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

Clark Humphrey:
clark <clark@speakeasy.org>
Mon, 23 March 98

I've been asked to write a bigtime Stranger feature about issues relating to Northwest literature, and naturally thought of some of the issues discussed in last December's email thread. Right now, looks like I'm going to: (1) Define "Northwest" for literary purposes as WA, OR, maybe ID and AK, with BC as a separate cultural entity within the same "bioregion" (a cultural entity where folks actually used to get grants to discuss 'cultural identity'), and entirely leaving out Montana fly-fishing fiction; and (2) divide "NW Lit" into four main groups

(a) works of writers who happen to live here but include little or no local content (John Saul, August Wilson, Robt. Ferrigno),

(b) genre fiction (mysteries, romances) with fill-in-the-blanks local place names (while acknowledging that series detective novels can indeed shed some light upon the mindset and spirit of a place within the strictures of the whodunit formula),

(c) glorified travelogue writing (nature poetry, 'place' essayists like Andrew Ward), and

(d) the rarest and most rewarding, serious writing that actually attempts to portray the thoughts & feelings of folks who live here. This can range from the sublime (Beverly Cleary) to the ridiculous (Tom Robbins), from the somber (los bros. Wolff, R. Carver) to the seemingly preposterous (Katherine Dunn). What I'd like you to consider:

Examples of any of these groups.
Whether there can be such a thing as regionalism in this day of Hollywood-centric globalism.
Your or others' statements in the email thread and your current thoughts about those issues (whether there's any NW lit at all, what might be done to encourage writers to look more closely at the worlds directly around them, how to build a more cohesive-supportive local lit community). And I'm on deadlines, so if you have any feelings you'd like to share about these topics I'd need 'em by Wed. 3/25.

Yours in neotribalism,

Clark H.

Phoebe Bosche:
bosche@u.washington.edu
Mon, 23 March 1998

Clark:

On your list," (c) glorified travelogue writing (nature poetry, 'place' essayists", it sounds like this is a non-serious, negative category. I'd place Barry Lopez, A. Dillard, Sharon Doubiago, Brenda Peterson in the nature writing categorybut certainly not travelogue writing. And what about the many Native American writers who have been writing about the NW for many yearsS. Alexie is new on the scene, but there's Elizabeth Woody, Duane Niatum, many exciting BC writers, Anita Endrezze, Gail Tremblay, to name just a few.

I know the Stranger is mostly interested in the underbelly-of-life type writers, but that pose gets too cute real fast. And it gets in the way of a real picture of who is actually writing what about life here now. And then.

As far as poets, NW, who have been writing interesting poems about regional attitudes and NW slices of life, there are many, most of whom little is written about, such as: David Lloyd Whited, one of our finest NW poets, largely unsung; Stephen Thomas; Bill Shively (Seattle-Oregon); Paul Hunter; to name a few.

Just a few quick thoughts, as I'm flying off now.

Matt Briggs:
mbriggs@cclink.fhcrc.org
Tue, 24 March 1998

He (Clark) also seem interested in the complete lack of consensus in the thread about what a northwest literature would be and who the principal writers of a pacific northwest literature would bewhich I still find sort of strange considering the number of books/classes about/and workshops about The Pacific Northwest. But there have been very few people who have sort of clearly said, this is it. John Keeble, I think, emphasizes Pacific Northwest Literature at the MFA program at Eastern Washington University.

I guess my initial feeling is that there is indeed a Pacific Northwest Literature with a Sense of Place, as written by Berry Lopez, William Kitteredge, Richard Hugo, David Wagoner, William Stafford, David James Duncan, this epic poem thing by Jana Harris. But in the last twenty years there has been an alternate strain of this (I think Richard Hugo has this strain sort of embedded in his earlier poems, like "Death of the Kaposin Tavern"), and this is an urban literature, in that it talks about the city and suburbs as places, and it talks about the slippery sense of place and identity in the Pacific Northwest. Where Berry Lopez, William Stafford, William Kitteredge and so on, would have you believe that Pacific Northwesterners grew up on farms, these newer writers have rarely come from purely rural backgrounds (or at last least don't write much about it).

