Author Mark Munger (Cloquet River Press)

Collected Stories by Wallace Stegner (2006. Penguin Classics. 978-0-14-303979-2)

As I am typing this, I am finishing up Steven King’s writing memoir/tutorial On Writing. Like all good writers (I’ll confess, I am taking the word of others on this as I’ve never successfully completed a King novel), King admonishes folks who have the “writing bug” to “read, read, and read”. And he is particular in his declaration: read the classic as well as the contemporary. Why? Reading the giants of literature, alongside today’s gifted storytellers, gives a wanna-be writer a clear understanding of craft. King doesn’t mention Wallace Stegner by name in his book or in the book’s bibliography but he should have.

Here, Penguin gives us true genius in the short and not-so-short story form. I’ll admit I am a Stegner fan, having fallen in love with his prose after reading Angel of Repose, Beyond the 100th Meridian, and other longer works. I was searching for a western author to read while visiting Books on Broadway in Williston, ND and this collection caught my eye. It took me months to get to it, methodically working down my stack of “books to be read” in OCD fashion, but in the end, I started reading Stegner’s shorter work and of course, could not put it down. Like seeing my wife dolled up for an evening out, I fell in love with Wallace all over again.

Stegner’s stories are not linked in the manner of many modern collections. Oh, there are two or three stories that share characters and settings; continuing a previous piece in the book in some fashion, digging deeper into familiar literary soil. But by and large, the snippets of fiction that make up this catalog of a great writer’s “lesser” (in terms of length only) work are stand-alone pieces, something abhorrent to today’s publishers. I’ve written a similar collection, without the skill and polish evidenced in Stegner’s Collected Works; short tales that are intended to be read one at a time, like grapes sucked off the vine. And it’s pretty clear from studying today’s marketplace that both Stegner’s short story collection and my own would not find a home with a traditional publisher in our contemporary world. Publishers want collections that connect and continue themes, characters, and place. Here, Stegner ranges from the Canadian Plains, to the Midwest, to California, writing in styles as varied as Annie Proulx and F. Scott Fitzgerald. Though known primarily as a “Western” writer, two of my favorite pieces in the book are “party scenes”: one set on the campus of an unnamed Indiana college (“The View from the Balcony”), the other, “A Field Guide to Western Birds”, set in the hills above LA. This last exists admirably as a time capsule of a certain age and class of people in a manner very akin to Fitzgerald:

“Maybe it’s something you did for ten percent,” she whispers, and that tickles me. I was the poor one when we were married. Her father’s money kept us going for the first five or six years. She laughs and rubs her cheek against mine and her cheek is soft and smells of powder. For the merest instant it feels old, too soft, limp, and used and without tension and resilience, and I think what it means to be all through. But Ruth is looking across the violet valleys and the sunstruck ridges, and she says is her whispery voice,” Isn’t it beautiful? Isn’t it really perfectly beautiful?”

For those readers who cherish Stegner’s writings about the Plains and the mountain country of the American and Canadian West, there is “Genius” a novella length depiction of a doomed cattle drive in Saskatchewan, with elements of place, style, and dialog that will make McMurtry lovers swoon.

All in all, a fine reflection of genius.

5 stars out of 5.

Peace.

Mark

The Fighting Frenchman by Paul Levy (2016. University of Minnesota Press. 978-08166-9719-9)

It’s been called the Sweet Science. The term was coined by English sporting writer, Pierce Egan in the early 1800s (see http://boxing.isport.com/boxing-guides/why-boxing-is-called-the-sweet-science). I wouldn’t say I was necessarily a fan. Having grown up watching the greats of the modern era, Ali, Frazier, Foreman, Holmes, Norton, and Tyson, to name a few heavyweight professional boxers I watched on television in my childhood, adolescence, and into my early adulthood, I paid attention to who was the heavy weight champion until the game became a carnival in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when the title of “World Champion” was not unified and was held by various boxers at the same time, each title sponsored by a different promoting organization. But even though I wasn’t a fan, certain memories stand out for me with respect to my connection to boxing. Watching Cassius Clay demolish Sonny Liston and Floyd Patterson. Being intrigued by the notion that a famous person, Clay, would change his name simply because he changed his faith. Considering whether Ali’s stand against the Vietnam War was genuine or a publicity stunt. Watching George Foreman in the Olympics. Marveling at the chiseled body of Ken Norton and the insane, tractor like insistence of Joe Frazier in the ring. And then, of course, as a white kid growing up in the suburbs, wondering if any white man could ever really stand up in the ring and win the title.

