8 // COASTWEEKEND.COM
An undiscovered talent
Two novels by local teacher and writer Neil Hummasti published years after his death
By ERICK BENGEL
COAST WEEKEND
eil Hummasti, a popular lan-
guage arts teacher in North
Coast schools, died of pancreatic
cancer in 2011. He taught in the War-
renton and Jewell School districts, and
substituted in Astoria and throughout
Clatsop County. For years, he coached
boy’s baseball.
He was also a prolific Northwest
writer who left behind three unpub-
lished novels and two full-length non-
fiction books — a trove that fell into the
hands of his last living sibling, Arnie
Hummasti. (Their older brother, George
Hummasti, also died of pancreatic can-
cer a year before Neil’s passing.)
Neil never let his friends and family
know what he wanted to happen with
his writings after his death.
“I sat on the thought of what to
do with them for a number of years,”
Arnie said. Aware it would be daunt-
ing to break into the publishing field, he
decided to publish his brother’s works
himself.
Last year, Arnie, an Astoria resi-
dent now living in Neil’s old house,
formed Svensen Pioneer Press to print
two of Neil’s novels — a comedy com-
pleted in the early 1990s, and a serious,
semi-autobiographical story written in
the 2000s.
The first novel, “I See London, I See
France…” is about a boy genius whose
family gets embroiled in a smuggling
caper while hopping around Europe.
That book, Arnie said, nearly got the
green light, but a would-be publisher
apparently discovered that a rival com-
pany was releasing a similar book and
decided to pull out.
The second novel, “Forty Ways to
Square a Circle,” is the tale of a lan-
guage arts teacher looking after an aunt
in the throes of dementia. Meanwhile,
the protagonist reckons with the coming
of computers and internet technology to
a school system that is simultaneously
undercutting the humanities. It is set in
Arnie Hummasti
A young Neil Hummasti
plays the guitar, much
like the protagonist of
his novel ‘Forty Ways to
Square a Circle.’
N
Arnie Hummasti
Svensen Pioneer Press
The cover of ‘I See London, I See France...,’
a comic novel by Neil Hummasti.
The photo of Neil Hummasti, taken
in the 1970s, featured in the back
of his books.
Svensen Pioneer Press
The cover art of Neil Hummasti’s ‘Forty Ways
to Square a Circle,’ drawn by Dave McMacken.