Thus, there is a strange dislocation that sometimes expresses itself in deformed characters, like Katherine Dunn's Geek Love; a reduction of reality into a heavily-weighted and controlled narrative, like Raymond Carver's short stories (his poetry, I think, sits on the other side of the fence in the sort of plain talking nature writing PNW schtick); or in the complete absence of family history and a sort of constant self-invention as in Denis Johnson's Jesus's Son and Already Dead; or in stories about isolated and small urban communities as in Peter Bacho's work. I know, this is a simplification and ignores whole areas of what is going on here. Native American writing is a completely different ball of wax, because a lot of the issues that define other writer's writing - the immigration to the Pacific Northwest from elsewhere, the distance and isolation from the rest of the county, the alien-ness and size of the Northwest landscape - these aren't directly issues with the writing from cultures still in shock from being forcibly occupied and ignored. I guess the one area that everyone shares is that there isn't any history here, there isn't any 'here' here; which could account for this constant assessment of 'sense of place' in writing workshops.

the need for people born in the Northwest to claim themselves as native Northwesterners seems silly to me. At the very most they are something like four or five generations old. Most of us so-called natives are only two or three generations back. Our grandparents/great grandparents came to the Northwest, I think, because it was the furthest corner of the US. For whatever reason they were trying to get as far way from wherever they came from as possible. And I think many people have come here for this reason up until the last ten years or so, when suddenly Seattle had a sort of successful allure rather than the allure of a good hiding place.

Phoebe Bosche:
bosche@u.washington.edu
Tue, 24 March 1998

I mentioned Native Amer. writing because it is a definite part of NW writing. And never gets mentioned really except as a genre/type separate from the whole picture. And unlike what most of us are doing, and I don't consider myself a Native writer, though being a halfbreed does color my view of American culture; Native writers are still at odds via the Amer. culture in a protest sort of waythough just protesting isn't enough to create literature which goes anywhere.

I think there is more to it than generations came here to get away/to escape from somethingthat is only half or part of the equation. They also came to create some kind of life that was different, didn't they? And that is the aspects I see in whatever is NW writing. To just dismiss "nature poetry/writing" is blind to the overriding presence of our surroundings here. There is the presence of nature in all the urban writing being created here...it is different than the open possibilities that infuse writing from Southern Calif, my home. The cynicism here is also different. from East Coast or LA cynicism...it is rooted in a denser feeling of our relationship with our surroundings, in the character of this cityspeaking of Puget Sound writing at least. Maybe more brooding. I think the writings say of Whited, or other poets I know writing here, lacks sentimentality, and that goes for relationships. This is pretty vague, and describes Hugo's writings certainly. Maybe it is sensibility that is the only common thread in "NW" writing...and this sensibility or energy in the writing changes from region to region, regardless of the subject matter.

Matt Briggs:
mbriggs@cclink.fhcrc.org
Tue, 24 March 1998

The more I talk about this, the more I feel like I'm completely ignorant about the whole thing - even though I have pretty strong feelings about it. I guess my feeling about Native American writing is that it is such a large topic and even the term, Native American writing is a generalization about a lot of different cultures that I know very little about. Even though I grew up on the Snoqualmie River - the people who originally lived there were gone. I didn't realize until just recently that there even was a Snoqualmie Tribe (when I read about Carnation considering opening a casino on their reservation at the confluence of the Tolt and Snoqualmie). Sherman Alexie, Arthur Tulee, Annie Hanson, Tiffany Midge, Philip Red Eagle, as writers use western (rather than Native American) forms, in general, and operate in a tradition that I think is influenced heavily by the audiences available to them (that is the expectations, the reference points, what has happened to the Pacific Northwest in the last hundred and fifty years). And so many of the same issues about this region have as much impact on their writing as anyone else. At this late date we've all been educated, more or less, by the same education system.

Phoebe> "literature which goes anywhere"

I guess this is at heart what concerns me about a regional sensibility. I think a literature of protest weakens the core values of creative work in which permanence and lasting relevance are sought. On the one hand, protest is a kind of writing that is important to do, but I think one of the frustrating things that has happened to the fine arts is that they are now expected to have a utilitarian function. They are expected to perform some kind of labor, as a protest or as an examination of some topic, which is fine, but when ALL writing and art is expected to perform like a shovel, that is, to be a tool in the service of some work, I think it takes away from the emphasis of literature as a means of understanding the world. (This understanding is understood, a moral high ground is claimed, and an enemy declared, and war waged.)

I think an understanding happens through a concrete examination of where the artist is living, what she is thinking about, and so on, in essence an understanding of the natural world and how the senses and memory interact with it. One of my own frustrations with postmodernism is how it dwells on the snake-oil salesmen illusion of 'reality' and the manipulation of appearance and identity rather than a close observation of how the writer is actually living in the world. I think the general feeling of this line of argument is that everything is advertisement; and that nothing has lasting relevance and that literature cannot go anywhere; that all literature is consumed like pop corn. There is either a close attention to effect, as in Mark Leyner, or a close attention to cause as in most 'experimental' writing that I've read. (Again, I'm sort of boiling down my points.) And I suspect a lot of the nature writing currently being done in the Northwest is being written out of nostalgia and its association with past Northwest writing rather than out of a close observation of where the writer actually lives and what the writer is actually thinking about. And so it is a literature of effect rather than observation.

