Leif Enger and musician at Enger’s launch for “I Cheerfully Refuse,” a novel set on Lake Superior.
Duluth author Leif Enger’s latest novel, “I Cheerfully Refuse,” is set in the near future in small towns along Lake Superior and on the wide water itself. The apocalypse that’s occurred isn’t some cataclysmic event, rather the novel investigates what could happen if current conditions exaggerate. Citizens are increasingly desperate and illiterate, a billionaire ruling class referred to as “astronauts” (think Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos) employ indentured servants and conduct “compliance” experiments on people in medical ships that roam the seas. Lake Superior is subject to rogue storms and increasing temperatures. The warming waters finally give up the bodies that have lain preserved in icy slumber in its depths. School children have so many behavior problems from toxic chemicals they’d been exposed to in utero, they’re rated on a Feral Comportment Continuum.
Rainy, the narrator, is a bereaved bear of a man and a musician from the small mythical town of Icebridge on Minnesota’s North Shore. (If you read Enger’s previous novel, “Virgil Wander,” Icebridge is right next to Greenstone, the mythical town where that book is set.)
Image courtesy of Amazon
Through a series of unfortunate events, Rainy ends up fleeing Icebridge on a sailboat named “Flower.” Most of the novel follows his Gulliver-like travels to the Slate Islands and Michigan’s Upper Peninsula where he encounters fog, hunger, storms, and lawless townspeople. But there’s also poetic beauty in gulls that settle on his sailboat when he plays his bass, magisterial island rocks, and unexpected kindnesses from strangers. I don’t want to give away too much more of the plot.
Things I loved: The novel’s focus on the importance of music, books and literacy. The sailboat setting, and Enger obviously knows his nautical terms, having had a boat himself in Bayfield, Wisconsin. I also appreciated the hopefulness amidst the horror.
Things I didn’t like so much: The book’s ending. Although it’s beautiful and literary, I expected more after the epic events that led up to it. Once Rainy reaches his ultimate destination, readers are only given a few vague lines about Rainy feeling a slight warm weight against his back, “a pressure like a palm between my shoulder blades.” A few dream-like images round it out and that’s it. But I still think I’ll give it a 5 on Goodreads because the writing is so gorgeous, and we Duluthians need to support each other. The world out there is already cruel enough.
I attended Enger’s Duluth launch last April and noted a contrast to his “Virgil Wander” launch six years earlier. That event was held at a local independent bookstore shortly after Enger had moved here. About 45 people attended and ate brownies and bars made by Enger’s wife, Robin.
His latest launch was held at a local brewery where people’s food order buzzers interrupted Enger’s presentation as their pizzas arrived. I’d say the audience tripled, which is a testament to the connections Enger has developed in the community during his time here. True to the musical emphasis in “I Cheerfully Refuse,” a guitarist accompanied Enger, playing through breaks in his reading.
Enger said he wasn’t sure if he could call himself an actual Duluthian yet or not. As he lies in bed at night, he still thrills at the sound of the lift bridge and ore boats in the canal communicating with each other with their horns. He thinks if he were a real Duluthian, that would all be passé.
I would answer: the trick is holding onto that wonder even after hearing the horns a thousand times. Then Enger will be a real Duluthian.
Well, it wasn’t the series itself that broke the internet in my neighborhood, rather it was a virtual presentation about it by Netflix that seemed to break it.
About a month ago, I was invited to an exclusive virtual screening of a new television series that’s being made out of the book, “All the Light We Cannot See,” by Anthony Doerr. I was invited because I rated the book on Goodreads.
However, right when the screening was supposed to begin, the internet went down at my house. Luckily, I was able to access the event via my cell phone. I sure was glad I signed up for that new unlimited data plan!
The event began with an introduction of one of the series’ main characters (Aria/Marie). Then the first installment of the four-part series was shown. It was filmed in Budapest and is set to air November 2 on Netflix. This was followed by an enthusiastic conversation between Doerr and the series director, Shawn Levy. I recorded it so I could make this blog post, complete with quotes and everything.
If you’ve been living under a literary rock, you might not know that “All the Light We Cannot See” won the Pulitzer Prize for fiction in 2015. I attribute this to Marie being one of the main characters’ names. Ha ha.