Here’s the story of a poor white kid from Crosby, Minnesota, who, though he never won a title, was someone I followed. Why? Well, Scott LeDoux was unorthodox and intriguing in so many ways, beginning with the fact he played college football at my alma mater, UMD. Then there was the son-of-a-miner connection (my maternal grandfather was an iron miner). And of course, the fact he was white. Paul Levy delves into all aspects of LeDoux’s troubled life, including the story of the boxer’s molestation at the hands of a neighborhood teem when he was only six. That incident scarred LeDoux, caused him to want to lash out in the ring, to purify himself, driving him, if not to greatness, then at least to notoriety. You get it all. The love story. The pain. The wins. The losses. The fixed fights. The hard luck. The fight that I watched on pirated pay-for-view in my Inver Grove Heights apartment as a law student (relax: I simply strung an extended wire around the room and captured the signal) where LeDoux, pummeled by Ken Norton for the entirety of the fight, came off the ropes in the last rounds and stood toe to toe with Kenny, bashing him with blow after blow after blow. He didn’t win but had the fight gone one more minute, he would have. During LeDoux’s career, the movie Rocky was released and became a hit. Though the hardscrabble fighter in Stalone’s epic shares the grit and tenacity of the boy from Crosby, the film wasn’t a fictionalized version of Scott LeDoux’s life. Unlike what’s depicted on the screen, the boxer from Crosby didn’t fare well after he left the ring. There’s much sadness, a touch of redemption, and even a bit of reconciliation at the end of the book, making the tale so much richer than an imagined story of a celluloid hero.

Levy’s touching portrayal of a man, his times, his demons, and the disgustingly brutal world of heavy weight prize fighting is better than a draw but not quite a knock out.

4 out of 5. There’s some repetitive writing that could have used a heavier edit but, overall, a fast, good read.

How Fiction Works by James Wood (2008. Pickadore. ISBN 978-0312428471)

Wood, the literary critic for The New Yorker is a bit high-brow for my comprehension and taste. His diminutive volume dissects elements of fiction writing, particularly novel writing, by comparison. He draws upon segments of well-known pieces of literature, both classical and modern, augmented with occasional references to genre fiction, to inspect, discuss, and explain how great writers build their fictional worlds in terms of tense, point of view, plot, character, and setting. His work is curt, precise, and engaging despite the overall atmosphere of suffyness one would expect in reading something written by a legendary critic. He tends, in choosing his exemplars, to draw upon Flaubert, Austen, Joyce, James, Checkov, and Tolstoy and other haughty types. But that’s okay for in the end, will it be writers such as those listed and relied upon by Wood who remain relevant a century from now, or will it be Grisham and Patterson and Flynn and their ilk, the storytellers of today who, in general, sacrifice quality and literary excellence for quantity and cash?

As a writer who has been accused of spending an inordinate amount of time providing details in my work about minor characters, folks who might appear in one brief scene and then never take the stage again, I thoroughly enjoyed Wood’s discussion of “flat” (superficial) and “round” (detailed and developed) characters. He reminds us all that, in the end, writing fiction is a bit of a card trick, an invented reality that is subject to numerous viewpoints and divergent analysis when the curtain is withdrawn and we can see the writer’s hands:

In Aspects of the Novel, Forster used the now-famous term “flat” to describe the kind of character who is awarded a single, essential attribute., which is repeated without change as the person appears and reappears in the novel…Forster is generally snobbish about flat characters, and wants to demote them, reserving the highest category for rounder or fuller characters. Flat characters cannot be tragic, he asserts; they need to be comic. Round characters “surprise” us each time they reappear; they are not flimsily theatrical; they combine well with other characters in conversation; “and draw one another out without seeming to do so.”

