The health of
literature in any country
depends on a renewed
contact with the earth.9
Barry Lopez
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A
i American literature is regaining its health.
Finn Rock author Barry Lopez credits Western
writers who are dealing with "the interface between
humans and the land" in fiction, short stories and
poetry with the miracle
"The health of literature in any country
depends on a renewed contact with the earth," he
says.
"There is a powerful thing going on between
America and the land," Lopez says, pulling books
from his pack and the shelves of the Book and Tea
shop as he refers to works by Western authors such
as Richard Hugo, a poet and teacher of creative
writing at the University of Montana.
But Lopez may be his own best example. On a
shelf near his chair and wood stove is his newest
book, Of Wolves and Men.
As well as studying wolves in Alaska for Wolves.
he has wrangled horses in Montana, spent con
siderable time with Native Americans to write Giving
Birth to Thunder, Sleeping With His Daughter:
Coyote Builds North America and traveled in the
American desert to write Desert Notes: Reflections
in the Eye of a Raven •
"There are several reasons to pay attention to
what Western writers are doing," Lopez says.
A. he reasons originate in the land.
"Allusion to natural elements makes for a sense
of integration and comfort.
"If you cut yourself off. I think you become es
tranged and the estrangement makes you mean
minded," he says, alternately brushing back his hair
and the black beard and mustache below his small,
dark eyes.
Lopez speaks quietly, with the intensity of one
who has listened and watched carefully during the
time he has spent in America’s Western landscapes.
"I think the West has always felt misunderstood
because writers in the West have set so much of
their work in the land," he says
The novels of A B Guthrie have been largely
overlooked, but they are critical in reaching an un
derstanding of how Western man deals with space.
Lopez says. Guthrie has written The Way West and
The Big Sky, among others
This space has great importance for Lopez,
who says he believes the land heals and is of utmost
importance to mental health
The healing qualities of the land should be a
viable argument in a court of law, Lopez says, ad
ding that he and poet Gary Snyder have discussed
how to testify to what they call the very real con
nection between landscape and mental health
"You should be able to fight for wilderness on
medical grounds,*' Lopez says
The way to do this, says Lopez, is through
literature — "with a continued emphasis on lan
guage and landscape”
T
1 hi
his emphasis means breaking down
many of the artificial dichotomies Lopez says we
have created Lopez says that the mind and body
aren't really separate and that the humanities and
the sciences aren't all that different from one
another
"But what about grizzly bear and garter snake?
What about the wind?** he asks "The philosophy of
science recognizes that scientific principles are
born of a recognition of how the world is pieced
together.”
Lopez says people concerned with the arts and
literature should not be upset with the "facts and
figures syndrome" of science "That's its me
taphor."
He says even scientific principles apply to how
we criticize literature if "you pull back far enough.
"Both science and literature are right in terms
of culture. Eskimos’ views of the wolf differ from
those of scientists, but neither is really wrong.”
Literature’s ability to be right means a great
responsibility for writers. "What the writer really
does is translate," he says
"The skills are what is really important —
providing a structure, through reading. Telling a
good story is most important.”
Entertainment was the context by which es
sential information was transmitted, historically."
Although Lopez says any writing should tell a
good story, there is something much deeper.
"I’ve thought of books as medicine bundles for
a long time," he says, defining medicine bundles as
"a set of components from the natural world all tied
to a dream — the guiding vision of your life ”
Through books you can bring yourself back to a
state of health Lopez says, and this means a writer
must take great care
It is an obligation. One must "get past the
business of costumes," Lopez says. "Shallow writ
ing is almost always fascinated with surface
things.”
T
M. he renewed health Lopez sees in
American literature may even reach to established
literary circles such as the National Book Awards,
he says.
Lopez says in the past those awards have
focused on New York writers, but in the future they
may be based on regional writers.
He also hopes for a split between fiction and
the short story in the awards and says he has seen
a resurgence of interest in the short story as a
genre, with writers such as John Sayles coming out
with collections recently.
