Tomorrow (May 19) come say hello to me from 1-3:00pm at the Barnes and Noble bookstore in the Miller Hill Mall in Duluth. I’ll have plenty of copies of my new mystery, Laman’s River to sell and sign. So dodge the rain drops and stop in to keep me company!
The on May 22, Tuesday, at 7:00pm, if you’re in the Twin Cities or near your computer, you can listen in as Ian Leask from KFAI’s program, Write On! Radio interviews me about the new book, my writing, and the crazy world of self-publishing. I’ll also read a bit from Laman’s River so you can hear the author in his own words and decide for yourself whether it’s a book you won’t be able to put down. You’ll find KFAI on the radio dial at 90.3 in Minneapolis and 106.7 in St. Paul. The station’s website is:
Log on and listen to the steaming audio in real time.
Finally, my interview with Heidi Holtan on KAXE’s RealGoodWords was recently picked up by KSRQ Radio in Thief River Falls so if you have friends in that area, let them know they can catch our discussion of Laman’s River in NW Minnesota. KSRQ can be found at 90.1 on the dial or at:
http://www.radionorthland.org/.
Peace.
Mark
2012 Fishing Opener Featuring Jack Munger
The title says it all. I’ve been coming to Bob and Pat Scott’s cabin on Whiteface Lake for the Minnesota Fishing Opener since I was 13 years old. It started when Bob invited six of the dads in his Denfeld High School supper club to come up to his place on Whiteface, a reservoir lake maintained by Minnesota Power. The gathering grew year after year as the oldest of the sons (no daughters have ever been allowed, though the dads all have plenty of those) got married and had kids, until, at one point, the six original dads were surrounded by nearly two dozen sons and grandsons. Amongst the six original fathers in the crew, the group included a cookie salesman, a lawyer, an electrician, a railroad switchman, a grain elevator operator, and a appliance store owner. A melding of mid-America, if you will.
This year, with Bob and four of the other dads having passed away, the numbers are sparse. Four-plus decades of the Opener have seen joy in the form of weddings, graduations, births of grandkids and great grandkids, new jobs, and the retirement of old men from their chosen occupations. The group has seen its share of tragedy as well: cancer, heart attacks, Parkinson’s, the death of a daughter in a car crash, the death of a wife in a car crash and the resulting family turmoil caused because one of the sons sued his own father for his mother’s death, divorces (both for the dads and their sons) and all the other curve balls that a long history of affiliation tends to bring to a group of friends. But my old man, a stouthearted old man of German and English ancestry, is still hanging in there. Oh, he’s had his own bouts with mortality. A heart attack. A couple of small strokes. Intestinal bleeding. A hip replacement. He’s been dinged, to be sure, by age. But he’s with us on the Whiteface, tossing minnows to scrawny walleyes and snaky northern pike, just like he did back in the 1960s. A bit slower, I’ll grant you, on both the cast and the retrieve. And he needs help threading the line through the eye of the hook and keeping his line free of snarls. That’s my third son Chris’ job over the weekend; a job he gladly accepts to ensure Grandpa Harry is with us, in the boat, chasing fish. We’re missing Dylan, my second son, who is out in Williston working the oil fields to make his fortune, and Matt, my oldest, who is at home minding his beautiful wife, Lisa, and their new son, my first grandson, Adrien James Munger. Next year, boys. Next year.
Grandpa Harry Fishing the Whiteface
Bob and Pat’s second son Tim is a busy boy this weekend. He has coordinated buying the food for ten guys, about a third of the group at its peak, and then, he’s off to the college graduation of his daughter, Abbie, and other family events. He manages to spend time with us during the mornings and evenings but he doesn’t get to wet a line.
Jack, my youngest son, at 14 years old, is the youngest of the group. My Dad, at 85, is the oldest by two and a half decades. My brother Dave and his son, Jonathan, couldn’t come this year. John Scott, now the patriarch of the Scott clan, is absent as well. The other families that were once part of this event: the Listons, the Lundeens, the Tessiers, the Nelsons, have all stopped attending; not in a catastrophic departure; but like the erosion of a sand bank along a river, over time, they have simply found other things to do during the Opener. Not the Mungers. We’re persistent people. As long as the Scotts invite us, we’ll show up.
