Northwest Lit. Schtick

April 1998
T H E RaVEN C H R O N I C L E S

`Pacific Northwest Urban Writing`

THE THREAD: Northwest Lit. Schtick

+

Nico Vassilakis:
subrosa@speakeasy.org
11/24/97

Mbriggs,

I don't think there's anything particular to the Northwest in Northwest literature. The show of nature has been the flag of recognition. Nature effecting and affecting the thought of those living near its mysteries. Mystery writers are big here now. Books using location to convey a story are what seem to be the Northwest's calling card. The Pike Market Murders. Poetry is mostly absorbed by national trends. Again anything specifically Northwest is revealed in its reference to location sites. Street names, corporations, geoducks, the peninsula, and, of course, the rain. This is found in any city. There's no exigency directly related to living in the Northwest. That's not to say it's inconceivable that it might someday exist. We, perhaps, may be on the precipice of change right now. Recently, an issue of Talisman magazine ran a section of Seattle Poets, which included my work, and noticed no certain bond between poets or nothing about how their Seattle experience was critical to the production of poetry. We seem to be individuals in a city, perhaps writing in a particular style or coming to the poem in a similar poetic - but really, quite disparate. Poetry slamming is where there could be a Seattle type coming into focus, but again, it's not singular in notion - there's the national competitive nature of that beast. Anyway, striped down, it becomes 'who's got the best monologue'. On the page you're left with much to be desired. It seems to be at yet another typical stage - what group of writers will next acquire notoriety. None has of yet, so there's no standard to gauge quality, and nothing to strive and topple, blah, blah, blah. There are several groups of writers here in Seattle. All viable entities for the community to learn from and enjoy, but who cares? Seattle's grown so quickly its culture hasn't had the time to grow at an equivalent rate. So, it's becoming nationalized, part of everywhere, to the joy of corporations. Look for any underground. Before media absorption creeps in. Before they get glossy. Look here.

Just some run-on ideas - nothing's revised - okay gotta go, the music, the music.

Matt Briggs:
Mbriggs@fhcrc.org
11/24/97

Hi Nico -

I don't agree with this is in the slightest (well I do agree with this in that superficially these are issue that obscure what is going on). TV and National Culture is dead, but I don't think you're going to see it on the cover of Time Magazine (like the 1950's cover declaring the beginning of this frenetic mass media - God is Dead) or on a Rupert Murdock TV channel. The works that you refer to don't have any impact on young writers and on people who think about the Northwest. Who cares about Earl Emerson? Who cares about the Public Market? What I'm talking about colonizes the Fred Meyer in Greenwood and guts the Newmark downtown.

There is a cultural similarity in the art work of Mark Toby, Abe Blashko, in the writing of Murray Morgan, Emmett Watson, Tom Robbins, Marilynn Robinson, Richard Hugo, even Walt Crowley, Stephen Thomas and Peter Bacho, and yourself, that is the Pacific Northwest.

Despite the fact that Seattle, and the Northwest in general, is a culture of immigrants, there is a very powerful, odd local culture that manages to assimilate newcomers. You, my friend, are an example - especially with your sort of Dobie Gillis dismissal of yourself. You're not even from Seattle and yet you're active on the behalf of Georgetown? You don't see recent immigrants in Milwaukee or St. Louis trying to vitalize old Hoovervilles (aside from the gentrification of old neighborhoods by people trying to live there). It's also a typical Seattle move to sort of shake your head, and say, like, I don't know. It just happened. Shit man. It wasn't me. (Meanwhile you're spending hours and hours working your ass off in some closed-off room.) It doesn't just happen. And you know it doesn't just happen or you'd be working an actual job earning some actual money.

And you're wrong about the next big thing. The next big thing is always happening. It is about four minutes away and it will be Avant Pop and I'm sure some lit. crit. fashion designers are out there preparing for the next book craze, such as those things go. Even the 80's boom of minimalism didn't actually sell very many books. I'm not talking about designing a regional identity from scratch, but tracking something that is already here - that is in the work of rancid poets like my uncle Fred and in horrible web poets and in the assorted ephemera of Farm Pulp - I'm talking about the careful sense of what Mark Svenvold is talking about in the "Buffalo Shoe Factory."

