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Education * Dialogue ♦ Independence
BOOK REVIEW
HOROSCOPE Author gives voice to an imagined, real world
BY SOUP
CAN SAM
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P S Y C H IC
BY JAY THIEMEYER
^ C O N T R IB U T IN G W R ITER
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Leo (July 24-Aug. 23) Sometimes
"psychic" translates to little more
then judgmental bitçh. Avoid
grinding my nerves this week.
You'll be glad you didn't.
Virgo (Aug. 24-Sept. 23) The shorts
are definitely getting shorter this
summer. Letting it all hang out is
newly defined.
Libra (Sept. 24-Oct. 23) Servicesucks
in this town. Sorry, but the truth
hurts. And no, of course I don't
mean everybody. Just you.
Scorpio (Oct. 24-Nov. 22) Get some
perspective. Even if you hate the
audience, you love those tips,
right?
Sagittarius (Nov. 23-Dec. 22) Less is
more is always the truth, except
for Virgo with the short shorts.
Resist the urge to show off today,
we'll all appreciate it.
bikes have a time and a place; the
Circus, not narrow-ass Belmont'
during rush hour. Save your freak
for the appropriate time and
place.
Aquarius (Jan. 20-Feb. 19) For most,
the ability to be to reserved is
achieved through the wisdom o t
old age. Holding your groove is a
strong statement.
Pisces (Feb. 20-March 20) What do
you learn from what you do? You
can geek out for two hours on
something you already know, but
to take five minutes to learn
something new is a true
achievement.
Aries (March 21-April 19) Sobriety is a
motherfucker. Buck up, little
camper. We all have to face
ourselves sometimes.
Taurus (April 20-May 21) Jazz is jazz,
and you are you. Embrace the ,
here and now. Don't double
back. Being self-conscious is so
eighth grade.
Gemini (May 22-June 22) Every
month you ask the same question,
and every time you get the same
• answer, What are you really
asking?
Cancer (June 23-July 23) Musician or
no, here's a great piece of advice:
Anything you can do to get
yourself behind your instrument,-
do it. And keep your hose clean.
iding in nearly 100 degree heat past
Forest Park coming off the St Johns
Bridge, I am struck by the smell of
the forest It is a different world, so
accessible with its trails, so foreign to the
city.
To my right in the forest’s elevation, as I
drive into town, is the general location
where Frank and Rachel, the father and -
daughter living invisible in the wild, were
discovered several years ago. Their home
was a carefully concealed underground
shelter, what I imagine the old
homesteaders’ sod houses looked like. On
the interstate passing through the Badlands,
of South Dakota there is at least one of the
sods retained for travelers’ view.
Dislocated, would be the appropriate
word for what happened to Frank and
Rachel. They were doing society no harm,
certainly far less harm than that long
distance runner who passed a girl perched
in a tree and gave information of his sighting
to the Portland police. One of the squad who
responded offered Frank and his daughter a
place to work on his farm, “in the real
world.” Frank didn’t have to live the way he
did, he was assured by his discoverers.
A short time later, as recorded in the
daily paper, Frank and Rachel disappeared.
What happened to them afterward is
unknown. This unknown postscript is what
Peter Rock attempts to create in “My
Abandonment/
Peter Rock in this, his sixth work of
mostly fiction, takes what we know about
this rare occasion and adds his fictional
interpretation Of what happened after these
"My Abandonment"
by Peter. Rock,
Houghton Mifflin
Harcourt Publishing,
2009,220 p-„ $22
Harris.
Peter Rock, who teaches writing atReed
College, provides something new in the
genre of discovered wild children; He
im agine s a voice for the child herself. We
see the world as she quite plausibly sees it.
And whose better voice to use than the
childishly confrontal, candid voice of
Raymond Carver? Very appropriate.
Otherwise we would have something closely
reiterating the ground covered by Roger
Shattuck, the Proust scholar, in his boolT,
“The Forbidden Experiment,” about the wild
boy of Aveyron. The subject of his book was
discovered in southern France b ackatthe
dawn of the 19 century. The subject of
movies and literature for instance,
Truffaut’s 1970 film, “The Wild Child” - this
wild embodiment of our discontent with our
modern situation has on-going appeal. But
no one has succeeded in getting inside the
mind of the child and attempting to see this
Peter Rock, who teaches writing at Reed
College, provides something new in the genre
of discovered wild children. He imagines a
voice for the child herself. We see the world
as she quite plausibly sees it. And whose
better voice to use than the childishly
confrontal, candid voice of Raymond Carver?
new world through his or her eyes. Peter
Rock does a thoroughly convincing job. The
re su lt is sim ply a w onderful, believable story.