William Burroughs said that he wasn't a reporter. But he wrote reports, nevertheless.

Also, I think there is too much information. Already in trying to look at what's going on in the Pacific Northwest I can think of more writing than I'm likely ever to read. And when it comes to the national literature, there are dozens of books published each month that are essential. How does a reader/writer draw a limit as to what concerns them? And how is a critic supposed to work when they have hundreds of books to choose from and space for five books to blurb and a hundred and twenty-five words to blurb each book? A book is too slow for this massive, gargantuan flow of information. It takes me months to digest a book.

I think a "portable literature" requires a close relationship of an audience with the specific geographical and historical context of a place, a limiting and concentration of cultural references. Durable literature, I believe, has always been specific, narrow in its range of reference, and closely observed.

Phoebe> I think there is more to it than generations came here to get away/to escape from somethingthat is only half or part of the equation. They also came to create some kind of life that was different, didn't they?

I agree. But I think a key component to them creating a new way of living was the rejection of wherever they came from.

Phoebe> Maybe it is sensibility that is the only common thread in "NW" writing... and this sensibility or energy in the writing changes from region to region, regardless of the subject matter.

I think this is what makes it interesting, at least to me. If it only involved this devoted absorption with geoducks, and the Public Market, and moss covered maple trees, and crawling fungus, and so on, it wouldn't be so difficult to trace. But there is a common, nervous energy (like over compensating for the overcast winter) to a lot of the writing that I think strikes me as particularly PNW. The city of Seattle, itself, in all of its different shapes, has this energy as well. It is still the same city in many ways despite I-5 through the middle of it, despite paving over the wharves, despite the World's Fair face lift, and despite this current wave of convention centers. In talking to my father about a Pacific Northwest literature - he's a bus driver and sometimes reads but he does read all of the city papers since they are on his bus every day - he said, of course there's a local literature. How could anyone live here and not be affected by it?

I think this is what's frustrating about thinking about a regional literature, because there is a sense of place here, but what is it? I mean the place is always changing. When I've lived elsewhere, briefly, I was freakish - not for just for the usual reasons, but I was marked by the place I'd come from.

