Tom McGuane Traverses Family Fault Line is Crow Fair

At the conclusion of his title story “Crow Fair,” Tom McGuane’s narrator understands he’s “getting to be…an old timer.” McGuane, Michigan born and raised, is himself an old timer, but his new collection of short stories illustrates he still commands the form. Like his running buddy Jim Harrison, McGuane now calls Montana home, so most of these stories are set in Big Sky Country, where his characters, old timers and some younger, lean into the troubles that accompany a range of ailments, real and imagined, but always family-themed. These stories hover over fault lines. In “Weight Watchers,” the narrator’s father moves in because, “My mother had thrown him out again, this time for his weight.” His father, it seems, is “insufficiently committed to his weight-loss journey.” Over the next week, the two men, father—at more than 250 pounds, and son--a small town contractor who lives alone--shadow box through memories of earlier times. “My father believed that anything done for pleasure was escapism,” our narrator explains, illustrating the old man’s attitudes. In a few short pages melancholy memories of how the narrator, who cannot “imagine letting anyone new stay in (his) house for more than a night,” navigates his largely unremarkable Midwestern upbringing. In “Hubcaps,” McGuane heads back to Michigan to find Owen, whose parents, by midafternoon, “were usually having their first cocktails.” The boy escapes to the neighbors and the “baseball diamond that the three Kershaw boys and their father had built in the pasture across from their house.” “Happy with his George Kell spot at third base,” Owen tries to avoid the unraveling of his parents’ marriage by accompanying Mr. Kershaw on arrowhead scavenging treks. When more and more of his life delaminates, however, Owen tries to patch it together by adding to his hubcap collection, even wandering “the darkened parking lot” to do so, replacing the cohesion of a predictable family structure with the lonely pursuit of simple law breaking. In the title story, Earl, a loan officer, and his brother Kurt, an orthodontist, move their mother to a rest home. Though their father “was a mouse” who “looked like a corkscrew” the last few years of his life, their mother “was a queen.” Now in the throes of dementia, however, she recollects her old lover “Wowser,”as the middle-aged brothers try to reconstruct their youth to find some sense in her senseless ranting. Ultimately, Earl invents “a gentler interpretation of (their) mother and the choices she made.” In “Crow Fair,” McGuane, author of more than a dozen other books, returns to familiar ground, whether the Midwest or the Big Sky, to examine the fault lines, real or imagined, of family.