I picked up this little primer of writing tutelage at Garrison Keillor’s Common Good Books in St. Paul on a whim. As I wandered the store, looking at the uruly crowd of hard cover and soft cover tomes for something to read, I wasn’t really intending to embark on yet another course of learning in my writerly career. And yet, that’s what transpired. In the end, I’m thoroughly happy I slid my little plastic card to the clerk and bought this book.

4 stars out of 5. A quick read that gives even an experienced fiction writer pause and causes necessary contemplation over the word, “Why?”

Peace.

Mark

Blue Window by Deborah Gordon Cooper (2017. Clover Valley Press. ISBN 978-0-9973643-2-3)

I am remiss. I bought a signed, personalized copy of Deb Cooper’s latest poetry collection last fall, at her book launch at Peace Church in Duluth. Not normally attracted to poetry readings, I went to the event with my 89 year old mother because it sounded therapeutic. Mom had recently lost her husband and I, my stepfather. We needed something to get us out of the house and back into the stream of life. Plus, I know Deb. I know her compassion, her faith, her kindness, and her poetry. I figured that an afternoon listening to her work would be palliative. It was.

There are many jewels in this slender volume. I marveled, as I read and re-read the book (3 times so far!), at Deb’s crisp, concise, unfailingly honest look at life in all its joys and sorrows. It also helps that the title of the collection is taken from my favorite Neil Young song, “Helpless”. You know the lyrics: Blue, blue moon behind the stars, yellow moon on the rise…Taking her cue from what is likely the best Canadian folk song ever written, the poet uses Young’s expression of longing and angst and the past to launch a very, very well conceived expression of similar feelings, thoughts, and circumstances.

My personal favorites include the lengthy work, “Central Hillside”, an episodic poem that chronicles the lives of disparate folks, young and old, as they go about their lives on Duluth’s hillside. One can picture the neighborhood she depicts, spreading out on the steeps just below the church where she held her book launch, each life chronicled as important and complex as the next.

Another of the poems that touched a nerve is “If I Could Take it Back”, wherein the narrator considers actions that cause her regret and shame:

If I could take back

every snide remark

                                                                                 the way I terrorized

                                                                                my brothers…

This exemplar lamentation should whet your appetite and cause you to pick up a copy of this fine volume of home-grown verse from Zenith Bookstore or The Bookstore at Fitger’s. Anyone with siblings or who grew up in the rough and tumble times of post-war suburban life will appreciate the images manifested in this listing of regrets.

There’s also a section completed (hinted at but not expressly confirmed) by the poet when on a retreat in Ireland. This second chapter, if you will, bears the book’s title, as does my favorite poem from Cooper’s Irish-influenced verse:

In the wee hours,

I dream another woman’s dreams

the dreams of a boat;

the dream of the garden,

sweet peas and cabbages.

Wake with her story

rotting in my mouth

potatoes rotting

in the ground…

Well done, Ms. Cooper. Well done. Thanks for helping us heal.

4 and 1/2 stars out of 5.

Peace.

Mark

The Great Alone by Kristin Hannah (2018. Holtzbrink. ISBN 978-0312577230)

I loved Hannah’s epic WW II novel, The Nightengale. I relished her story of the siege of St. Petersburg, Winter Garden. (Find my reviews of those books by using the search engine on this page!) So, it was with much anticipation that I began reading this novel of a broken down Vietnam veteran, his wife, and daughter trying to forge a life for themselves in early 1970s Alaska. This a love triangle set against harsh wilderness but not in the way you might think. Ernt Allbright, the veteran, has his moments as a husband and father. But the demons of war have, at least according to his wife’s view of things, shattered the man, making him suspicious, alcoholic, brutal, and unhinged. Wife Cora and daughter Leni try hard to love and protect the man from himself. But who will protect them from his rages, rages made all the worse by the inhospitable landscape and perpetual darkness of an Arctic winter?

Hannah writes well. Her depiction of spousal abuse is spot on. The dynamics of staying or leaving, a choice that I see being debated internally by women in my courtroom when confronted with domestic violence unleashed by men they love, is well documented in this telling of that sad reality. There are some implausibilities and some moments where I thought the lawyer in Hannah got the better of the fiction writer but, in the end, this is a story needing to be told, one that women’s book clubs will eat up like candy.