Lopez says the awards should serve the func
tion of making people aware that there is a vigorous
community of writers in this country, a community,
at least in the West, that is concerned with the land
and the writer s relationship to it.
Story by Glenn Boettcher
Graphic by Tom Ettel
Cover and interview photos by Jim ml Harris
1
A sampler of literary tastes
The people our candid observers searched for were not hard to find.
Anyone wth a book would pass. "What kinds of books do you like to read?" was
our gambit. The answers that followed were as different as a novel by Mickey
Spillane and a handbook of international politics.
"I read politically oriented books,” says Nigel
Griffith from Guyana, an International Studies major
at the University “In a country like Guyana, faced
with overwhelming social problems, fiction is a
luxury There's a lot of problems in this world that
you have to know something about before knowing
what to think about them. I used to read fiction,
mostly science fiction and fantasy, but I just don't
have time for it anymore ”
“I really don't read very much recent fiction. I
read books like Vanity Fair, Wuthering Heights and
Jane Eyre, but still I’d have to say I would rather read
recent fiction.”
Near the law school, we noticed a woman
reading the translator’s introduction to The
Brother's Karamazov. Undaunted by the immensity
of such a proposition, Sona Joiner, a graduate
student, was looking for a new author in whose work
to immerse herself.
"I find one writer and then read everything he
has written to learn all about his life and mind.
Usually, I try to find a Russian author,” says Joiner.
“I like historical novels. I liked Hunter Thomp
son's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas but to tell you
the truth I’ll read anything. I’m not discriminatory.
Other books I’ve read are a collection of short
stories by Sinclair Lewis and the Autobiography of
Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein.”
Page 4 Section B
"Catch me, kill me." we thought we heard
someone scream Alas, it was merely a book s title
“This book is part of my vacation reading list," said
Jenny Johnstone, in Eugene from Washington. D.C.,
where she works as an urban planner. "I like fiction
because I get enough non-fiction at work I usually
read much deeper and thoughtful books than this
Some books I've really liked are I Hear That
Lonesome Whistle Blow by Dee Brown (who also
wrote Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee) and Fear
and Loathing in Las Vegas. Usually I check books
out from the library but if I really like a book I'll buy it
so I can read it again and again. That's what I did
with Hunter Thompson s book.
"But just the same," confesses Johnstone.
"Deep in my heart. I’m still a mystery freak."
Venturing farther from our campus confines, we
made it to the second floor of the University Book
store where Tetsuo Horiuchi, a recent emigrant from
Japan, was perusing More Joy: A Lovemaking
Companion to The Joy of Sex.
"I read detective stories," said Horiuchi with
conviction. "But I must tell you I still read books
written in Japanese. Sometimes I read an English
version of Mickey Spillane In Japan there are many
American authors we like. Richard Brautigan, J D
Salinger, John Steinbeck and Ernest Hemingway
are ail popular."
And we left our last mental traveler for the day to enjoy that other world
called the book, a world sometimes more fantastic and violent than the real one
but nonetheless a much more serene place to be. By Dave Stelnman
Thursday, May 31, 1979
Books
The World According to Qarp
By JmWI Irving
•1976 Pocketbooks
$2.75, paperback
For John Irving's fictional
hero, T.S. Garp, life is anything
but a bowl of cherries. At a very
young age. one of his ears is
bitten off by a dog This scene,
perversely amusing for the
reader but painful for little Garp,
sets the tone of a macabre but
funny tale.
Perhaps the most important
lesson of The World According
to Garp — if there is anything at
all to be learned — is that it is far
more pleasant to imagine than
to remember
Practically everyone in the
novel is the victim of homicide
Oregon Dally Emerald
or suffers an ignominious na
tural death.
Before Garp is assassinated,
he becomes responsible for the
death of one of his children and
for another child losing half his
sight
Garp's mother, a famous
feminist author, is also assas
sinated, Her friends include the
members of an all-woman pro
test group known as the Ellen
Jamesians They have cut out
their tongues to protest the rape
of an 11-year-old girl.