Paddle At Your Own Risk

In a recent “New Yorker” analysis critic Peter Segal concludes, “The crime tale has become to Scandinavia what the sonnet was to Elizabethan England: its trademark form.” I’m not sure I’m ready to dub Vidar Sundstol William Shakespeare’s heir, but in “The Land of Dreams”, he serves up a thoughtful thriller. Winner of the Riverton Prize for best Norwegian crime novel of 2008, “Dreams” is now in English, published by University of Minnesota Press. As the story opens, local conservation officer Lance Hansen angles his state issue pick-up truck into what he expects to be another uneventful day along the shores of Lake Superior on Minnesota’s northeast coast in Cook County. In fact, when he meets a new colleague, Hansen tells him he’s lately been all about the usual. “’Brawls and boozing at a couple campgrounds,’” is the best he can do, though he believes “his job was far more preferable to walking a beat in some place like Duluth or Minneapolis.” But when an illegal tent pops up near the mouth of the Cross River, Lance investigates. Only five pages in, and the simple tent check reveals the brutal murder of a visiting Norwegian canoeist, upending the sleepy tourist community in the heat of the summer season. Because the murder took place on federal land, and the victim is Scandinavian, the FBI weighs in, inviting celebrated Norwegian homicide detective Eirik Nyland to assist. Nyland’s detached expertise serves a perceptible counterpoint to Lance’s local leeriness after his logger brother Andy pops up repeatedly in the investigation. “Until he turned thirty-seven, Lance Hansen was more interested in the past than the future,” we learn, as the story runs deeper than Lance, “’our local genealogist,’” when he chases not one mystery but two. Roots running generations deep anchor Hansen family lore to Thormond Olson. Emigrating from the old country at the end of the 19th century, Olson, Lance’s great, great grandfather, trudged many a snowy mile, surviving a shocking cold before washing up in Cook County. Thormond’s legend, however, veers uncomfortably close to the disappearance of Swamper Caribou, a local Ojibwe trapper swallowed by the vast wilderness. And though Lance cannot separate the two mysteries, current and former, he wants to run quickly from what might scar him and his. In his “New Yorker” piece, Segal also explains how in Scandinavia, “The crime novel (is) an effective vehicle for the expression of fears and resentment.” Sundstol goes further, using his novel to render social commentary, albeit made easier because he’s focusing on American culture here, not his own. Of the general disinterest surrounding Swamper Caribou’s disappearance, readers learn, “A missing Indian was simply not something that required attention…there was nothing to be done about it.” This is because, “Many white Americans respect the Indian cultures, but it’s a form of respect that involves no…risk.” Some of the writing here comes off as wooden, though largely in dialogue, underscoring the challenges of translating regional idioms. The supporting characters, however, including the doughy Sheriff Eggum and Lance’s peripatetic brother, ring believably enough. Vidar Sundstol might not be Shakespeare, but in “The Land of Dreams,” the first installment in his “Minnesota” trilogy, he demonstrates why Scandinavian storytellers continue to captivate readers.

Everest Story Reveals Calm Amidst Storm

In his new book “After the Wind,” Good Hart author Lou Kasischke says there was a moment when, “A veiled force overpowered me.” His heart pounding, his fingers frostbitten, he writes, “Everything else went quiet.” Kasischke was just a few hundred feet from the summit of Mount Everest. What happened next encouraged Kasischke to publish his first account of that notable climb. “What meant everything was what it would take to overcome a mountain of ambition and pressure to succeed, and to make a hard choice,” Kasischke said. Kasischke did not make the summit, but says instead he found direction in “the still, small voice” that he heard “after the wind.” The 1996 climb, the subject of other books before now, is notable because eight climbers died. Trouble came from many corners on that climb, when human error put climbers in dangerous weather well past an agreed upon turn-around time. Until this past April, this was the most deadly day ever on Everest. Kasischke, part of an experienced team climbing with veteran guide Rob Hall, believes some of the troubles came from the presence of journalist Jon Krakauer. Working for Outside Magazine, and later famous for “Into Thin Air,” an account of the 1996 climb, Krakauer put the other climbers on edge. His online updates of the expedition reported members’ climbing skills to the world in real time. Kasischke acknowledges that Krakauer did aide others in the aftermath, but when asked if Krakauer’s presence influenced the outcome, says, “You bet it did.” Hall summited Everest previously, as had his counterpart Scott Fisher, another prominent guide on the mountain that season. Hall and Fisher, friends but also competitors, each hoped to guide their clients to the top of the world, and Kasischke believes this competition, though amicable, also led to the tragedy. The two skilled guides unexpectedly decided to push for the summit on the same day: May 10. In his chapter on “The Hedge,” Kasischke explains, “Rob and Scott hedged the business and publicity competition by agreeing to go to the summit on the same day” deciding on “a shared outcome in which both expeditions would get to the top of the world or neither would.” He admits he was not privy to their discussion, but says, “There was no upside to going together.” He believes emphatically, “There would be no tragedy in 1996 but for going on the same day.” This is not simply a climbing story, however. “After The Wind” is also a love story. Kasischke wrote what he initially referred to as “the pages,” some 160,000 words, soon after his experience. He’s published only recently, though, because, “The reasons for writing were different than the reasons for publishing.” The strength to turn back when he didn’t want to came from Sandy, he says, his wife of nearly 47 years. “I just wanted people to know her part in the story. I wanted to honor her.” Sandy’s role in the events is traced early on to chapter two, “The Ritual.” Kasischke, who has climbed big mountains on all seven continents, explains the ritual of initiating a climb always involved Sandy. “We both knew if Sandy said no that was it.” In 1996, unlike ever before, she asked Lou to promise, succeed or not, he try Everest only once. “This was the first time I could remember Sandy asking for anything,” he writes. Kasischke agreed, because it “was a fair request.” Adventure story and love story, Kasischke writes that their story is even more about how we all confront our own daily dilemmas. “How do you prepare for the challenge within,” he wonders in the book. “What prepared me and influenced me to determine the outcome was this personal relationship; it was the love.” He says, “What made the difference between life and death resided in my heart.” With carefully rendered pencil drawings from Kasischke’s Good Hart neighbor, Jane Cardinal, “After The Wind” takes readers along on an adventure already known around the world. Until now, however, the story of how this Northern Michigan climber faced down his fears of failure and found the strength to make the right decision has been known to only a few. “After The Wind” is available at Between the Covers in Harbor Springs, as well as McLean & Eakin in Petoskey, or from Amazon.com. More information on the book is available at Kasischke’s website www.afterthewind.com