This is not The Nightengale but that’s okay. It’s a contemporary look at a haunting and difficult issue set in a location that, by itself, forms an esssential character in the story. 

4 stars out of 5.

Peace.

Mark

Boom Copper by Angus Murdoch (1943. Drier and Koepel. No ISBN)

In researching the history of copper mining in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula for my forthcoming novel, Kotimaa: Homeland, the tale of Finnish immigrants to the United States in the early 1900s, I needed to locate resource materials that succinctly laid out the history of the industry with an eye towards the human story behind the hardscrabble lives of the early miners. Angus Murdoch’s book fit the bill.

Murdoch’s storytelling sometimes veers into near-fiction, recalling anecdotal tales as if they were documented history, but, for the most part, his reportage is straight forward, compelling, linear, and succinct.

I would recommend this book as a good starting point for anyone interested in Michigan history, the Finnish immigrant experience, or mining.

4 stars out of 5.

Peace.

Mark

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Phillip K. Dick (1968. Del Rey. ISBN 978-0-345-40447-3)

This is not Blade Runner. Though this short novel, really more of a novella, was the basis for the character Rick Deckard (played by Harrison Ford in both cinematic derivations of the tale), that’s about the only consistency between the book and the movies. The original film, which came out in 1982, is so much more complex and detailed in its examination of Deckard, the bounty hunter whose job it is to “retire” replicants (androids who are virtually indistinguishable from humans), his motivations and his demons, than this written work. In addition, a thread to the book that, so far as I can recall, is completely absent from the film, is the theology of Mercerism, a mumbo jumbo of spirituality that doesn’t really seem to add much to the novel’s plot line. I’m glad the movies chose to eliminate that storyline as it adds nothing to the novel and would be, if attempted on film, even less compelling than in print.

And then there is Rachael Rosen, played in both movies by Sean Young, the one replicant that Rick Deckard cannot retire. Her role in the novel is very different and less satisfying and intriguing than portrayed in either film.

All in all, this is one of those tales that contained a germ of an idea-the hunting of rogue androids by a policeman-that genius filmmakers turned into a franchise with far more heart and substance than the original tale.

2 stars out of 5. Watch the original film and Blade Runner 2049 for a far more compelling vision of the future.

Peace.

Mark

Miles Lord: The Maverick Judge Who Brought Corporate America to Justice by Roberta Waburn (2017. University of Minnesota. ISBN978-1-5179-0231-5)

No. This is not how judges act, decide cases, or go about their business. That’s the thought that rings true after devouring Walburn’s well-written and researched biography of Minnesota’s most iconic, debated, loved, and hated jurist. There were so many aspects to how United States District Court Judge Miles Lord went about doing his work as a trial judge that are inapplicable and indeed, inopposite to my work as a state court judge that, while reading Walburn’s accounting of Lord’s work on the Reserve Mining case and the Dalkon Shield litigation, I found myself clenching, grimacing, and well, quite frankly, shaking my head. And yet…

Beneath it all, was a Minnesota Iron Ranger steeped in the DFL Party’s desperate rush, during the 1950s and early 1960s, to establish itself as the People’s Party, filling in the void left by the Farmer Labor Party that had held sway in Minnesota for most of the Great Depression. Lord saw himself as a fighter-both literally and figuratively-for the ordinary man both in his role as Minnesota’s Attorney General and as a judge. Personal friends with both Hubert Humphrey and Eugene McCarthy, two United States Senators from the DFL who found themselves on opposite ends of the Vietnam War, Lord tried to bridge the philosophical gap between his mentors through mutual friendship, hoping upon hope to propel HHH into the presidency. He failed in bringing McCarthy back into the fold and, in the process, failed at electing Humphrey to the presidency. Admittedly, the sections of the book detailing Lord’s ties to politics are fascinating. But it’s Walburn’s depiction of Lord’s work on the Dalkon Shield cases that is the focus of her dissection of what made the man tick.