Saturday Night Bonfire. Chris and Jack Munger and Tim Scott.
Saturday morning. We’re on the lake before seven thirty, a rarity in the years we’ve been at Whiteface. Usually the bullshit and the beer fly in equal measure on Friday night as the older guys (like me) catch up with each other. This celebration of friendship usually leads to very slow departures on Saturday morning. Not this year. We’re serious about fishing for the first time in years. And it pays off. Pat “Poncho” Scott, the youngest of Bob and Pat’s kids and the captain of Boat No. 1 (I am captaining Boat No. 2), brings his crew to a school of walleye and they net quite a few. I manage to steer Chris, Jack, my dad, and me into a honey hole where we catch walleye, perch, and northern pike. My dad wants some fish to fry so we keep eight or nine. After lunch at the Scott cabin and a nap (there’s always a nap waiting at Whiteface!), we head back out but catch only snaky northerns.
Steaks sizzle. Beer is tipped. Grandpa Harry fillets his fish. After the dishes are done, we forgo the traditional Smear game and spend time sitting on benches talking around a fire. The topic turns to legislative gridlock and the wisdom of using state money to build a football stadium. The arguments for and against are passionate and heated. Chris and I take the losing side, the side opposing the deal. Voices grow louder. More beer flows. Joe Scott, the oldest grandchild of Bob and Pat, argues both sides of the case. The next morning, we greet a sunny, wondrous Whiteface morning sky, fire up the outboards, and scour the lake in search of fish. We don’t catch much on Sunday, never have. But what does it matter?
Jack and Chris Munger. Chris is mending our landing net with garden netting. The fish are very big on Whiteface!
Peace.
Mark
The Marquee of the Zinema Last Night
Over seventy folks flowed into the Teatro Zuccone in downtown Duluth last night to launch my latest novel, Laman’s River. Those in attendance listened to stellar introductory musical performances by Minnesota’s homegrown musicians, Paul Imholte and John Ely. Then Heidi Holtan, program director and host of KAXE’s renowned author interview show, RealGoodWords took the stage with me for a half hour of lively literary banter and discussion. Paul and John wrapped up the night with a couple more tunes including a sultry pedal steel/guitar rendition of “Summertime” and yes indeed, the living was easy! A special thanks to Heidi for agreeing to test out this new launch format in return for dinner, a glass of wine, and a chance to share her insights into the book with the crowd. Thanks as well to Paul and John who put on one hell of a show for far less than union scale. Thanks to my wife Rene’ and my sons Chris and Jack for lending a hand when needed during the bustle of the event. But most of all, a hearty thanks to all of you who took a few moments out of your busy lives to come and promote the work of a semi-famous regional author. It’s not every day a guy gets to see his name up in lights!
Peace.
Mark
Another View of the Theater Marquee
CRP Booth @ 2012 Living Green Expo
Ah, the life of a semi-famous novelist from Duluth. It’s Friday afternoon. I’ve just concluded four days of presiding over a complex and hard fought civil trial in my courtroom. I loaded the new Pacifica (not to be confused with the old Pacifica which is now living a new life in Williston, ND) with boxes of books, a few supplies, and my wife’s glass mosaic art (concrete benches and wrought iron tables) Thursday night and drove the packed van to work so I could bug out as soon as the trial ended for the day. So here I am, putting on more miles, intent upon trying to catch the public’s eye (and reach their collective hearts) with my latest book, Laman’s River, by spending the weekend selling my words in a booth at the Living Green Expo on the State Fairgrounds in St. Paul. Tires hum. The sky grays but the rain holds off as I encounter a line of stalled vehicles just north of the I-694 split. I make an executive decision and take the nearest exit ramp, intent upon finding an alternative route to the fairgrounds. Of course, even though the new Pacifica is equipped with GPS, I manage to get lost. Not to worry. We men are always steady in our belief of our innate directional abilities. I’m no exception to this rule. I weave and wind the van through Rosedale, eventually pulling into the site of the event. I spend an hour and a half setting up my booth. As I finish, the sky cries. By the time the Pacifica is heading down the steep grade of Montreal Avenue, rain is coming down in sheets of cool silver. Cars and trucks actually pull over and stop due to the lack of visibility. Not the author guy. I keep my hands on the wheel and my eyes on the road as I push south towards the Schostags’ home in Lakeville.
