

In the late spring of 1973 I took at job at the Dearborn Stamping Plant, part of Ford Motor Company’s Rouge Plant, at the time the largest factory in the world. I operated a spot welding machine on the assembly line, afternoon shift.  

            The parking lot at the plant was enormous and I remember the walk from the car to my work station took as long as the drive from my home to the parking lot.  You could actually take a bus from the lot through the gates, but I never took it. On my very first day I remember passing a guy leaving the day shift with an enormous white bandage swaddling his hand. I distinctly remember him smiling, though it never occurred to me he might have done this on purpose.  In any case, my thought was what fresh new hell is this?

            The work was almost exactly as Kushner describes: I grabbed a small piece of metal, placed it of a larger piece of metal on a moving track, and pressed two buttons, one with each hand, which activated the spot welder, and moved the piece down to the next station.

            When the spot welder ignited, the points of contact would shoot a stream of sparks that often hit me in the face, once somehow finding my eyes despite the safety goggles.  Another time, my supervisor came by and mimed—you couldn’t hear anything in there—to brush my head—then I smelled it, the sparks had ignited my hair. 

            I’ve seen photographs of the assembly line today: clean and bright, the workers attired in shining white lab coats. It wasn’t that like that in 1973. The line was dark and dirty, loud and dangerous, more like something out of a Dickens novel than a model of late 20^thcentury engineering.  From my work station—from which, by the way, I never moved––I could see a tiny open window in the ceiling far above me.  Once in a while a star would pass across it.

            Mike Schonhofen, another Dearborn and Ford refugee, and I were remembering this the other day: the white large sign at the gates that announced in red letters DAYS WITHOUT AN ACCIDENT: then there was a number that could be changed by hand like an old-fashioned baseball scoreboard. We laughed that the number was always zero, only a bit of an exaggeration.

            When my shift was over, if I hurried, I could get to the bar, The New Place, ten minutes before last call. At least a half dozen of my friends would be there––had been there all night—and I could order three beers, Strohs, and drink them in the forty minutes before the lights went on, blinding us and ushering us out to the parking lot where we would stand around for another hour or so shooting the shit.  What we might have talked about is utterly lost to me now.  The friends: P.J., Clay, the Arch, Simmons are all gone now. The New Place remains.

            Some nights I would meet up with my friend John who also worked an afternoon shift at a steel plant west of the city and we would plan the mountaineering trip that we would take at the end of the summer. We wouldn’t want to wake up anyone at our parents’ houses so we’d just walk the streets, talking, full of plans, too wired to sleep.  After the climbing trip John would head to Durham England for junior year abroad, and I would go to Mexico ostensibly to research a book about the volcanoes there.

            At the end of the summer I left the assembly line for my travels. I felt guilty about quitting.  Just about everyone who worked there was working at the best job they could ever hope to have.  We were paid very well for the work; all you had to do was sign over your soul. When I returned from Mexico I had enough money left to buy a used car—a 1968 American Motors Javelin. It would be another year before I left Michigan for good–in the Javelin. I think of Dylan’s line “Drove that car as far as we could, abandoned it out west.”  More accurately, the Javelin abandoned me first.  It was towed to Gunther’s boneyard east of Yelm, Washington and I drove out of there in a 1970 VW Squareback.

            Someone once asked me what the part was that I welded.  I couldn’t begin to guess. If it had a name, I didn’t know it.  Could I, at least, tell what car I was working on?  I could.  It was a four-door Maverick.  Designed as a poor man’s Mustang, but really it was just a cut above Ford’s other bad idea, the Pinto. I haven’t  seen one of those Mavericks on the road in decades, but you might find one in some mechanic’s steely boneyard, among the Country Squires and Javelins.

            

Almost Winter Solstice

The day before the shortest day of the year

we drive to town to do errands,

 

stop at Robert’s Books to drop off a box for store credit, or to be 

donated to the library,

 

drive past the feed store by mistake,

 

drop off the glass for recycling, remembering now that we forgot the batteries,

 

stop at the Goodwill to drop off a couple bags of clothing,

 

the bank to get cash to pay Jim for installing the closet doors,

 

Barnacle Bills for just under a pound of freshly caught salmon,

 

return the cans with deposits for recycling at the grocers,

 

pick up just enough at the store to last the few days before we leave for Christmas,

 

stop at the department store for face cream with the added bonus of the man ahead in the checkout line who spends $110 on condoms and Viagra,

 

now remember the feed store for black sunflower seeds for our crow overlords,

 

the hardware store for putty to hold the window screen in that keeps blowing out in the 

winds,

 

finally, street tacos from our favorite food truck and a couple drafts of IPA,

 

then, almost home, leave the coffee that Aisha ground for Rhonda on her front porch.

 

At sunset we walk down to the shore in unseasonably mild weather, where we meet our neighbors and watch, first, the sun set, and then, the running lights of the crab boats–eleven of them we count–blink on suddenly on the horizon as darkness falls.