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BACK
ISSUES
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Kingfisher Dedicated to
the appreciation of poetry, fiction,
painting,
Summer
2003, Volume Two, Number
Three |
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A Friend Publishes His First Novel--at 74
So you want to write a novel? Many people do. My old friend from college, Ken Maclean, a professor emeritus of English at Seattle U. got fed up with the tedious, unrewarding game of sending letters of inquiry off to agents and publishers (neither of which usually will respond today), and decided to publish it himself. After all he had worked on it for five years and believed it was pretty good. It was, and is. The Mind Keepers (Xlibris Corp., 2003), $22.95 paper is a rich novel of 351 pages, with enough characters to confuse even a Thackery buff. A hard-cover edition is also available. It is a mystery and a story of intrigue, which includes a governmental and industrial conspiracy to control the minds of citizens through magnetic impulse technology. It sounds a bit far-fetched, but Maclean makes it seem not only plausible but vaguely possible. It is the assignment of Michael Neely, retired FBI agent, to unravel the mystery of what he sees going on around him in a fictional community set in Eastern Washington State. In doing so, he meets and gets involved with many, many people, both new and from his checkerboard past. Though characters are delineated in leit motif fashion, there is a tendency for the reader to get lost, if he does not pay very close attention as he reads along. But, mid-way through the book, the pace quickens, the mystery deepens, and the conspiracy begins to unravel and reveal its origins. If you like the mysteries of Tony Hillerman (who Mclean admits influenced him) you will probably enjoy this novel. It may be ordered with a credit card on line from Xlibris.com. Or purchase from Amazon, B&N.com, or ordered at most bookstores.
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Featured Poet, W. S. Merwin
TO THE BOOK Go
on then of
course you are not finished never
mind whoever
I was from his 2002 translation of the Middle-English poem, Sir Gwain and The Green Knight: ["]It
would have been better to have proceeded more prudently and from The River Sound , his long poem "Lament for the Makers," that is, other poets now dead. Two that some of us also knew: then
the sudden news that Ted and another: and
James Wright by his darkened river and from his wonderful long poem, Testimony," another thought on Wright: my
life was never so precious to me books
NORTHWEST MYTHOLOGIES, The Interactions of Mark Tobey, Morris Graves, Kenneth Callahan, and Guy Anderson, by Sheryl Conkelton and Laura Landau, Tacoma Art Museum, in association with University of Washington Press, 2003; full cloth, $40
This is a poor title for a great book. Well, okay, a good one. These four superb artist comprise what is known, ever since September 1953, as the Northwest Mystics. But the authors seem to have gotten the words "mystic" and "mythology" mixed up. They do not have a common root or common meaning. The artists are, unarguably, somewhat mystical in their combined efforts. Comprising a mythology they are not. [Now, Coyote, Big Foot, and Paul Bunyan are mythological figures, Northwest ones, but they never existed. Tobey, Graves, Callahan, and Anderson assuredly did.] We have long needed a comprehensive book on these important painters. When Delores Tarzan Ament's book, Iridescent Light, The Emergence of Northwest Art, came out in 2002, I thought we had it. High on persons and personalities, it was light-weight when it came to understanding the art these men produced and how it was made. We learned a lot about them, thanks to Ament's research and, especially from Mary Randlett's sharp, homey photographs, who was helped a lot by Randlett's mother's strong personal relationships will all four painters and her daughter's ability to visit with them and photograph them more or less informally (even though most of the photos look posed.). But the book was lacking in the art department. And it seemed determined to avoid discussing the artists' personal relationships, some of which were sexual. (Only Graves's "encounter" with Neil Metzler in Callahan's Granite Falls cabin was mentioned in the book. Perhaps this was because Metzler happily and proudly described it to the book's author.) Conkelton and Landau have produced the book we had wished for, well, up to a point. It is the expensive catalog for the Tacoma Art Museum's current show, and was intended to be a tribute to the new building and its display capabilities. The book concentrates on the painters interactions between the early Thirties to the early Fifties, some twenty years. And then it stops, ostensibly because the four men had drifted far apart, and this comes as a huge disappointment, for the case could have been made (and was) that they had parted company at various earlier periods, then come (often reluctantly) back together out of friendship sometimes but more often need. Of course such a book might go on for another 50 years, and I wish it had, for it is so good. But I know how these artists all continued to produce mature work, two of them into their nineties. (Anderson and Graves.) Tobey, the eldest, died in 1976; Callahan had just taken a bold new turn in his painting and was producing