- especially on a day w hen th e h e a t is over - ~
100 degrees, especially for freq u e n te rs of
'
whom he gives the name Caroline, to
narrate. Her voice is as .terse and cogent as
Raymond Carver’s; Rock’s writing as even
and subtly involving, “deceptively simple,” as
well. It is wonderful to follow this completely
credible life portrayed for us by a 13-year-old
child, wise beyond, her years, largely
unsullied by urban America, who is candid
and informed and bright — feral like a bird, |
and aware. It is an imagined world but
thoroughly convincing. As fiction the book
holds its own; the plot holds the readerdue
to it plausibility, even likelihood. Here is
Caroline narrating their departure from the
forest:
“Will someone bring my
encyclopedias?” I say.
“Not today.”
1 put the branch across the door to our
house when I have everything I can take.
“Don’t worry about that now,” Mr '
Harris says With his hand on my
shoulder.
“People will take our pots,” I say,’’and
plates and our stove and our bed even.”
“Don’t worry about any of that,” he
, says. “Really. Wouldn’t you like io wear
shoes?”
Her language is innocent sounding, free of
the rubbishy adornment which served to
substitute for substance in the life her father
kept her from. Life in the real world of Mr.
CAM PING, from page 1
our own Forest Park here in Portland. What
was imposed on this father and daughter has
to be seen in the context of two people
devoted to each other. They were a
phenomenon, and their whole message to us
seems largely to have been lost, except for
this book and those enjoying its pages.
The title derives from the following bit
taken from the father’s journal, according to
Peter Rock:
“If one advances confidently in the
direction of his dreams, he will meet with
success unexpected in common hours. He
will pass anzinvisible boundary. Don’t forget
this. Don’t forget that thinking can get in the |
way. Forget the forgetting. We seek fo forget
oursdlves, to be surprised andto do
something without knowing hoW of why.
The way of life is wonderful. It is by
abandonment.”
, “My Abandonment” can be read as an
affecting story about a father and his
daughter together. Or iUcan be read in the
context of Thoreauyian anti-urban, anti-
artifice literature. It can be placed on the
same shelf as Edward Abbey and Rousseau’s v
“Emile,” or on the shelf of “deceptively
simple” story-tellers like Raymond Carver. .
With what would-be lovers talk about when
,
they talk about love or a child talks about
when forgetting her forgetting.
homeless in Portland, according to the court
document. Anderson now lives in his van
of Housing and Urban Development, Oregon and the others sleep outdoors.. In their suit,
now leads the nation in the number of
the four cite multiple incidences of police ;
homeless people per capita. Oregon’s
routing them from their camps or even from
homeless rate is 0.54 percent, according to *
sitting. In 2007, Anderson was sleeping on
HUD.
top of his sleeping bag in Delta Park in.
According to Goracke, this lawsuit is the
first of its kind against the city’s no camping North Portland when he was cited for
Unlawful camping. He pled not guilty and
ordinance. Other defense cases have been
was scheduled.for trial, but the district
brought forward but this is the first
attorney dismissed the citation after
affirmative suit claiming the ordinance is ’
Anderson informed the D.A. that he would
unconstitutional, according to Goracke.
have legal representation.
The named plaintiffs are Marlin
Anderson, Mary Bailey, Matthew Chase and
Bailey and Chase claim they had.
Jack Golden, all of whom are “involuntarily”
permission from the owner of a private
~
.
parking lot to camp there. They allege that
the manager told them police threatened to
shut down” the building if Bailey and Chase
did not move their belongings. They moved
their personal property to the street, only to
find most of it missing the next day, with a ?
“notice of illegal camping” sign posted with
no date or time given forthe clean up or
property seizure, according to their lawsuit.
The, city moved to dismiss the case on
the gounds that the violations are not a
crime, that they criminalize conduct rather
than status, and therefore the Eighth
Amendment did not apply.