Then there is Garp's best
friend (after his wife). Roberta
Muldoon, a transsexual and ex
tight end for a professional
football team
If this freakishness seems too
much, I won’t mention that
Garp's mother is killed by an
out-of-season deer hunter at a
New Hampshire political rally or
that Garp, dressed in drag, is
beaten by feminists at his
mother’s funeral.
Actually, between all the bad
breaks that come Garp’s way,
there is a great deal of laughter
and, unless one wants to be
weighed down by all the realis
tic tragedies befalling Garp and
his family, it would be best to
take this novel as a satire.
Fortunately, when Garp
enters middle age and the
book's humor is supplanted by
the mockery of growing old. the
story is brought to a swift end
ing
So. indeed, let’s laugh. In The
World According to Garp, it is
wise to fantasize and laugh at
all of life’s indecencies
Because the book is already
in paperback it's worth buying.
If it was still hardback, I would
advise waiting until the library
got its copies
It shouldn't take more than
four nights of intense reading to
devour the novel, a masterful
story in the tradition of English
satirist Henry Fielding. Fielding,
of course, managed to infuse
his heroes with a manly, almost
stoical, laughter and calmness
to get them through the bad
times But for the overly sincere
and sensitive Garp, his own
death is almost a blessing
Perhaps this is demonstrative of
the one philosophical qualm I
have with The World According
to Garp. For all the humor Irving
tries to put in his work, there still
isn’t enough for Garp to over
come life's tragedies with
anything more than a grim en
durance By Daw Steinman
Good at Gold
By Joseph Heller
' 1979 Simon and Schuster
$12.95, hardcover
Good as Gold, Joseph
Heller s latest novel, lives up to
standards set by Catch 22.
Though Good as Gold lacks the
quotability of his earlier book,
Heller deserves credit for this
critique of American lifestyle,
education, government and
other hypocrisies.
The book follows the me
teoric rise of Dr. Bruce Gold to
medium importance. This hack
author achieves fame by giving
the President s book My First
Year in Office a favorable
review The President spent his
first year in office writing My
First Year in Office and the book
lacked substance. But this
doesn't bother Gold. The review
gets him a shot at every position
in Washington, from Secretary
of State to the top — unnamed
source
Before he gets the job he
must trade in his dumpy Jewish
wife for something tall and
blonde and gain the approval of
a President who spends his time
asleep.
Gold becomes a part of
Washington life — a world of
spies, politics and girls named
"Sweets ’’ He makes a name for
himself by originating the
phrases “I don't know” and
"That's mind boggling." Of
ficially, though, he has no posi
tion. "I can just about guaran
tee you'll get an appointment,”
says a presidential adviser,
‘though I can’t promise
anything.”
In the meantime Gold tries to
write a book on the Jewish
experience. Good as Gold, it
turns out, is that book. P first
Gold believes he has never had
a Jewish experience. He has
never met an anti-Semite, and
has spent most of his time
around colleges. By the middle
of the book his political career
rests in the hands of a man who
called him a “Kike filly fucker.”
Gold has escaped his wife,
renounced his daughter, is try
ing to ship his Jewish father off
to Florida and is courting a
young blonde.
The message, it seems, is that
the Jewish experience is a
prolonged attempt to look
Protestant.
Gold, in the end, gives up his
struggle for fame and returns to
an honest life and his dumpy
Jewish wife Probably Heller
has seen an analyst since his
heavy and laboring book.
Something Happened, and is
working on his attitude. Even
so, Heller should be able to
work around happy endings.
Elsewhere, Heller’s cheerful
ness does not get in the salad.
The novel takes place in short
comic bursts; each chapter
stands apart from the rest and
can be read separately or
together, like an American
Heritage Great Chiefs collec
tion. All are more enjoyable and
perceptive than any Art Buch
wald column By Joc& Hatfield
Page 5 Section B