Lorrie Moore's Bark has subtle bite.

I wanted to ignore Lorrie Moore’s new collection of short stories. “Bark” is getting so much praise from so many corners; I wanted to find a flaw. I didn’t want to agree with others, but I confess, for the most part, I do. Regarded a master of the form, Moore nonetheless took a fifteen- year hiatus after her last collection “Birds of America.” She returns with eight tales of men and women in crisis and confusion, certain only of the missing safety net as they toe the high wire of love and loss. Her women are troubled, her men awash as much in determination as doubt. In “Debarking,” Ira, divorced six months, wobbles between his worry for his young daughter Bekka and his new, but awkward relationship with the pediatrician Zora. Bumping into these bookends, he is convinced he is “watching history from the dimmest of backwaters, a land of beer and golf.” Zora’s relationship with her sixteen-year old son Bruno, monosyllabic and doughy, vexes Ira. His Bekka welcomes a new cat, but can’t reconcile Ira’s pronouncement that, “’We cheat the power of time with our very brevity.’” Bruno, “broad –shouldered and thick limbed,” wedges between his mother and Ira. After a communal dinner, “Zora and Bruno, some distance behind him, began to jostle up against each other, ramming lightly into each other’s sides.” Their physical closeness, what Ira misses in his life, unsettles him, played out weirdly by mother and son. Moore certainly draws me in with her opening story, but she as quickly loses me with “The Juniper Tree.” Though there is subtle brilliance in the idea that the narrator and her middle aged friends recognize how, “In rejecting the lives of (their) mothers, (they) found themselves looking for stray volts of mother love in the very places they could never be found,” I can’t appreciate that the three friends are visiting the ghost of their recently dead friend. The introspection is clever, but the premise if too off-putting to work nearly as well as some other stories here. Another such workable story is “Paper Losses,” a glimpse into the failing marriage of Kit and Rafe. Kit realizes in time, “A woman had to choose her own particular unhappiness carefully. That was the only happiness in life.” With Kit, their three young children both a wonder and a distraction, she understands, “It was like being snowbound with someone’s demented uncle: Should marriage be like that,” she wonders. Of course, marriage should not be like that, but in Moore’s stories, most all relationships are, by turns banging dangerously against the rocks, then listing idly in still but deep waters. Her most solid effort is “Wings.” KC and Dench wash up on the edge of poverty, marooned by a gentrified disinterest. KC, a failed musician, recognizes how, ““The gardenia in (her) throat, the flower that was her singing voice…had already begun its rapid degeneration into simple crocus, then scraggly weed.” KC cultivates instead a symbiotic relationship with her widower neighbor Milt, who exclaims, “It’s lonely in this neck of the woods,” amplifying the heart of Moore’s most consistent theme. I resisted “Bark” as long as possible. But Lorrie Moore’s command of short story makes these new selections impossible to ignore. Good Reading.