Saturday morning. I had a fitful night of sleep (mostly because of the three beers I drank with my wife’s brother-in-law, Al Schostag). I am half-rested and bleary eyed. I tromp upstairs. I stand naked in the shower, feeling the water’s warmth ease kinks in my neck and back, wondering why I insist on doing this author thing at an age when I should be looking into condos in Taos. In the quiet of the steamy bathroom, I dress for the day. I’ve decided to go with the hat. My eldest son and his wife, Lisa, bought me a straw Panama to wear at bookselling events. I have never worn it. Today, I decide, I will.
CRP Booth @ the 2012 Living Green Expo
The Expo
Traffic is steady. By noon, I have sold enough books so that my native pessimism (a light touch of dread, if you will) is disarmed.
If this keeps up, it’ll be a hell of a weekend.
Of course, I got carried away. I’ve learned, over twelve years of playing the part of a regional fiction writer, that nothing comes easy. My work, while beloved by a small cadre of fans, has a heck of a time getting recognition from the press and critics when it’s not published by a big New York house and isn’t represented by an agent. Essentially, I live hand to mouth with each sale. That’s the deal I’ve made with the literary devil: I get to write what I want to write and put it out into the big wide world but there’s very little chance it will ever amount to much in the big stream of commerce that is America’s marketplace. I got excited when the first few books flew off the table. But it didn’t last. Though there are folks at the Expo, the rain is pouring down and few are buying. So I content myself with people watching and reading A Team of Rivals.
Another fitful night on the Schostags’ couch; this time, not caused by beer in the bladder but by horrific storms that pass over Lakeville after dark. Had it been high summer, with heat and humidity present, the winds that whipped through the Cities would likely have included a funnel cloud or two. But because it’s still spring, the storm simply pummels the house with rain. Wave after wave of rainwater pelts the sturdy house, beating a steady rhythm of storm throughout much of the night.
Sunday morning. Al makes a great breakfast, I say my goodbyes, and I’m off for a second day of selling. Again, patrons weave their way in and out of my booth but few copies of Mr. Environment get sold. Oh, I have plenty of talkers, environmental types who recognize my Uncle Willard’s face and name and want to applaud me for writing his life story. But few of them buy books. By the close of the show, my back sore from couch surfing and hauling my wife’s art, I’m happy to be back in the car, listening to American roots music on The Current, as I head north, towards home.
Peace.
Mark
Hells Angels directed by Howard Hughes (1930 and 1958. DVD Version from Universal)
If you’ve watched Leonardo Dicaprio’s depiction of billionaire Howard Hughes’ obsession to “get it right” regarding the British fighter pilots of the Great War, then you must watch this film. Why? Hells Angels is Hughes’ final product after $4 million dollars in production costs, years of filming, nearly 140 real WW I airplanes and a similar number of pilots, and the deaths of (reportedly) three stunt fliers who perished during the making of this fine film. Hughes himself was a pilot, a man of talent behind the stick of an airplane. He knew what he wanted when he leveraged his early fortune in the late 1920s to make this movie: He wanted real action, not models or spliced newsreel footage, to depict what it was like to fight dogfights in the Great War.
Mostly, the director succeeded. However, the best scenes aren’t those replicating plane on plane combat, but the exquisite details Hughes gave the rendering of a massive German Zeppelin during a night time bombing run on London. The models and mock-ups used in the Zeppelin sequence make the movie, in my humble view, far more so than the tepid acting that we are given by the film’s principle actors (with one notable exception).
The plot concerns two English brothers who go to war as pilots. The leads, played by Ben Lyon and James Hall, are adequate, not stellar. Hughes’ attempt to be ironic, to include a third wheel, if you will, into the brothers’ story, a German aristocrat-turned-officer, as a foil, fails. There is simply too much coincidence and not enough acting behind John Darrow’s portrayal of the German to make that character an interesting study.
But the saving grace of the picture in terms of acting, in my view, is the appearance of Jean Harlow in her first major film. She plays the vampy love interest to both brothers. Harlow’s portrayal of a seductress, seventy plus years after her death in 1937 due to kidney failure, still rings true. She plays to her attributes, both physical and intellectual, during this film in ways which made her portrayal believable and endearing despite her character’s lack of mainstream morality. One can only wonder what Harlow would have been like in middle and old age as an actress given the level of sophistication she brings to her role in this film.