huge, wavy canvases of personal joy. And Morris Graves, during that period, had turned to delicate tempera paintings of transcendent flowers. Anderson painted up until the time he died. That Anderson and Graves were lovers should not come as a surprise, but Ament super-discretely avoided the subject, though it was mystically alluded to in the correspondence that was readily available to her through her access to her mother's papers and other documents in the UW's archives. In the Conkelton/Landau book it seems to be tactfully discussed and related naturally to the excellent painting both these men produced during their youth traveling together. Such talent! And what mutual respect. The book is important in its main mission, which is to show how personal relationships pollinated each other's work and strong influences flowed back and forth. Often it is difficult to tell one man's work from another during the same decade. Two or more picture juxtaposed cleverly can be confusing to someone who thinks he knows their work well. And there are many influences from outside the group. The color plates are the best I've seen. Marquand Books, Seattle, and C&C Offset Printing, Hong Kong, are doing fine work. It is nice to handle a book bound in cloth, one that opens flat on the table and is so well sewn that its pages don't begin to fall out when it is fully laid out to read. I've seen about 80 percent or more of these pictures before, either at a gallery or reproduced in a book, but they shine forth anew, my old friends do. Conkelton and Lanau have done a thorough job of researching the material, as the copious footnotes attest, and when they don't find a source make keen guesses. The two women have worked together before, and with Martha Kingsbury on the catalog to the excellent Henry Gallery exhibition, What It Meant to be Modern, in 2000. That book too stopped about 1950. One hopes the three of them put their heads together again and bring their next effort up closer to the Twenty-first Century. We'd all benefit from the additions. Robert Arnold, Editor/Publisher
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THAT OLD FISKETJON GANG OF MINE For one brief shining moment, Binkie, we experienced A Literary Moment. It was back in 1968, and The Gang had gathered at Tess and Ray's place, Sky House, at Port Angeles, Washington, ostensibly for a fishing trip, but really to renew old friendships and to compare notes on how everything was going on the personal and literary scene. One was an editor for a prestigious publishing house, Alfred A. Knopf; the others were writers--three of the best fiction writers of their generation. They knew it, recognized each other as peers and as their main competition. Yet they sparked each other, and make one another better than he might have been. Raymond Carver, Robert Stone, Tobias Wolff, and Richard Ford. Add to this group Toby's brother, Geoffrey and Editor Gary Fisketjon, to whom, nearly two decades later, and Carver long dead, Ford acknowledged in an afterward to his fine short story collection, A Multitude of Sins: "I wish to express, for the thousandth time, my gratitude to Gary L. Fisketjon, Bill Buford" an editor at the New Yorker ". . . and L. Rust Hills," the fiction editor at Esquire. It is seldom that a finished writer pays such tribute to his editor, but Ford did, and does. Such help and encouragement is important to a writer and helps sustain him through hard times. Below are some of Gary Fisketjon's protégés, and lists of their work. They comprise some of the best writers of the past half-century:
Richard Ford Women With Men Ford is one of the finest writers we have, and acknowledges Raymond Carter as not only his "pal" but an indirect influence, making certain it is not thought that this group of men writes out of its collective experience, or even personal experience, but carefully crafts its fiction artistically, no matter how much it may seem to some readers and critics that their stories are drawn nearly directly from life. Ford says this is a destructive assumption. Tobias Wolff
The Night in Question Tobias dedicated his memoir of the war in Viet Nam (In Pharaoh's Army) to his brother, Geoffrey, who "gave him books." Both are skilled writers and, along with Ford, sometimes seem to resemble each other in their world view and personal lives. Sometimes it seems as if they could have written each other's stories. That is, they sound much alike. This would be a detriment, except for the fact that the stories are so good. The Gang (they never called themselves this, and would probably resent it, but they got together whenever they could and kept in frequent communication. Often they planned watery get-togethers. When they were on the East Coast, say, at Cornell, where several of them taught, they went sailing on Toby's boat. They liked to fish. It was a time for fun and relaxation. It was also a chance to recharge their batteries before the next literary effort. Toby has published less than I had thought. The Barrack's Thief collection reprints all the stories from In The Garden of the North American Martyrs, and adds one, the title story. This is a dirty trick and an unconscionable one to play on one's dedicated readers. Maybe he should write more and publish less. Yet his recent work is fresh and strong. Too bad I bit and wasted some money on a mail-order reprint. I suspect other Toby buffs did, too.
