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THE ASTORIAN • SATuRdAy, MAy 15, 2021
Book highlights potholes of young adulthood
By DAVID JASPER
The Bulletin
The road from youth
to adulthood can be full
of potholes and blind
alleys, detours and obsta-
cles. Proceeding with cau-
tion is advisable. Ed Garri-
son, the protagonist of “The
Step Back,” a coming-of-
age novel written by for-
mer central Oregonian J.T.
Bushnell, must learn this
the hard way after he loses
the stability he’d known all
through his childhood and
his high school years. “The
Step Back” is the first book
by Bushnell, 40, who began
writing it a decade ago. It
was published this month by
Portland State University’s
Ooligan Press.
In the novel, as Ed cruises
into summer, everything is
going pretty swimmingly,
playing as a basketball
star with a full scholarship
to University of Califor-
nia, Berkeley. But when his
mother announces she’s gay
and leaving his father for a
woman across the country,
Ed’s world, and immediate
plans for the future, begin to
come apart.
“This produces in him a
kind of desperation, and in
his desperation, he makes
impulsive decisions, trying
to latch onto something that
will give him meaning and
comfort,” Bushnell said.
“When we finish high
school and depart for col-
lege, or whatever we depart
for after high school, it’s
like this big moment in our
identity and our percep-
tion of ourselves, I think,
because we’re moving away
from the old associations
that have sustained us, our
friends and our family,” he
said. “And we’re trying to
forge this new life and iden-
tity. That’s always been a
moment that’s really fasci-
nated me as far as creation
of identity to go along with
the creation of community
— whether that’s friends or
family or larger communi-
Jennifer James-Long
ABOVE: J.T. Bushnell’s debut novel, ‘The Step Back,’ was published this week. RIGHT: The cover
of Bushnell’s book, ‘The Step Back.’ He teaches writing and literature at Oregon State University.
ties, whatever.
“I think it’s a very dif-
ficult time that makes a lot
of people feel very lonely,
especially in our current cul-
ture. So my story is basically
a way to enhance and drama-
tize what I think a lot of peo-
ple feel, by basically exacer-
bating the isolation and the
break from previous iden-
tities and communities that
had sustained this character
Ed.”
Growing up in Sisters
with his three brothers — to
whom he dedicates the book
— Bushnell used to wait
tables at Tumalo Feed Co.,
a restaurant started by his
father.
His last two years of high
school, he began writing
sports recaps for The Sis-
ters Nugget, leading him to
major in journalism at Lin-
field College, albeit with
enough elective literature
‘THERE’S
SOMETHING
ABOuT HAVING
A BOOK THAT
CHANGES
yOuR STATuS
OR SELF-
PERCEPTION
AS A WRITER.’
J.T. Bushnell | author
and creative writing classes
to also minor in English.
“For me, that was the
fun stuff that I didn’t really
consider part of my formal
studies,” he said. “I always
loved that stuff even though
I didn’t major in it.”
The summer between his
junior and senior years, he
interned at the Medford Mail
Tribune, where he “basically
just worked as a general
assignment reporter for low
pay,” he said. “They gave me
these little throwaway sto-
ries that ended up running on
the front page because they
liked the way I handled them
so much.”
That led to a job await-
ing him upon graduation
from Linfield, but he decided
not to pursue journalism.
Instead, he waited tables for
a couple years for his father,
and then in Portland for a
couple of years.
“The purpose was to give
myself a break from aca-
demic rigors, just because I
was burnt out with that iden-
tity,” he said. But the work
left his days for woodshed-
ding as an aspiring fiction
writer.
“I would just write furi-
ously all day, short stories,
novels — garbage, but stuff
that I really enjoyed doing,”
he said, “just to kind of
explore how interested I was
and what I was capable of in
terms of pursuing that inter-
est. Would I get burned out
halfway through a novel, and
was it for me?”
About 20 short stories
and two unpublished novels
later, Bushnell decided the
answer was yes. He began
graduate work at University
of Idaho.
Bushnell said he still isn’t
sure why the school admitted
him, “but I was really serious
in my studies, and because I
hadn’t studied creative writ-
ing like a lot of these people,
I was interested in absorbing
all I could,” he said.
However, it was a
doomed relationship. Upon
being accepted at Idaho, he
inquired about a teaching fel-
lowship and learned that he
should have applied for one
back when he’d applied to
school. He moved to Idaho
anyway, but out-of-state tui-
tion and no teaching oppor-
tunity meant still having to
wait tables 35 hours a week
and work on his writing and
grad school on the side.
“It was an absolutely dif-
ficult time. I was constantly
fighting off drowning just
because of the workload,”
Bushnell said. He threatened
to apply to other schools if
he couldn’t get a teaching
fellowship. To give the threat
some teeth, he applied to
other schools, including Uni-
versity of Oregon, not neces-
sarily expecting to get in.
But University of Oregon
offered the young writer a
much better deal — full tui-
tion waiver, teaching oppor-
tunities, even health insur-
ance — only a couple of
hours from his hometown.
Today, Bushnell teaches
literature and writing courses
at Oregon State University.
He’s married and has two
young daughters ages 3 and
6 months. Though he’d pub-
lished many short stories in
journals over the years, to
now hold his debut, 10 years
in the making, is different.
“There’s something about
having a book that changes
your status or self-percep-
tion as a writer,” Bushnell
said. “Before this book was
accepted for publication, I
was always someone who’d
just labored endlessly over
my writing without that vali-
dation — not only for myself,
but also, I think of my daugh-
ters growing up and think-
ing of me as this writer who
just keeps working, work-
ing, working without suc-
cess, and my daughters being
able to grow up and hold my
book in their hands and read
it themselves.”
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