In the end, the plot is a bit thin and forced, but there is enough action here, together with Harlow’s performance, to satisfy both the mind and the heart. A memorable film from a memorable man.
4 stars out of 5.
A long time ago, I was selling books at the Green Man Festival at Spirit Mountain. Things got boring so I left my little EZ-Up tent to check out the music. By chance, I stumbled into a group of young Duluth musicians who called themselves “Trampled by Turtles”. I’d never heard of the group until I found them on the Festival’s “second stage”. I sat in the wet grass and immediately became a fan for life. You should be too. Click on this link and be proud you’re from Duluth!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5kjqNTccuYI
It probably didn’t hurt to have Thunder Bay’s own Paul Shaffer as a cheerleader!
Peace.
Mark
(And of course, you should do the right thing and buy the album! Go here to do that: http://trampledbyturtles.com )
Northern Crayfish
I’ve been pretty busy at work. Some of you gleaned this from the fact my name’s been mentioned of late in the local newspaper. In my “real” job, the one that pays the bills, that happens sometimes: I get cases assigned to me that someone at the newspaper thinks are “newsworthy”. But as I move into my 14th year as a judge, I’m feeling the weight of what I do for a living a bit more than I used to. I’ve heard that’s a natural progression. Maybe. But I find myself less and less willing, at the end of a hard day, to tend to things that need doing around the house. It’s driving Rene’, my long-suffering wife of thirty-three years, crazy.
So the other day, I ripped off my suit jacket, slacks, dress shirt, and tie (how I hate wearing a tie!) and slipped on my battered old paint-stained bluejeans and an old T-shirt. It was sunny and warm outside and the leavings of winter (you know: old dog turds, bits of paper, scraps of wood, gravel from the road; that sort of stuff) needed to be raked into piles. So I walked out to our tool shed, pulled out a rake, and took a swipe at some physical labor. You know what? It felt good. Oh, I paid for it last night when my left shoulder, the one that’s been acting up since Jack and I got T-boned by a young lady on a bright Sunday morning (we were on our way to church: she, unfortunately, was still drunk from Saturday night) throbbed in bed. But being outside, with a rake in my hands, the sun shining bright, and birds flitting over the greening grass of our lawn, well, it was something I needed to do more than something that needed doing. When I was done with the raking, I walked over to stairs that slope down the riverbank to the Cloquet River. Kramer, our frail chocolate Labrador, stood behind me, scanning the flowage, unable, due to age and bad hips, to join me as I sat on a wooden tread of the stairs and watched black water move. Beneath the river’s undulating surface, in about two feet of water, I spotted a crayfish walking, not scuttling, slowly across the pebbled bed of the Cloquet. He or she or it (I’m uncertain as to the sexual nomenclature of crustaceans) didn’t do anything fancy during the fifteen minutes I watched quietly from the stairway. I saw no great episode of life and death. No bass zipped into my field of view to snatch up the shellfish for a quick dinner. No otter plunged to the shallows to pluck the crayfish and motor off. It was just me, and Kramer, and the little crayfish absorbing the sun and taking a breath.
Movement up river broke my meditation. I caught sight of a male wood duck, all alone, no mate in sight, drifting with the slow current. The duck stopped a dozen yards from the dog and me, his colors dazzling in the late afternoon sun, his peeping voice at odds with his ducky bill.
Male Wood Duck
It didn’t take long for the beautifully feathered bird to figure out I was there, gawking at him. He fluttered his short wings and scooted away, hell bent on finding his wife. Once the duck was out of sight, I rose slowly from the stairs, patted Kramer on the head, and ambled towards the house. I filled bird feeders with feed, put away the rake, and then decided, because my attempts to get Jack, our youngest, involved in my chores had failed, to pull out the trampoline and set it up. The rig was a gift to our third son, Chris, who’s now twenty-four, for making the honor roll when he was at Hermantown Middle School. The tramp has served all of our boys, their friends, and assorted nieces and nephews well over the past thirteen summers and is still in good shape. Oh, there’ve been a few broken bones (cousin Alex broke a wrist, I think) and some odd bruises and bumps, but mostly the kids have had a ball jumping and flipping for hours on end. During the hottest days of summer, one of Jack’s favorite things to do is to set up the lawn sprinkler under the tramp and jump through cold well water beneath the glaring sun. Anyway, it took a good hour or so to get the trampoline set up. That was the last of my chores, at least the ones on my list (as opposed to Rene’s list), which meant I had time to sit on a rocking chair on our covered front porch and read the newspaper.