Geoffery Wolff The Duke of Deception:
Memoirs of My Father Older brother of Tobias and a fine writer in his own right. A bit more scholarly and biographical in his interests. (See above.) Both sons have written telling accounts of their charming, scoundrel father, who walked out on his family, then entered back into the boys' lives at various points, before he died early. Raymond Carver Cathedral and his collected poems, Known primarily as a writer of short stories, when he was dying of lung cancer and the companion, then husband, of poet Tess Gallagher, Carver wrote a lot of substantial poetry. Yet it is his fiction that made him famous in literary circles and to his peers. His titles were particularly arresting, and his best books took on the catching title of a good short story and gained from it. "Cathedral" is one, "Where I'm Calling Form," another. "What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" is noteworthy enough a title to make him memorable without having read him. He was called "The American Chekhov," but the name was later aptly applied to his friends, The Gang (as only I have called them). They wrote remarkably taut short stories that owed a lot, probably, to Hemingway as well. Themes of isolation, alienation, loneliness, and frustration abound among these writers. This is expressive of the human condition, not just the American experience. Carver says it about as well as anybody has. Robert Stone
Damascus Gate The war in Viet Nam was central to the experience of young writers coming into maturity in the Sixties and Seventies. Carver did not serve and was older, but the others did, and wrote about it. Stone's novel, Dog Soldiers, is considered a war novel, and draws on those years, but is really about the heroin traffic in Southern California. Veterans of the war, disillusioned as all veterans are constitutionally, live a nihilistic existence and live only to get high and to make money they don't know how to spend well. The book was made into a successful move, "Who Will Stop The Rain," which hints at this naturalistic determinism and tragedy. Yet it is all highly sophisticated and desirable. Stone's biography says that he was born to a schizophrenia mother, abandoned by his father, and attended Catholic School. He says he quit high school because he drank too much beer and was "militantly atheistic." In such a situation, a writer often enlists in the Navy, and Stone did. He returned after four years, attended NYU, read Kerouac and Ginsberg, got married, fathered a daughter, went West, palled around with Ken Kesey, and started writing seriously. About the time Carver was hitting his stride, Stone was, too. He won a Faulkner Foundation award for best first novel and got a Guggenheim. He joined the others of The Gang in being Writer in Residence at a number of welcoming universities, including Stanford.
And now we come to the club master, Gary Fisketjon, who knew and encouraged them all, this band of renegade writers who, one after another, found fellowships, publishers, and universities that welcomed them. I know little about him accept he chain-smokes unfiltered Camels and is a vital and welcoming editor to the talented. He is about fifty and has been described as a cross between Maxwell Perkins and Steve McQueen. (That would be an odd mating.) I had a pleasant encounter with him about ten years ago, and with Rust Hills of Esquire, ten years before that, and maybe someday in Kingfisher Journal I will write about them. Sooner rather than later. Robert Arnold, Editor/Publisher
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