Welcome Scott Elliott

Welcome to the next installment of the Roundhouse Reading Series, generously funded by Union County Cultural Coalition, Cook Memorial Library, Libraries of Eastern Oregon, and local donors, such as yourselves. Thank you for making this possible! According to our usual plan, we’ll have an open mic following Scott Elliott’s reading. I hope you’ve signed up!

Just as a reminder, May’s Third Wednesday reading will feature Rob Schlegel of Walla Walla reading from his new poetry collection, January Machine (Four Way Books, 2014).

This week! Scott Elliott is one of two Pacific Northwest writers visiting La Grande whose work addresses environmental issues, and it has been stimulating to read their works side by side. Jennifer Boyden will read at Ars Poetica tomorrow night at 7:30 in Pierce Library on the EOU campus.  

Tonight! The Roundhouse Reading Series is pleased to host Scott Elliott, whose novel Temple Grove (University of Washington Press, 2013) I’m currently reading.

Scott is Associate Professor of Creative Writing at Whitman College in Walla Walla and has previously published Coiled in the Heart (Bluehen/Penguin Putnam, 2003), selected by Booksense 76 and One-Book-One-Community, and a collection of short stories, Return Arrangements, which was named a finalist in the 2009 Flannery O’Connor Award for Short Fiction and Mary McCarthy Prize competitions. He was born in Kentucky and grew up there and in Alaska and on the Olympic Peninsula in Washington state. He earned a BA from Vanderbilt, an MFA from Columbia, and a PhD from the University of Houston.

Scott’s most recent novel, Temple Grove, takes place on the Olympic Peninsula and features three main characters. Trace, a native Makah woman, works at an aquarium and is the mother of Paul and wife of Tom, Paul’s stepfather. In the present time of the novel, Paul is 18 and has spent his life hiking and camping in the Olympic Forest. The third character is Bill Newton, Paul’s biological father, a logger from a family of loggers, who returns to the Olympic Peninsula after years in Alaska. The plot is spurred by a chance meeting between Trace and Bill and also by Paul’s decision to become an ecoterrorist, damaging logging equipment and spiking the trees of the Temple Grove in order to protect them.

Kim Barnes, author of In the Kingdom of Men who also did a reading in La Grande recently, notes that “Elliott writes from that place where the old myths and the new stories collide. In Temple Grove, he reminds us of what it means to be lost to everyone and everything we have ever loved...and to be found again. It is a story of longing, cruelty, forgiveness, and redemption, shot through with intimate descriptions of a land on the cusp of ruin that will break your heart with their beauty."

I am enjoying reading Temple Grove and wish to praise the depiction of the Pacific Northwest. I feel as if I have walked in the Olympic Forest, although I have not. The forestry issues remind me of my years spent in Humboldt County, CA, where loggers and environmentalists still vie for trees as a resource and ecosystems as a legacy. I am also enjoying the depiction of the inner lives of the main characters, particularly the complexity of their motivations and the uncertainty with which they make decisions, which feels true to my own experience. At the midpoint of the novel, the storytelling has hooked me; I have passed “the point of no return” and am having trouble putting the book down to do my real work. The last commendation I wish to make regards the imagery. I especially like the image of breaching, as in whales breaching, which seems a metaphor for all the ways in which the characters survive: they find hope in surfacing and taking the next breath.

Without further ado, please welcome Scott Elliott!

Works Cited

Book Cover Temple Grove. "Biography." Scott Elliott. n.d. Web. 16 April 2014. <http://www.scottelliott.net/index.htm>.

Elliott, Scott. Temple Grove. Seattle: U of Washington P, 2013. Print. 

Dear Jennifer Boyden

Dear Jennifer Boyden,

Where have you been all my life? I don't think I really saw poetry until now, or at least what poetry can do when unhitched from the literal. You language a dead end dominated by syntax, silencing the shoulding. I keep hearing Steve Martin's "May I mambo dogface to the banana patch?" The moral is, when we teach kids to talk wrong, they make poetry that sidesteps the mundane and approaches the beautiful. Skip the similes and give me pure metaphor! To quote Steve Martin, "Listen to this..."