Eastern Bluebird
My work finished, paper in hand, I settled into the rocking chair intent upon focusing on the day’s news. But nature wasn’t quite done with me. My favorite bird, the male eastern bluebird, decided to make an appearance. About ten years ago, we started putting up bluebird houses. And the bluebirds decided, after some discussion in bluebirdeese, I am sure, that they liked what we’d done. So now, every year, pairs (at least two, sometimes three) of eastern bluebirds come back and nest in the little wooden birdhouses on posts next to our vegetable garden. And every year, little bluebirds are hatched, raised, and fledged at the edge of pasture on our place. I watched as the male bird, his bright blue backside most visible during flight, landed on the very tip top of a spruce near Rene’s dormant flower garden. The bird didn’t seem to mind my company. He too seemed content to pause, to take a moment, and breathe.
Peace.
Mark
This Dance by Teague Alexy (2012. Consider It Correspondence Music.)
So my twenty-four year old son Chris buys me a great locally produced (home-grown if you will) CD by The Hobo Nephews of Uncle Frank. I write a review and post it on this little blog. One half of the Nephews emails his appreciation and asks me to give a listen to his new solo CD. I agree. And here we are.
There’s much to like on Teague Alexy’s This Dance. First off, if you’re like me, and you enjoy the whimsy of say, Randy Newman, with a bit of Greg Brown growl thrown in for good measure, than you’re gonna love Teague’s voice. If not, too bad. Why? Well, because this new release is so chock full of great guitar licks and well constructed songs, that if you don’t like Teague’s voice (as I said, I do), you might make a mistake and tune out. That would be a shame because, as the title to this review says quite plainly, this is music that even old men will like.
“The Raggedy Hat of John Henry” kicks off this assortment of blues and folk tunes (all originals, which is another damn reason to buy the CD: folks who do their own dirty work deserve to be rewarded). It’s a fine song standing on its own but as a lead in to the rest of this musical adventure, it’s a great choice. You see, making albums (yes, even in these days of MP3′s, I still consider a release by a musician to be, in the parlance of old hippies, “an album”) isn’t just pressing tunes into pieces of plastic and hawking them at your next gig. It’s about pulling out all stops to say something, to create something lasting. That’s the thing: Alexy’s latest effort does that with seamless effort.
This isn’t to say we’re talking vintage Bob Dylan here, though, given the breadth of the playing, writing, and singing on this release, it’s a comparison that could be made. Such praise might not hold up to close scrutiny but, given the strength of most of the cuts on this CD, there are similarities to be noted between the bard of Hibbing and the ongoing development of this young singer-songwriter. A good example of the level of musical prowess that weaves its way through the songs in this collection can be found on “Mainline” where a jangly banjo adds a bluegrass flare to a nice little ditty that, while it won’t change the world or start a revolution, is pleasing to the ears.
All in all, this is a good, solid bit of songwriting and music making from one of Duluth’s up and comers. You can catch Teague live, at the CD release show for This Dance at the new saloon in town, Tycoons, on April 28th. The time hasn’t been set (at least as of the writing of this review) so keep an eye out for updates and head down to Old Downtown to get your bogey on.
4 and 1/2 stars out of 5.