Pick a column, any column

Choose any Nick Kristof column dealing with the humanitarian crises in Africa, and comment here. Mention the specific column and cite at least two of Kristof's phrases or sentences in your response.
Any questions? Just ask.

http://topics.nytimes.com/top/opinion/editorialsandoped/oped/columnists/nicholasdkristof/index.html?match=any&query=Africa

Summer Reading

The other night at dinner my wife wondered aloud why anyone, myself included, would assign summer reading? I didn't have a prepared answer, except to say I thought some of the discussions that came out of this year's assignment had been productive. I also thought the two books worked well together, and there is always the fact that likely few if any students would have read either of these books had I not assigned them.
So now I want to hear from those who were required to read them. Tell me what you think about the idea of a summer assignment, and what you thought in particular about the two books in question.

How can readers have such diverse reactions to the same book? Is this a comment about the books or about the readers, and if it is about the readers what does this say about what we as readers bring to the process?

Once Upon A (Michigan) River

Margo Crane first enchanted readers in Bonnie Jo Campbell’s 2009 short story “Family Reunion.”
Meeting her again in Campbell’s novel “Once Upon A River” is an even larger treat. Margo, the Annie Oakley-wannabe heroine of this latest novel, has been compared to Huck Finn and Odysseus.
These comparisons, though, minimize the decency of the teenage Margo, who is not so much larger than life but rather as unadorned as life. A sharp shooting interloper and outsider in the clannish Murray family of Campbell’s fictional southern Michigan burg “Murrayville,” Margo’s yearnings for family and purpose personify the same fundamental longings recognized by everyone who has experienced family turmoil.
Cast adrift when her mother abandons her and by her father’s inability to understand her untamed impulses, Margo early on learns to fend for herself around the riverside home she shares with her father, just across the water from the Murrays. In part, Margo’s outsider status is sealed long before she is born, as her father, Bernard Crane, is “born the bastard son of Dorothy Crane and Old Man Murray during his bout of infidelity.”
When calamity soon visits, Margo discovers, “For the first time in a year, she was, horribly, part of the family.” The Murrays are expected to rally around the teen at this crucial moment, but she instead lights out along the Stark River in her teak rowboat “The River Rose,” given to her by her grandfather, Old Man Murray.
Campbell’s evocation of the elemental pull of the river on Margo’s burgeoning awareness is consistent as well as convincing. On the first night she spends at home without her father, “She smelled the river in every corner of the house, in every molecule of the air, in every pore of her own body.”
Margo next embarks on a series of sometimes heartbreaking but always heart-rending adventures, involving a cast of low brow characters like Brian and Paul, meth-making brothers who prowl the river for treasure, real or imagined, and Michael, whose river dog Cleo Margo renames “King,” because though a female, she stalks the river like a kingfisher.
Her journey’s purpose, ulimately, is to find her mother Luanne, whom Margo remembers as cocoa butter and white wine. Luanne left her husband and daughter, unable to cope with the closed nature of Murrayville. Rumored to be upstream, in Heart of Pines, Luanne becomes Margo’s destination.
Upstream or down, Margo pilots the banks of the Stark River as she navigates the edges of society. Unwilling to return to the stifling expectations of Murrayville, she instead journeys in and out of trouble, accompanied always by the .22 caliber Marlin rifle she appropriates from uncle Cal before leaving the family decay.
Eventually, in the emphysema-riddled Smoke, his dog Midnight, and his friend Fishbone, Margo finds both purpose and place, though she is no more settled than before, as Luanne remains in still uncharted waters.
“Once Upon A River” captivates as it startles, because Margo Cranes leaves in her wake a tale illustrating the confluence of calamity and connection.
Good Reading.