Phoebe Bosche:
bosche@u.washington.edu
11/25/97

Wow! I'd like to get in on this argument, but I'm too busy trying to think of what decrepit section of near-lost immigrant Seattle I can spend the few seconds of my free time trying to save, or reinvent. There really is something in what Matt says (Abe B. was from Seattle - was Toby or Graves, or those other Seattle visionary artists?) Also, Stephen Thomas is from Auburn, even tho he went east for an Ivy League education. Mark Svenvold is from this area, though he now lives in New York. And Matt Briggs is a native. Most, of us, however, are immigrants, modern day versions of the Carpetbaggers.

Phoebe Bosche:
bosche@u.washington.edu
11/25/97

More: But is the Seattle story, re: immigrants, any different from any other section of the country? Right now here is da place, but prior to that it was some place else. I'm from LA, been here 17 years. My maternal side came from Nebraska, my dad is from LA. The thing is, and I was discussing this last night, do certain geographic areas have certain inbred attitudes - which affect and change the immigrants as they move in, or is it more the other way around? This area is certainly picking up more of the Southern Cal/East Coast attitudes, right? Think of this area in the past, e.g., The Wobblies, the radical history of this area, or maybe the "thumb it at authorities" angle. Do we still see this area as filled with perverse, odd, eccentric, do it on one's own types? Then there is the other, ominous, conservative side of that - see the story of Frances Farmer. Read that horror story. Inherent in that story are who the leaders of Seattle were and what they represented. Because the other side of the Wobblies is the executions and repression that went down. I'm babbling, sorry.

There are interesting layers to the immigrations here. I'd like to see a human map of that.....(See J. Raban's stories of Korean immigrants.)

I think Nico is right, and maybe not right. But true, things happen so fast, technology develops so fast, that culture cannot develop. It needs roots and preservation to develop. Maybe we should just blame it on the weather - the type of writing that develops here.

Matt Briggs:
mbriggs@fhcrc.org
11/25/97

Hi - Nico sent me his response in response to my initial query about Northwest Urban writing, in his typical lythergic rolling around way, and I responded in my typical caffeine fueled wordprocessor mode - but I agree with what he's saying in a sense (and totally disagree) that Seattle is a generic, post-modern city, with a skyline and mall culture and baseball stadiums no different than any other city. And I disagree because there is something else here as well. In a line for coffee on Queen Anne, you're surrounded by recent immigrants to Seattle and they are all Seattleites. When you are walking down Robinson in Vancouver, BC you're surrounded by recent immigrants to the Northwest, but they all share a set of values. I think this is different than folks living in the Mid-West and East Coast, and even different than people in San Francisco or other West Coast places. What is this?

Bosche> roots and preservation to develop

In the 1840,s, De Tocqueville was able to write down many of the prevalent attitudes and tendencies of the US just seventy-years or so into the life span of the country. The core values, I think, are formed very early on in the life of a region; immigrants to the US are quick to assess and adopt these values and often become more enamored/trapped by them - aka the American Dream - than "natives." I think this is especially the case in Seattle/Pacific Northwest, where no one aside from the Native American is really a native (and even these cultures have been radically effected by the culture on Puget Sound).

Bosche> re: immigrants, Northwest different from any other section of the country?

I think this is a good question. I'm contending that the region is different, that Murray Morgan, Emmett Watson, and even Mississippi Mud and Willie Smith and the staff of the old Helix testify to this difference.

Nico Vassilakis:
subrosa@speakeasy.org
11/25/97

Matt,

When you say "typical lythergic rolling around" I assume you mean lethargic, and that image, that image makes me laugh. It paints such a funny picture of me. As the first to respond I've been rather quickly placed on the chopping block of critique. That is as it is in an e-mail world. I never said Seattle is generic and a postmodern city with a skyline and mall stadiums, etc. I said Seattle's grown so quickly its culture hasn't had the time to grow at an equivalent rate. (it's becoming further nationalized to the joy of corporations). This is happening everywhere. And for a young country and younger state and yet younger city there's no real time for a personality to settle in. People bring culture here; I'm not sure the reverse is true (certainly not to the same extent). Because someone moves to the Northwest doesn't automatically mean they take on a shared set of regional values - Matt, could you explain what you intended by that. From here sans coffee.

