essays
tsunami
books
R E A D I N G L I S T
k The Orchardist
By Amanda Coplin. Harper, $26.99.
(PROPRIETOR SCOTT LANDFIELD’S FAVORITE)
State of Wonder
By Ann Patchett. Harper, $15.99.
Me and Lee: How I Came to Know, Love
and Lose Lee Harvey Oswald
By Judyth Vary Baker. Trine Day, $21.95.
(PUBLISHED LOCALLY)
The Art of Fermentation: An In-Depth
Exploration of Essential Concepts and
Processes from Around the World
By Sandor Ellix Katz and Michael Pollan.
Chelsea Green, $39.95.
Auntie Yang’s Great Soybean Picnic
By Ginni and Beth Lo. Lee and Lo, $18.95.
Diary of a Wimpy Kid #7:
The Third Wheel
By Jeff Kinney. Harry N. Abrams, $13.95.
My Heart is an Idiot
By Davy Rothbart. Farrar, Strays and Giroux, $25. Amazon
Best Books of the Month, September 2012.
Indeed, Davy Rothbart’s
heart is an idiot. But so is
mine. This 16-essay book
opens with Rothbart’s re-
count of childhood trickeries
aimed at his deaf mother.
What had me shaking my
head halfway through had
me smiling by the end, ef-
fectively hooking me for the
rest of the book.
Rothbart is the founder
and publisher of Found
Magazine and author of
2005 anthology The Lone Surfer of Montana, Kansas. Like
many of us, Rothbart is constantly falling in love, always
with the wrong people, and occasionally before he’s even
out of love with another. Feeling heartsick yet hopeful is
the common thread weaving through each of the 16 essays.
Throughout each essay his sentimentalism strikes close
to home, funny and melodramatic all at once. Each woman
he meets is beautiful in her own right; each experience he
has is fraught with meaning. He is always searching for
“the one,” no matter what else he is doing.
However, these small tales, these seemingly insignifi -
cant experiences Rothbart has, all seem to add up to some-
thing bigger with each page turned. Although he may seem
perpetually heartbroken, his words are sweet and meaning-
ful. Hope and humor never leave his heart.
Do you read way too much into small exchanges with
strangers? Do you often fi nd yourself imagining future
scenarios based on fragments of information? Do you
believe life is a series of beautiful, fl eeting interactions?
Your heart might also be an idiot. It feels good, doesn’t it?
— Jackie Varriano
The Tangled Bank:
Writings from Orion
By Robert Michael Pyle. Oregon State University Press,
$18.95.
Lepidopterist Robert Michael Pyle came to the Eugene
Natural History Society last May from his farm in
southwest Washington to give a talk on butterfl ies, a topic
for which he is well known. I missed the talk, but lucked
into eating dinner at a downtown restaurant with Pyle and
a fellow writer who is working on a book on road kill. I
forget where we ate or what we ate because all I remember
was the fascinating conversation.
Pyle can discourse on a variety of topics and make all
of it fascinating and somehow make you feel, as you chat
with him, that you just might be fascinating, too. Reading
Pyle’s collection of essays, The Tangled Bank, is a bit
like having dinner with him: The topics are diverse and
fascinating; Pyle manages to be both chatty and scientifi c
and in his efforts to show his reader how fascinating the
natural world is, he lets you know that you can see these
fascinating things as well. The essays are pulled from
Pyle’s Orion and Orion Afi eld column, also called “The
Raygun Dreams
2012’s sci-fi graphic novels
T
he past year produced some incredible graph-
ic novels, especially in the science fi ction
arena. One of 2012’s strongest premieres is
Saga, Vol. 1 (IMAGE COMICS, $9.99) . Against
a backdrop of interstellar war, creators Brian
K. Vaughan and Fiona Staples cast an intimate story of
one young family’s struggle to survive. Alana and Marko,
a pair of (quite literally) star-crossed lovers, take a break
from trying to kill one
another long enough to
go AWOL from their re-
spective extraterrestrial
armies, elope and pro-
duce a hybrid baby. Hi-
jinks ensue.
As always, Vaughan
propels his tale with req-
uisite heart and soul. The
organic rocket ships,
teenage ghosts and other
sci-fi trappings are sec-
ondary; it’s the family
dynamics and the honest
writing and art that pro-
pel this story.
At the other end of the spectrum is Prophet, Vol. 1:
Remission (IMAGE COMICS, $9.99) , an unrelated sci-fi proj-
ect from the same publisher that could not be more dif-
ferent in tone. Writer Simon Roy drops the reader into
the middle of the aftermath of an interstellar war as John
Prophet, the last known human, awakens from suspended
animation on a long-changed planet earth, compelled by
programming and patriotism to carry out a mission to re-
launch his nearly extinct species.
Where Vaughan’s Saga is primarily character-driven,
with a focus on romance and adventure, Prophet is a work
18
December 13, 2012 • eugeneweekly.com
driven by its apocalyptic setting, bursting at its spacesuit
seams with mind-blowing visuals and concepts.
Fans of ironic, message-driven ultraviolence (and hey,
who isn’t?) will enjoy k Nature of the Beast (SOFT
SKULL PRESS, $23.95) , co-written by Eugene author Douglas
McGowan and Adam Mansbach of Go the F**k to Sleep
fame. An alien race has targeted humanity for extinction,
and only one man can save us: Bruno Bolo, an alpha male
gator wrestler from Florida. To establish his dominance
as Earth’s champion, Bolo must compete in a bizarre TV
reality show, fi ghting his way to the death through a pha-
lanx of angry animals and hard-case humans, before he
can earn the right to represent his planet.
Illustrated by Owen Brozman in a clean, cartoony style
that belies its blood-spattered gonzo violence, Nature of
the Beast chronicles Bolo’s drug-fueled rise to ultimate
interplanetary fi ghter.
From a book no kid should read to a book every kid
should read, the season also sees the publication of a
graphic novel adaptation of A Wrinkle in Time (FARRAR
STRAUS GIROUX, $19.99) , Madeleine L’Engle’s perennial clas-
sic of kid lit — and unfortunately the only book on this list
appropriate for children.
Indie cartooning darling Hope Larson may seem an
odd choice to illustrate this quasi-religious, interplanetary
rescue mission to the planet Camazotz, but amidst all the
winged centaurs and friendly witches and extrasensory
perception, Wrinkle is, at its heart, the story of a girl’s fi rst
faltering steps on the road to adulthood — and no tesseract
is required for the journey. Meg Murry, the story’s young
protagonist, must fi nd the strength to not only stand up to
bullies from another planet, but the next homeroom. As in
Saga, the story walks between the poles of humanity and
fantasy, and in this regard Larson makes a perfect choice,
with a blue, black and white palette that will appeal to
children and adults alike.
Meg may know a thing or two about witches, but
Captain Twain of the steamboat Lorelei has the mermaid
market cornered. In Mark Siegel’s complex, black-and-
white masterpiece Sailor Twain, or: The Mermaid in
the Hudson (FIRST SECOND, $24.99) , the dutiful captain is
shocked one day to pull from the river a wounded mer-
maid. He hides her away in his cabin on the ship and nurs-
es her back to health.
Parents should banish from their minds all thoughts of
Disney’s Ariel — Siegel’s period piece rumination on riv-
er lore and American folk legend restores the mermaid’s
original association with sex and death. With the mer-
maid’s coming, those two elements descend in full force
on the steamship on its journey down the river, and Twain
must unravel a literary mystery while combating his own
growing obsession, in a situation that quickly grows myth-
ologically complicated. — Aaron Ragan-Fore