© 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 Clark Humphrey: clark <clark@speakeasy.org> Mon, 23 March 98 I've been asked to write a bigtime Stranger feature about issues relating to Northwest literature, and naturally thought of some of the issues discussed in last December's email thread. Right now, looks like I'm going to: (1) Define "Northwest" for literary purposes as WA, OR, maybe ID and AK, with BC as a separate cultural entity within the same "bioregion" (a cultural entity where folks actually used to get grants to discuss 'cultural identity'), and entirely leaving out Montana fly-fishing fiction; and (2) divide "NW Lit" into four main groups (a) works of writers who happen to live here but include little or no local content (John Saul, August Wilson, Robt. Ferrigno), (b) genre fiction (mysteries, romances) with fill-in-the-blanks local place names (while acknowledging that series detective novels can indeed shed some light upon the mindset and spirit of a place within the strictures of the whodunit formula), (c) glorified travelogue writing (nature poetry, 'place' essayists like Andrew Ward), and (d) the rarest and most rewarding, serious writing that actually attempts to portray the thoughts & feelings of folks who live here. This can range from the sublime (Beverly Cleary) to the ridiculous (Tom Robbins), from the somber (los bros. Wolff, R. Carver) to the seemingly preposterous (Katherine Dunn). What I'd like you to consider: Examples of any of these groups. Whether there can be such a thing as regionalism in this day of Hollywood-centric globalism. Your or others' statements in the email thread and your current thoughts about those issues (whether there's any NW lit at all, what might be done to encourage writers to look more closely at the worlds directly around them, how to build a more cohesive-supportive local lit community). And I'm on deadlines, so if you have any feelings you'd like to share about these topics I'd need 'em by Wed. 3/25. Yours in neotribalism, Clark H. Phoebe Bosche: bosche@u.washington.edu Mon, 23 March 1998 Clark: On your list," (c) glorified travelogue writing (nature poetry, 'place' essayists", it sounds like this is a non-serious, negative category. I'd place Barry Lopez, A. Dillard, Sharon Doubiago, Brenda Peterson in the nature writing categorybut certainly not travelogue writing. And what about the many Native American writers who have been writing about the NW for many yearsS. Alexie is new on the scene, but there's Elizabeth Woody, Duane Niatum, many exciting BC writers, Anita Endrezze, Gail Tremblay, to name just a few. I know the Stranger is mostly interested in the underbelly-of-life type writers, but that pose gets too cute real fast. And it gets in the way of a real picture of who is actually writing what about life here now. And then. As far as poets, NW, who have been writing interesting poems about regional attitudes and NW slices of life, there are many, most of whom little is written about, such as: David Lloyd Whited, one of our finest NW poets, largely unsung; Stephen Thomas; Bill Shively (Seattle-Oregon); Paul Hunter; to name a few. Just a few quick thoughts, as I'm flying off now. Matt Briggs: mbriggs@cclink.fhcrc.org Tue, 24 March 1998 He (Clark) also seem interested in the complete lack of consensus in the thread about what a northwest literature would be and who the principal writers of a pacific northwest literature would bewhich I still find sort of strange considering the number of books/classes about/and workshops about The Pacific Northwest. But there have been very few people who have sort of clearly said, this is it. John Keeble, I think, emphasizes Pacific Northwest Literature at the MFA program at Eastern Washington University. I guess my initial feeling is that there is indeed a Pacific Northwest Literature with a Sense of Place, as written by Berry Lopez, William Kitteredge, Richard Hugo, David Wagoner, William Stafford, David James Duncan, this epic poem thing by Jana Harris. But in the last twenty years there has been an alternate strain of this (I think Richard Hugo has this strain sort of embedded in his earlier poems, like "Death of the Kaposin Tavern"), and this is an urban literature, in that it talks about the city and suburbs as places, and it talks about the slippery sense of place and identity in the Pacific Northwest. Where Berry Lopez, William Stafford, William Kitteredge and so on, would have you believe that Pacific Northwesterners grew up on farms, these newer writers have rarely come from purely rural backgrounds (or at last least don't write much about it). Thus, there is a strange dislocation that sometimes expresses itself in deformed characters, like Katherine Dunn's Geek Love; a reduction of reality into a heavily-weighted and controlled narrative, like Raymond Carver's short stories (his poetry, I think, sits on the other side of the fence in the sort of plain talking nature writing PNW schtick); or in the complete absence of family history and a sort of constant self-invention as in Denis Johnson's Jesus's Son and Already Dead; or in stories about isolated and small urban communities as in Peter Bacho's work. I know, this is a simplification and ignores whole areas of what is going on here. Native American writing is a completely different ball of wax, because a lot of the issues that define other writer's writing - the immigration to the Pacific Northwest from elsewhere, the distance and isolation from the rest of the county, the alien-ness and size of the Northwest landscape - these aren't directly issues with the writing from cultures still in shock from being forcibly occupied and ignored. I guess the one area that everyone shares is that there isn't any history here, there isn't any 'here' here; which could account for this constant assessment of 'sense of place' in writing workshops. the need for people born in the Northwest to claim themselves as native Northwesterners seems silly to me. At the very most they are something like four or five generations old. Most of us so-called natives are only two or three generations back. Our grandparents/great grandparents came to the Northwest, I think, because it was the furthest corner of the US. For whatever reason they were trying to get as far way from wherever they came from as possible. And I think many people have come here for this reason up until the last ten years or so, when suddenly Seattle had a sort of successful allure rather than the allure of a good hiding place. Phoebe Bosche: bosche@u.washington.edu Tue, 24 March 1998 I mentioned Native Amer. writing because it is a definite part of NW writing. And never gets mentioned really except as a genre/type separate from the whole picture. And unlike what most of us are doing, and I don't consider myself a Native writer, though being a halfbreed does color my view of American culture; Native writers are still at odds via the Amer. culture in a protest sort of waythough just protesting isn't enough to create literature which goes anywhere. I think there is more to it than generations came here to get away/to escape from somethingthat is only half or part of the equation. They also came to