Nico

Matt Briggs:
mbriggs@fhcrc.org
11/25/97

I think the fact that so few people are from the Northwest, I mean almost everyone has either come here recently or come here a couple of generations ago. And this disconnection from the rest of the US, over the Rockies and then the Cascades (which admittedly means less and less), but up until the 1980's, we really felt this isolation. National tours didn't come all the way up to Seattle because it wasn't worth it. I was born in Seattle. And my mother was born here and my father grew up here, but both grandparents came here because they really had no where else to go. My paternal grandfather was an ex-convict and my maternal grandfather had been kicked out of his home in Iowa at seventeen and came to Seattle because of the Wobblies. When he came here the city was in full depression and he lived in the Duwamps until the war. I think this is a pretty common story. My grandparents came here because they were too freakish to remain in their own communities and didn't have enough get up and go to go to California.

Nico Vassilakis:
subrosa@speakeasy.org
11/25/97

Well, I think Seattle's always had an identity problem. The transplanted population has reworked its surface to the point where there's no way to gain footing (starting with Sealth). If you specifically want to deal with pre-existing lit. work and its connection to the Northwest ... off the top there are only a few that come to mind. At least in my hole-addled canister of a head. As far as demurring from trumpeting my work in the community, I like, don't need too. Perhaps this idea of 'what do artists seem to share in their work that is particular to living in the Northwest' does not even apply to this area. Maybe, maybe, maybe it's the rain and the isolation one feels. Maybe the audience or lack of one. Subtext is a venue to attract an audience interested in "difficult" "non narrative" "reader challenged" writing. Now why would people come to such a thing that would perhaps be an anathema to most people. A niche. Small pockets. Though I mostly founded Subtext with Ezra [Marks] to present this writing in Seattle - it has grown, but what exactly is its effect on people's writing. The people they come to see are from OUT-OF-TOWN. They are hungry for what's out there - not in here. Anyway, it's Snyder, Hugo, Roethke - oh, and Souppalt, he was real northwest, eh? I 'm always happy to meet a true Seattlite, sad about what's become of their place. Let's take our diagonal opposite FLORIDA, is there anything Florida about their writing but for elements of the environment. Hot, gators, retired, what?

I am mixing this up maybe with energy - are you asking 'what's the energy about here' - there was the New York School writing type - could there be such a thing here in Seattle, for instance. Fuck no. Seattle's a recoup, a pit stop, a waylay, artist's interests look south or east. Whoever rises here, doesn't stay here - they go. Why? $.