Atlas Shrugged, Part I (2011. 20th Century Fox. Based upon the novel by Ayn Rand)
I am not a devotee of Ayn Rand. Let me make that perfectly clear and say it again: I am not a follower of Rand’s radical conservative philosophy, Objectivism. And I don’t consider Ayn Rand to be a great writer of fiction. I panned Atlas Shrugged in a review at amazon.com. I gave The Fountainhead a less-than-stellar review (see this site’s book review archives for the complete review). But, as with most things philosophical and political (save for Nazism: there’s no saving grace is a deception meant to annihilate an entire race of human beings), there’s a grain of truth behind Rand’s not-so-subtle message: that allowing men and women to reach their own personal potential through economic freedom, commerce without regulation or constraint, allows humanity as a whole to reach its zenith. But that having been said, I loved the film version of The Fountainhead starring Gary Cooper (again, see the archives of this site under “movies” for a full review) and when I learned that Rand’s greatest work was being put on film, I eagerly waited to see it. Well, Atlas Shrugged Part I was released last fall, was here, in Duluth, at Zinema2 for a moment, and then disappeared. Outside a few positive words from folks on websites (most of them Rand followers), there was little good said about the film. Well, I’m here to set the record straight: This effort from director Paul Johannson, though considered a low budget affair, is one sleeper of a film.
First, let’s start with the fact that, given the liberal vibe of Hollywood, a place unlikely to worship the teachings of Rand (which are followed by conservative icons like Congressman Paul Ryan, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, and former head of the Federal Reserve, Alan Greenspan) it’s miraculous that this film got made at all. Yes, it’s true, it made it to screen on a purported six million dollar budget. That’s like, what, the cost of James Cameron’s lattes during the filming of Avatar? But that’s one of the charms of Atlas: for its low cost, the movie’s computer graphics (primarily scenes of the John Galt Line) are terrific: very real and breathtaking. The acting, particularly by the three main faces on the screen, Taylor Schilling as Dagney Taggart (lovely, smart, and cast dead on as Rand’s strong female protagonist); Grant Bowler as Henry Reardon (again, a first rate, little known actor who is perfect for the part); and well known character actor Graham Beckel (who you’ll recognize from hundreds of television appearances and movie parts, playing oil tycoon, Ellis Wyatt). The cinematography is also excellent, with great shots of industrial and pastoral settings that give the movie a documentary feel, albeit one with a deep message and superb acting. There are no long speeches or rants in this section of the planned three part film (Parts II and III are in production, but more on that later), just quiet lessons from the pen of Ms. Rand on why the socialism and collectivism that she endured as a citizen of Soviet Russia is so damn evil and why unrestricted capitalism is so damn good. Understand: The dialogue does not bludgeon you over the head to make these points. Rather, you are indoctrinated into Rand’s view of the world through the actions and minimalist dialog of Dagney Taggart and the other characters.
So what are the problems with this film? Well, for beginners, the paperback version of the novel comes in at 1,200 pages and over three pounds of paper! Quite a hefty book for one as poorly written as Atlas is. But that’s the material Johannson had to shape into a 97 minute film. By way of contrast, The Fountainhead, Rand’s other major work, though still large by contemporary attention span standards, is a little over 700 pages and weighs in at less than a pound and a half. King Vidor was able to take that mountain of words and papyrus and craft a wonderful movie back in 1949; a film which still manages to entertain because of great acting and production qualities. My point here is that Atlas Shrugged rivals some of the largest fiction tomes ever set to type: Perhaps, given the book’s size and intricacies, a better “fit” for the story would have been a television mini-series such as was used for Roots or Lonesome Dove or The Thorn Birds. It’s not that the ending of Part I doesn’t make sense or leave the viewer begging for more: The film doesn’t suffer from those problems. But if you go to the IMDB website and scan the production details regarding Atlas Shrugged Part II ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1985017/) you will see trouble brewing: None of the principle cast members is coming back! I don’t know about you, but, in my humble view, replacing Tommy Lee Jones and Angelica Huston with Jon Voigt and Barbara Hershey in Return to Lonesome Dove destroyed the sequel to the greatest Western ever written. Because I’ve seen Atlas I and appreciated Ms. Schilling and Mr. Bowler in the key roles, tossing other actors into those parts in the continuation of the same story (not a sequel, you understand, but the same plot and story), makes me reluctant to spend my time or hard earned cash to see Part II or Part III. The producer, whomever he or she is, may pull it off. But with all the controversy surrounding Rand and her philosophy in this, a presidential election year, does Rand’s legacy deserve a less than full-tilt effort? I’m not a fan of the woman’s thinking but I want her message to be heard. For without considering the positions of folks we don’t agree with, we Liberals will be reduced to watching talking heads on television who spew only what we want to hear. That’s no way to reach compromise and govern a nation and I am troubled that the folks behind this trilogy didn’t have the common sense, the economic good judgment, if you will, to sign the principles up for all three segments of the movie depicting Rand’s greatest work.