On a first read, I liked "Like a Frequency, Like Looking Right at It" best. It is pretty easy to understand from a literal perspective, but it has one moment where the language launches itself out of the syntax:

In June, the man noticed how quietly the evenings held
themselves. Birds did not have to ask to continue, nor
the grass. There were no answers anyway that meant
they could not do as they wished, and so flying, and so
the world greenly. (23)

The moment I mean is, of course, "and so flying, and so/the world greenly." What does that mean? Literally, it doesn't make sense because "flying" is a gerund and can't really stand by itself as a clause, and "so/the world" gears the reader up for the beginning of a clause and then pulls the rug out with "greenly," which isn't a word because "green" is an adjective and not an "adverb," and I was expecting a verb anyway. Luckily, for the first-timer, the poem folds back into normal syntax after this moment.

And yet, I'm drawn back to this moment as amazing. It seems to capture the birds' perspective. Birds don't worry about clauses; they just fly. They are always already flying, even when still, so the gerund works really well. The use of "greenly" is also pretty cool because like the gerund, it conveys action in the midst of ongoing existence, as if, to quote Kermit, "being green" is the reality of the living, interconnected forest or, to quote Ursula K. Le Guin, "The Word for World is Forest." Green is a lifestyle; it is something we see in and do to the world, and the man and the birds share a moment of this together, a kind of immanence. Wow, Jennifer Boyden.

On a first read, I didn't like the other poems as well because they didn't leap out at me literally, as this immediately obvious one did, and yet, I am still reading and realizing the need to go back for a reread, to see all that your breathtaking breaking of syntax has to offer. I spent several hours last night imitating you in my own sad poetry, and I feel a whole landscape open up. No looking back, Eurydice! Orpheus writes the only poetry. Thanks, Jennifer Boyden. See you soon! https://www.facebook.com/events/1514140552146663/

Very truly yours,

An admirer

Works Cited

Boyden, Jennfier. The Declarable Future. Madison, WI: U of Wisconsin P, 2013. Print.

Kermit the Frog. "Green." Sesame Street. 1970.

Le Guin, Ursula K. The Word for World is Forest. Putnam, 1976. Print.

Martin, Steve. "Philosophy/Religion/College/Language." A Wild and Crazy Guy. Warner Bros., 1978. Cassette Tape.

The Declarable Future Book Cover. Jennifer Boyden. n.d. Web. 13 April 2014. http://www.jenniferboyden.com/

Jo Walton's Among Others

Jo Walton's Among Others tells the story of Mori Phelps, a Welsh 15-year-old who has survived a traumatic experience caused by magic. The story is presented in journal form, beginning after the traumatic event, as Mori is headed to boarding school, paid for by her father, Daniel, whom she has not met until now. This narrative structure allows the events of the past to unfold as Mori attempts to move forward with her life. 

What we know about the past is that Mori's twin was killed, Mori herself was injured enough that she now walks with a cane, Mori's mother Liz was responsible, and Mori had to involve social services in order to escape. In the present, Mori deals with bullying in boarding school and adjusting to her paternal family, which includes three aunts and a grandfather, Sam. She still has contact with members of her large maternal family, with whom she would rather reside but cannot, due to laws governing guardianship of minors. 

The story is slow-moving, more cerebral and emotional as Mori reflects on her memories and experiences. I enjoyed the slow build to the action in the ending, but I'm not sure I would have read the whole book if it weren't for Mori's references to her fantasy and SF readings. Many of the texts were familiar to me, but an equal number were not--I wanted to jot them all down so I could go back and reread or go pick up some used copies (as the story is set mostly in 1979, many of the texts are now "classic" fantasy and SF). Luckily, Molly Templeton has created a book list using Pinterest: 

https://www.pinterest.com/tinyampersand/the-books-of-among-others/

Thanks, Molly! Summer reading, here I come! 

Works Cited

Among Others Book Cover. amazon.com. n.d. Web. 8 April 2014. http://www.amazon.com/Among-Others-Jo-Walton/dp/0765331721/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1396984910&sr=8-1&keywords=Jo+Walton+Among+Others

Walton, Jo. Among Others. New York: Tor, 2010. Print. 

Le Guin's Left Hand of Darkness

In her article “Is Gender Necessary?” Ursula K. Le Guin mentions that her novel Left Hand of Darkness arose from 1960s feminism and her interest in probing issues of gender and sexuality. In the article, she describes protagonist Genly Ai as “conventional, indeed rather stuffy” (163). What interests me about Genly’s stuffiness is his misogyny. As Genly attempts to place androgynous Gethenians into a gender box, he continually tries to make them men and is struck by their feminine qualities. Without exception, except towards the end, the characters’ feminine qualities are unpleasant. I think this misogyny may have three potential origins: Le Guin’s sociohistorical context, her intent to show Genly as patriarchal, and the fact that the attempt to define a masculine gender box tends to result in misogyny associated with homophobia.