© The Raven Chronicles 1998

	April 1998		T H E RaVEN C H R O N I C L E S

	`Pacific Northwest Urban Writing`		THE THREAD: Northwest Lit. Schtick + Nico Vassilakis: subrosa@speakeasy.org 11/24/97 Mbriggs, I don't think there's anything particular to the Northwest in Northwest literature. The show of nature has been the flag of recognition. Nature effecting and affecting the thought of those living near its mysteries. Mystery writers are big here now. Books using location to convey a story are what seem to be the Northwest's calling card. The Pike Market Murders. Poetry is mostly absorbed by national trends. Again anything specifically Northwest is revealed in its reference to location sites. Street names, corporations, geoducks, the peninsula, and, of course, the rain. This is found in any city. There's no exigency directly related to living in the Northwest. That's not to say it's inconceivable that it might someday exist. We, perhaps, may be on the precipice of change right now. Recently, an issue of Talisman magazine ran a section of Seattle Poets, which included my work, and noticed no certain bond between poets or nothing about how their Seattle experience was critical to the production of poetry. We seem to be individuals in a city, perhaps writing in a particular style or coming to the poem in a similar poetic - but really, quite disparate. Poetry slamming is where there could be a Seattle type coming into focus, but again, it's not singular in notion - there's the national competitive nature of that beast. Anyway, striped down, it becomes 'who's got the best monologue'. On the page you're left with much to be desired. It seems to be at yet another typical stage - what group of writers will next acquire notoriety. None has of yet, so there's no standard to gauge quality, and nothing to strive and topple, blah, blah, blah. There are several groups of writers here in Seattle. All viable entities for the community to learn from and enjoy, but who cares? Seattle's grown so quickly its culture hasn't had the time to grow at an equivalent rate. So, it's becoming nationalized, part of everywhere, to the joy of corporations. Look for any underground. Before media absorption creeps in. Before they get glossy. Look here. Just some run-on ideas - nothing's revised - okay gotta go, the music, the music. Matt Briggs: Mbriggs@fhcrc.org 11/24/97 Hi Nico - I don't agree with this is in the slightest (well I do agree with this in that superficially these are issue that obscure what is going on). TV and National Culture is dead, but I don't think you're going to see it on the cover of Time Magazine (like the 1950's cover declaring the beginning of this frenetic mass media - God is Dead) or on a Rupert Murdock TV channel. The works that you refer to don't have any impact on young writers and on people who think about the Northwest. Who cares about Earl Emerson? Who cares about the Public Market? What I'm talking about colonizes the Fred Meyer in Greenwood and guts the Newmark downtown. There is a cultural similarity in the art work of Mark Toby, Abe Blashko, in the writing of Murray Morgan, Emmett Watson, Tom Robbins, Marilynn Robinson, Richard Hugo, even Walt Crowley, Stephen Thomas and Peter Bacho, and yourself, that is the Pacific Northwest. Despite the fact that Seattle, and the Northwest in general, is a culture of immigrants, there is a very powerful, odd local culture that manages to assimilate newcomers. You, my friend, are an example - especially with your sort of Dobie Gillis dismissal of yourself. You're not even from Seattle and yet you're active on the behalf of Georgetown? You don't see recent immigrants in Milwaukee or St. Louis trying to vitalize old Hoovervilles (aside from the gentrification of old neighborhoods by people trying to live there). It's also a typical Seattle move to sort of shake your head, and say, like, I don't know. It just happened. Shit man. It wasn't me. (Meanwhile you're spending hours and hours working your ass off in some closed-off room.) It doesn't just happen. And you know it doesn't just happen or you'd be working an actual job earning some actual money. And you're wrong about the next big thing. The next big thing is always happening. It is about four minutes away and it will be Avant Pop and I'm sure some lit. crit. fashion designers are out there preparing for the next book craze, such as those things go. Even the 80's boom of minimalism didn't actually sell very many books. I'm not talking about designing a regional identity from scratch, but tracking something that is already here - that is in the work of rancid poets like my uncle Fred and in horrible web poets and in the assorted ephemera of Farm Pulp - I'm talking about the careful sense of what Mark Svenvold is talking about in the "Buffalo Shoe Factory." Phoebe Bosche: bosche@u.washington.edu 11/25/97 Wow! I'd like to get in on this argument, but I'm too busy trying to think of what decrepit section of near-lost immigrant Seattle I can spend the few seconds of my free time trying to save, or reinvent. There really is something in what Matt says (Abe B. was from Seattle - was Toby or Graves, or those other Seattle visionary artists?) Also, Stephen Thomas is from Auburn, even tho he went east for an Ivy League education. Mark Svenvold is from this area, though he now lives in New York. And Matt Briggs is a native. Most, of us, however, are immigrants, modern day versions of the Carpetbaggers. Phoebe Bosche: bosche@u.washington.edu 11/25/97 More: But is the Seattle story, re: immigrants, any different from any other section of the country? Right now here is da place, but prior to that it was some place else. I'm from LA, been here 17 years. My maternal side came from Nebraska, my dad is from LA. The thing is, and I was discussing this last night, do certain geographic areas have certain inbred attitudes - which affect and change the immigrants as they move in, or is it more the other way around? This area is certainly picking up more of the Southern Cal/East Coast attitudes, right? Think of this area in the past, e.g., The Wobblies, the radical history of this area, or maybe the "thumb it at authorities" angle. Do we still see this area as filled with perverse, odd, eccentric, do it on one's own types? Then there is the other, ominous, conservative side of that - see the story of Frances Farmer. Read that horror story. Inherent in that story are who the leaders of Seattle were and what they represented. Because the other side of the Wobblies is the executions and repression that went down. I'm babbling, sorry. There are interesting layers to the immigrations here. I'd like to see a human map of that.....