4 stars out of 5.
Prairie Son by Dennis M. Clausen (1999. Mid-list Press. ISBN 0922811393)
Ever wonder what it would be like to be utterly and totally alone in the world? Lloyd Clausen, the roustabout, laboring, job-changing father of the author of this terrific diary-turned-memoir-turned-novel lived that life during much of the 20th century. Set on the southwestern prairie of Minnesota (near Morris, though the closest town in the story is Alberta (pop. 142)), the author asked his father, as the old man was dying from cancer, to jot down stories of his youth and upbringing. Given that Lloyd Clausen had been adopted from an orphanage, was raised by what Dennis perceived to be a loving and devoted mother (his paternal grandmother), the intent of the exercise was to create a traditional family history. But when Dennis found yellow legal pads filled with his father’s scribbling after Lloyd’s passing, the author knew he had the makings of something far more intriguing and gut-wrenching than a lovingly portrayed narrative.
What took place after 1922 in the Clausen home was physical abuse and an utter and complete lack of love: That’s the environment that young Lloyd was dropped into by the Stevens County Human Services folks when the Clausens adopted the boy as an infant. Early in the story, we are provided a clear vision of what hell would look like for a scared, unloved, unwanted orphan. Lloyd’s (and the author’s) view of Lloyd’s parents softens a bit over time, not so much because the Clausens actually change due to the intervention of morality but more because outsiders, who learn of Lloyd’s plight (and his parents’ behavior towards him), step in to lend the boy love and, at times, protection. These characters range from illiterate farmers who protect Lloyd from a vengeful local minister to the neighborhood bully, who seeing himself in the down and out face of Lloyd Clausen, takes Lloyd’s part against a mob of nasty town boys.
The scene involving the reverend seeking Lloyd’s expulsion from the country schoolhouse is a memorable one:
“I was standing in the middle of the road,” he began in a halting and nervous tone of voice, “when Lloyd threw a rock at me…” Marcus continued to look in my direction for several seconds, staring directly into my eyes. Then he looked back at the school board. “No,” he said, “that’s not the way it happened at all. Lloyd and I were playing a game. It was my idea…”
“It was not your idea!” Reverend Reese shouted. He started to stand again, but several members of the school board glared at him, and he sat down.
“It was my idea,” Marcus repeated…”I threw a rock at Lloyd’s shoes. He threw one back at my shoes. We did this several times. Then one of the rocks hit something in the road, flew up, and hit me above the eye. It was an accident…”
“He’s trying to protect his friend!” Reverend Reese yelled…
“Reverend Reese,” the chairman said firmly, “I really think you had better sit down.” Then he glanced at the other school board members, all of whom nodded in his direction. “I don’t think we need to hear from anyone else regarding this matter.”
The members of the school board huddled together briefly at the front of the room. They returned to the table. “Lloyd,” the chairman said warmly, “the members of the school board apologize that you were suspended…You are innocent of the charges…”
Then he turned to Reverend Reese and said, “As for you, Reverend Reese, if the school board ever again hears that you have tried to blame this incident on Lloyd, we will go to your church council, and we will tell them the whole story. You tell people the truth about what happened to your son, or you will be looking for a new parish.”
The point of this scene is twofold: It establishes that there were role models in young Lloyd’s life who stepped in to assist him in times of trouble. But it also establishes the gritty truth about his father’s lovelessness: Lloyd’s father never said a word to the school board or the reverend in defense of his son. Why? Because as we learn, the boy who grew up to be Lloyd Clausen was adopted not as a son but as a hired hand; a boy to grow into a man and work the family farm as a colt grows into a stallion to pull a plow. The bitterness and bleakness of this awful reality is tempered by folks like the school board and Delores, Lloyd’s cousin (also adopted but treated as a natural child by her parents) who show Lloyd love and kindness along his journey to adulthood.
My only criticism of the book is that it is a bit disjointed. The format, short vignettes that don’t always flow together in a cohesive narrative, often read more like excerpts from a diary than a sell-paced memoir. Still, the story has heart and is well written: So much so, I can guaranty you won’t want to put it down and that you will shed a tear or two at the book’s conclusion.
4 1/2 stars out of 5.