Evidence of Genly’s misogyny can be identified throughout the novel. Here is one example from his description of the guards at Pulefen Voluntary Farm: “They tended to be stolid, slovenly, heavy, and to my eyes effeminate--not in the sense of delicacy, etc., but in just the opposite sense: a gross, bland fleshiness, a bovinity without point or edge” (176). Each time Genly references femininity, his tone is disapproving. Here the diction contributing to the tone includes “slovenly, “gross, bland fleshiness,” “bovinity,” and “without point or edge.” The Gethenians are not neat or trim, as apparently men would be; they are fleshy, which suggests not only laziness but also a kind of threat of flesh, as if too much flesh would threaten to absorb one, which suggests a kind of fear of the maternal body. In addition, “bland,” “bovinity,” and “without point or edge” suggest stupidity, as if men would be more dynamic and intelligent, while women are uninteresting and lazily stupid, just sitting around without activity, chewing cud. What a portrait of femininity!

Some of this diction likely arises from 1960s views of men and women, as both genders were stereotyped in dualistic ways. In “Is Gender Necessary?” Le Guin references Simone de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex and also Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique (161), both of which highlight the dangers of stereotyping. Friedan’s book in particular argues against women’s domestic role, which might relate to the depiction of women as bovine. Because they are imagined to sit around the house all day and to go to college only to get their “Mrs.” degree, it might be a commonplace to assume lazy fleshiness and mental inactivity. Obviously, anyone who makes this assumption has not had charge of domestic arrangements for a household.

However, there seems to be some irony in this assumption cropping up in Le Guin’s novel. It seems to be more meaningful than the anachronism of bouffant hairdos and go-go boots in Star Trek. In describing Genly as “conventional,” Le Guin calls attention to his depiction as a patriarchal man. Deploying a conventional, patriarchal man in an alien context calls attention to the socialized attitudes he cannot shake. Women are like cows because his culture feeds him that assumption. The fact that Genly’s views become more balanced by the end, in his ability to see both masculinity and femininity in King Argaven without horror (291), suggests that growth away from misogyny represents an important character development and also part of the learning that readers can take away from the novel.

The other lesson that emerges for me in exploring Genly’s transformation is that misogyny and homophobia are used as a threat to police the boundaries of the masculine gender box. Boys and men are encouraged to “be a man,” to avoid throwing or crying like girls, and to be strong, not show emotion, and deal with other men in less emotional ways, for example, as teammates in sports institutions where a slap on the butt means only team-oriented support. Genly’s exclusively misogynist opinions regarding femininity highlight the fact that producing patriarchal masculinity requires denigrating women and any potentiality of homosexual feeling or activity. Any sign of femininity is “prying, spying, ignoble” (48), something not to be emulated or desired. However, once Genly has developed a deep friendship for the Genthenian Estraven, a friendship verging but not acting on sexual desire, he realizes that femininity in others and even in himself is not a threat. People are not easily divided up in to masculine and feminine; they are human beings, all worthy of kindness, respect, and love. Misogyny and homophobia are thus tools of hatred, and individuals seeking balance in the world need to move beyond them.

I have read Le Guin’s Left Hand of Darkness many times, and I get new ideas from it with each reading. While de Beauvoir and Friedan enacted feminism through analytical writing, Le Guin has done a masterful job in communicating feminist ideas through fiction. In this case, she provides a pathway for addressing gender inequity. We are born within gender norms, and getting outside of them is difficult if not impossible. Through the “thought experiment” of science fiction (“Is” 163), Le Guin provides a glimpse of a more self-aware gender identity where humans can spend less time denigrating the other and more time building meaningful relationships within and across gender boundaries.

Works Cited

The Left Hand of Darkness Book Cover. amazon.com. n.d. Web. 18 Jan. 2014.
Le Guin, Ursula K. “Is Gender Necessary?” Language of the Night: Essays on Fantasy and Science Fiction. Ed. Susan Wood. New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 1979. 161-69. Print.

---. The Left Hand of Darkness. New York: Ace Books, 1969. Print.