create some kind of life that was different, didn't they? And that is the aspects I see in whatever is NW writing. To just dismiss "nature poetry/writing" is blind to the overriding presence of our surroundings here. There is the presence of nature in all the urban writing being created here...it is different than the open possibilities that infuse writing from Southern Calif, my home. The cynicism here is also different. from East Coast or LA cynicism...it is rooted in a denser feeling of our relationship with our surroundings, in the character of this cityspeaking of Puget Sound writing at least. Maybe more brooding. I think the writings say of Whited, or other poets I know writing here, lacks sentimentality, and that goes for relationships. This is pretty vague, and describes Hugo's writings certainly. Maybe it is sensibility that is the only common thread in "NW" writing...and this sensibility or energy in the writing changes from region to region, regardless of the subject matter. Matt Briggs: mbriggs@cclink.fhcrc.org Tue, 24 March 1998 The more I talk about this, the more I feel like I'm completely ignorant about the whole thing - even though I have pretty strong feelings about it. I guess my feeling about Native American writing is that it is such a large topic and even the term, Native American writing is a generalization about a lot of different cultures that I know very little about. Even though I grew up on the Snoqualmie River - the people who originally lived there were gone. I didn't realize until just recently that there even was a Snoqualmie Tribe (when I read about Carnation considering opening a casino on their reservation at the confluence of the Tolt and Snoqualmie). Sherman Alexie, Arthur Tulee, Annie Hanson, Tiffany Midge, Philip Red Eagle, as writers use western (rather than Native American) forms, in general, and operate in a tradition that I think is influenced heavily by the audiences available to them (that is the expectations, the reference points, what has happened to the Pacific Northwest in the last hundred and fifty years). And so many of the same issues about this region have as much impact on their writing as anyone else. At this late date we've all been educated, more or less, by the same education system. Phoebe> "literature which goes anywhere" I guess this is at heart what concerns me about a regional sensibility. I think a literature of protest weakens the core values of creative work in which permanence and lasting relevance are sought. On the one hand, protest is a kind of writing that is important to do, but I think one of the frustrating things that has happened to the fine arts is that they are now expected to have a utilitarian function. They are expected to perform some kind of labor, as a protest or as an examination of some topic, which is fine, but when ALL writing and art is expected to perform like a shovel, that is, to be a tool in the service of some work, I think it takes away from the emphasis of literature as a means of understanding the world. (This understanding is understood, a moral high ground is claimed, and an enemy declared, and war waged.) I think an understanding happens through a concrete examination of where the artist is living, what she is thinking about, and so on, in essence an understanding of the natural world and how the senses and memory interact with it. One of my own frustrations with postmodernism is how it dwells on the snake-oil salesmen illusion of 'reality' and the manipulation of appearance and identity rather than a close observation of how the writer is actually living in the world. I think the general feeling of this line of argument is that everything is advertisement; and that nothing has lasting relevance and that literature cannot go anywhere; that all literature is consumed like pop corn. There is either a close attention to effect, as in Mark Leyner, or a close attention to cause as in most 'experimental' writing that I've read. (Again, I'm sort of boiling down my points.) And I suspect a lot of the nature writing currently being done in the Northwest is being written out of nostalgia and its association with past Northwest writing rather than out of a close observation of where the writer actually lives and what the writer is actually thinking about. And so it is a literature of effect rather than observation. William Burroughs said that he wasn't a reporter. But he wrote reports, nevertheless. Also, I think there is too much information. Already in trying to look at what's going on in the Pacific Northwest I can think of more writing than I'm likely ever to read. And when it comes to the national literature, there are dozens of books published each month that are essential. How does a reader/writer draw a limit as to what concerns them? And how is a critic supposed to work when they have hundreds of books to choose from and space for five books to blurb and a hundred and twenty-five words to blurb each book? A book is too slow for this massive, gargantuan flow of information. It takes me months to digest a book. I think a "portable literature" requires a close relationship of an audience with the specific geographical and historical context of a place, a limiting and concentration of cultural references. Durable literature, I believe, has always been specific, narrow in its range of reference, and closely observed. Phoebe> I think there is more to it than generations came here to get away/to escape from somethingthat is only half or part of the equation. They also came to create some kind of life that was different, didn't they? I agree. But I think a key component to them creating a new way of living was the rejection of wherever they came from. Phoebe> Maybe it is sensibility that is the only common thread in "NW" writing... and this sensibility or energy in the writing changes from region to region, regardless of the subject matter. I think this is what makes it interesting, at least to me. If it only involved this devoted absorption with geoducks, and the Public Market, and moss covered maple trees, and crawling fungus, and so on, it wouldn't be so difficult to trace. But there is a common, nervous energy (like over compensating for the overcast winter) to a lot of the writing that I think strikes me as particularly PNW. The city of Seattle, itself, in all of its different shapes, has this energy as well. It is still the same city in many ways despite I-5 through the middle of it, despite paving over the wharves, despite the World's Fair face lift, and despite this current wave of convention centers. In talking to my father about a Pacific Northwest literature - he's a bus driver and sometimes reads but he does read all of the city papers since they are on his bus every day - he said, of course there's a local literature. How could anyone live here and not be affected by it? I think this is what's frustrating about thinking about a regional literature, because there is a sense of place here, but what is it? I mean the place is always changing. When I've lived elsewhere, briefly, I was freakish - not for just for the usual reasons, but I was marked by the place I'd come from.
			© The Raven Chronicles 1998