(See J. Raban's stories of Korean immigrants.) I think Nico is right, and maybe not right. But true, things happen so fast, technology develops so fast, that culture cannot develop. It needs roots and preservation to develop. Maybe we should just blame it on the weather - the type of writing that develops here. Matt Briggs: mbriggs@fhcrc.org 11/25/97 Hi - Nico sent me his response in response to my initial query about Northwest Urban writing, in his typical lythergic rolling around way, and I responded in my typical caffeine fueled wordprocessor mode - but I agree with what he's saying in a sense (and totally disagree) that Seattle is a generic, post-modern city, with a skyline and mall culture and baseball stadiums no different than any other city. And I disagree because there is something else here as well. In a line for coffee on Queen Anne, you're surrounded by recent immigrants to Seattle and they are all Seattleites. When you are walking down Robinson in Vancouver, BC you're surrounded by recent immigrants to the Northwest, but they all share a set of values. I think this is different than folks living in the Mid-West and East Coast, and even different than people in San Francisco or other West Coast places. What is this? Bosche> roots and preservation to develop In the 1840,s, De Tocqueville was able to write down many of the prevalent attitudes and tendencies of the US just seventy-years or so into the life span of the country. The core values, I think, are formed very early on in the life of a region; immigrants to the US are quick to assess and adopt these values and often become more enamored/trapped by them - aka the American Dream - than "natives." I think this is especially the case in Seattle/Pacific Northwest, where no one aside from the Native American is really a native (and even these cultures have been radically effected by the culture on Puget Sound). Bosche> re: immigrants, Northwest different from any other section of the country? I think this is a good question. I'm contending that the region is different, that Murray Morgan, Emmett Watson, and even Mississippi Mud and Willie Smith and the staff of the old Helix testify to this difference. Nico Vassilakis: subrosa@speakeasy.org 11/25/97 Matt, When you say "typical lythergic rolling around" I assume you mean lethargic, and that image, that image makes me laugh. It paints such a funny picture of me. As the first to respond I've been rather quickly placed on the chopping block of critique. That is as it is in an e-mail world. I never said Seattle is generic and a postmodern city with a skyline and mall stadiums, etc. I said Seattle's grown so quickly its culture hasn't had the time to grow at an equivalent rate. (it's becoming further nationalized to the joy of corporations). This is happening everywhere. And for a young country and younger state and yet younger city there's no real time for a personality to settle in. People bring culture here; I'm not sure the reverse is true (certainly not to the same extent). Because someone moves to the Northwest doesn't automatically mean they take on a shared set of regional values - Matt, could you explain what you intended by that. From here sans coffee. Nico Matt Briggs: mbriggs@fhcrc.org 11/25/97 I think the fact that so few people are from the Northwest, I mean almost everyone has either come here recently or come here a couple of generations ago. And this disconnection from the rest of the US, over the Rockies and then the Cascades (which admittedly means less and less), but up until the 1980's, we really felt this isolation. National tours didn't come all the way up to Seattle because it wasn't worth it. I was born in Seattle. And my mother was born here and my father grew up here, but both grandparents came here because they really had no where else to go. My paternal grandfather was an ex-convict and my maternal grandfather had been kicked out of his home in Iowa at seventeen and came to Seattle because of the Wobblies. When he came here the city was in full depression and he lived in the Duwamps until the war. I think this is a pretty common story. My grandparents came here because they were too freakish to remain in their own communities and didn't have enough get up and go to go to California. Nico Vassilakis: subrosa@speakeasy.org 11/25/97 Well, I think Seattle's always had an identity problem. The transplanted population has reworked its surface to the point where there's no way to gain footing (starting with Sealth). If you specifically want to deal with pre-existing lit. work and its connection to the Northwest ... off the top there are only a few that come to mind. At least in my hole-addled canister of a head. As far as demurring from trumpeting my work in the community, I like, don't need too. Perhaps this idea of 'what do artists seem to share in their work that is particular to living in the Northwest' does not even apply to this area. Maybe, maybe, maybe it's the rain and the isolation one feels. Maybe the audience or lack of one. Subtext is a venue to attract an audience interested in "difficult" "non narrative" "reader challenged" writing. Now why would people come to such a thing that would perhaps be an anathema to most people. A niche. Small pockets. Though I mostly founded Subtext with Ezra [Marks] to present this writing in Seattle - it has grown, but what exactly is its effect on people's writing. The people they come to see are from OUT-OF-TOWN. They are hungry for what's out there - not in here. Anyway, it's Snyder, Hugo, Roethke - oh, and Souppalt, he was real northwest, eh? I 'm always happy to meet a true Seattlite, sad about what's become of their place. Let's take our diagonal opposite FLORIDA, is there anything Florida about their writing but for elements of the environment. Hot, gators, retired, what? I am mixing this up maybe with energy - are you asking 'what's the energy about here' - there was the New York School writing type - could there be such a thing here in Seattle, for instance. Fuck no. Seattle's a recoup, a pit stop, a waylay, artist's interests look south or east. Whoever rises here, doesn't stay here - they go. Why? $.
			© The Raven Chronicles 1998