A confession here. Perhaps I’m a bit too close to the subject matter. Not because I share Lord’s vocation, but because of my own background. I was a law clerk at the Robins, Kaplan, and Ciresi Law Firm when Judge Donald Alsop forced another Twin Cities law firm, after discovering improprieties, to disgorge over 400 Dalkon Shield products liability cases. I was working at the Robins firm when the boxes arrived a week before I left to begin my summer study for the Minnesota Bar Exam. Later, after I’d passed the bar, I represented two Duluth women who’d been injured by the Dalkon Shield in front of of Judge Alsop. Both cases settled but there’s no question that Judge Lord’s exposure of AH Robins’ malfeasance in manufacturing and promoting a device that devastated women’s health contributed to cases being resolved short of trial.

I found the author’s careful dissection of Judge Lord’s pugilistic background, juxtaposed upon the tense, ugly world of corporate litigation, to be a fascinating read. Mind you, there’s much that Miles Lord did in both the Reserve and Dalkon cases that caught the attention of the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals and got him in trouble with the appellate court. But, true to his Iron Range nature, reprimands and reversals did not change the judge’s belief that he was not just a referee between unequal litigants. In Miles Lord’s eyes, his role-as described in loving detail by his former law clerk- was to ensure everyone got a fair shake, damn the personal consequences. While that’s an admirable goal for a jurist, it’s one only those appointed to their jobs for life likely are able to fulfill with such unfettered bravery.

All in all, one of the best Minnesota biographies I’ve ever read.

4 and 1/2 stars out of 5.

Peace.

Mark

Faith Works by Jim Wallis (2000. Random House. ISBN 1-4000-6479-1)

An Evangelical friend gifted this non-fiction “handbook for Christians” a year or so back. It sat on my shelf, waiting discovery, until it became one of my bedside and bathroom reads. Because I’m a life-long Liberal Christian (yes, we still exist!), I’ve taken it upon myself to try and understand the recent election of The Orange Headed One through the eyes of my more conservative, vocal, Christian brothers and sisters. I was hoping this book would guide me to some sort of comprehension. It did not. But that’s not because the book lacks depth or quality writing or spiritual insight. Wallis’s work is filled with all of those things. But it is, at this point, eighteen years old already and sadly, written at a time when the current disaster of a president wasn’t in the picture.

Too harsh you say? I’m being too judgmental? Here’s the thing. My entire life, my biggest pet peeve is hypocrisy, the “do as I say, don’t do as I do” mentality of certain folks in power. Wallis works hard to paint a picture of the a possible unification of Christians on the right and the left by turning away from debating whether one side or the other has the keys to the kingdom, or has a clue as to WWJD (What Would Jesus Do). He reports on a then-growing movement of like-minded and stout-hearted civil rights leaders, churchmen and women, and deep thinking politicians who understood, at least back in the late 1990s, that economic disparity, racial inequality, wage inequity, and environmental instability (most often in areas inhabited by the poor) are not just political questions: they are Christian issues. His reportage, as a leader in this re-discovery of the need to blend Christian charity with governmental oversight and programming,  is concise and accurate. But there is one fundamental flaw in his logic. He could not anticipate that his audience, fueled by the advance of Balkanization through politically-driven television and radio and websites, would not come together to confront the issues he raises but rather, separate farther and farther until the two sides of any big-picture argument are no longer able to talk in a common, respectful language.

I was hoping that Wallis, an acclaimed Evangelical himself, could point us all in a direction that would lead to reconciliation and healing. But despite his best efforts, that didn’t happen and in fact, seems desperately impossible. His stern warnings about Trump the candidate went unheeded by his fans and those fellow Evangelicals who believed Wallis, back when this book was written, was spot on. (See https://www.huffingtonpost.com/jim-wallis/donald-trump-narcissist-i_b_7770156.html.) And yet, here we are. We elected ( I include myself because, well, I am still an American and must live through the next three years alongside my fellow citizens who put Trump in office) a man who thinks only of himself, is a serial adulterer, denigrates women and minorities and immigrants and just about everyone who doesn’t share his white skin and his privilege, avoided military service when called, and worst of all, has no semblance of Christian charity or belief about him. Wallis tried, when he began the Sojourner Movement in the 1990s in the face of  Congressional attacks on the social safety net, to bring Jesus forward, to make Him the focus of a discussion of how to improve morally as a people. I applaud his tenacity and his faith. I am only sorry that his vision of a unified approach to the biggest social and equity issues confronting our nation has led us to this.

In reading Wallis’s book, my one major criticism is that he soft sells the wide gap between Evangelicals and Liberal Christians when it comes to the issue of abortion. The topic is only marginally present along the edges and never is tackled head on. This is, in my estimation, a mistake. Until the two sides in the abortion debate can come to some sort of armistice, whereby the Right is allowed to hold fast to its belief that abortion is a moral sin but admits those who think otherwise aren’t murdering, unfeeling animals; and the Left acknowledges that abortion is a morally difficult topic and recognizes that casually denigrating those who believe abortion to be morally repugnant are ignorant, backwater boobs is wrong; none of what Wallis hopes to accomplish across the spectrum of Christianity is likely possible. My personal take is such an accommodation may once have been plausible and all sorts of Believers might have been able to agree to disagree had that dialogue taken place around the time Bill Clinton (no moral guiding light, I’ll admit) shared his belief that abortion should be “legal and safe, but rare” in 1992. Had that discussion taken place before Hannity and Maddow, perhaps Wallis’s vision might have come to pass. But that era disappeared within the whirlwind of impeachment based upon a Liberal president’s own moral failings. Absent the heavens opening and Jesus descending sometime soon to guide us out of this morass, I’m not encouraged that things are gonna change and men and women across the political divide will roll up their sleeves and do the Good Work that Wallis believes is possible.

4 stars out of 5. Trump isn’t Wallis’s burden to bear. He is ours.

Peace.

Mark

(PS One could write volumes about the disconnect between how Evangelical Christianity held its collective nose and voted for an immoral man simply because he assured them “I stand against abortion” and yet aimed its collective slings and arrows in the direction of an intelligent, honest, faithful, and thoughtful black man. But this isn’t the place…)

Big Shoulders by William Jamerson (2007. Pine Stump. ISBN 978-1-882882-12-0)

The back cover jacket of this “coming of age in a CCC camp” novel reveals that the author is an award winning filmmaker (Camp Forgotten: The CCC in Michigan) so when my writer-turned-aunt handed me this book, being that I am a historian by training, I thought, “what the heck.” I must say, even though I managed to finish the story ( ever the optimist, I rarely ever give up on a novel), it’s not a story that I’d recommend to anyone over the age of 16. So. in addition to all of the book’s other flaws and faults, I’d add false advertising to the mix as well. Why?

There’s nothing on the back cover or inside the novel that warns the reader that the book is written for middle and high schoolers. That’s probably because the author did not intentionally set out to write a juvenile novel. But that, in the end, is what readers are left with. Beyond that, Jamerson’s writing style, while accurate, is stiff and analytic and contains few, if any, memorable scenes or passages. The old adage for budding fiction authors, “write like your parents are dead” is completely absent. Mr. Jamerson, while likely a very nice man and a find filmmaker, takes zero risk in his prose. The protagonist, Nick Radzinski-a city boy claimed by the camps for redemption-ambles along in this tale, avoiding, as the author does, any real consequence or conflict or revelation of mind or spirit. Two major plot points, Nick’s looming fight with the camp tough and his burgeoning affection for a local girl (Betty) end in abject disappointment. And the ending, where Mr. Jamerson attempts to “bring it all home” with a climatic, suspense-filled, nail biting conclusion, fails to excite or engage. The final scenes, in which Nick uncovers the identity of a camp thief-a person he’s been seeking to uncover to clear his good name-don’t even rise to the level of middle school suspension of disbelief, much the thrilling  to an adult-level read.

On the plus side, I discovered no sentence clunkers or typographical glitches or major deviations from the English language in this book. But technical competence cannot bring life to a body of words that lacks heart.

In the end, I wish I’d watched the documentary.

2 and 1/2 stars out of 5.

Peace

Mark