Marie-Laure is a blind girl who crosses paths with a Werner Pfennig, a German soldier, in occupied France during World War II. After her uncle disappears, Marie takes over his nightly clandestine radio broadcasts from the attic. Werner’s job is to track down resistance operations, including radio broadcasts. His life and Marie’s collide in this book, which illuminates the ways people try to be good to one another against all odds.
I gave the novel five stars on Goodreads, saying, “This book has *almost* spoiled me for any other. The writing! The metaphors! The sensory descriptions! OMG. The flipping between time periods and character points of view were confusing at times, but it all works in the end. So, keep reading. You won’t be disappointed.”
The character of Marie is played by a woman who is actually blind, “That’s valuable detail that impacts and informs every frame of this series,” Director Levy said. He conducted a global casting search for the part.
“We got thousands of videos. One of them is a unicorn of a discovery. She’s never auditioned, she’s never thought about being an actress, she’s an academic,” Levy explained.
He chose Aria Mia Loberti. She’s an American who was a graduate student in rhetoric. She learned about the audition from a former childhood teacher. Aria was a fan of the book and this is her first acting role.
Levy optioned the rights for the story after it was rejected by another firm, which decided it was too complicated to tell in a single movie.
Levy directs all four episodes, a task that Doerr called “herculean,” but Levy said this allows for aesthetic continuity between episodes.
Levy decided to direct all four out of selfishness because he loved the book. “By page 12 of episode 1 of the script . . . I said, ‘Oh no, no, I can’t share. I need to direct it and I need to direct all of it because I want live in this world and create this world in a way that feels uniform and unified across episodes.’”
Levy describes the work as one story that happens to have four episodic breaks. “I knew if I could make myself happy as a rabid fan of this book, likely I could make other fans happy. That was my whole strategy.”
Levy previously directed “Stranger Things,” a sci-fi horror series on Netflix. He also directed “The Night at the Museum” movies and “Deadpool 3.”
Doerr said that the general advice writers get is to write what they know. “I like to write into what I don’t know.” With “All the Light,” he said to Levy, “often, I’d get one-and-a-half sentences in and just like you guys, I’d have to go and build the set.” He had to research what it was like to be blind during the time period of World War II.
Levy asked Doerr how he combines lyrical storytelling with a taut narrative action. “Often, as a novelist, you’re toggling between the tiniest microscopic details, which can take a whole morning . . . and then other days, you’re trying to move totally structurally, and think, ‘where’s this tiny moment in the book falling in the larger scope of the narrative?’” Doerr said.
Levy finished Doerr’s thought with: “Because you always have to keep the narrative in your mind. Always. But you also have to be hyper-focused on this shot. It’s like zooming in and out from a macro to a micro lens.”
Many people think the book’s title comes from the blindness of the protagonist, but this was not Doerr’s intention. He thought of the title while on a train to NYC to see his editor about the cover of his current novel at the time.
“There was a guy in the seat in front of me and he was on his big 2004 cell phone. He was talking about the movie, ‘The Matrix.’ I remember that quite clearly. As we go underground as we near the city and Penn Station, his call drops, and he gets unreasonably angry. I remember thinking at the moment that what he’s doing is a miracle. He’s got this tiny set – a radio — a receiver and a transmitter no bigger than a deck of cards, and he’s expecting this conversation to work at 60 miles an hour, sending these little packets of light between radio towers at the speed of light. And who knows, the person’s he’s talking to could be in Madagascar or France. I remember thinking that what we’re all taking for granted is using this invisible light that can pass through walls. It’s a miracle and so many generations of humanity never had access to this kind of communication.
“I wrote down the title (usually titles come really late to me) but I wrote down “All the Light We Cannot See” in my little notebook that I carry in my pocket before I had anything. All I had was a girl reading a story to a boy, which is how episode 1 really begins, over the radio. I conceived of her being blind and him trapped in darkness, desperately needing this story. I just wanted to play with all the metaphorical meanings of where are we living and what our human perceptions involve.”
Levy asked Doerr whether it is surreal to have this population of people living in your head for years and then to see them burst into life on the screen. Doerr replied that he was blown away by seeing Aria’s audition video and also by the younger version of Marie, played by a child actress named Nell.
The movie stars other, more familiar actors, too. Wisconsinite Mark Ruffalo plays Daniel, Marie’s father. Hugh Laurie plays the reclusive uncle.
From being privy to episode 1, I can tell you that if you loved the book, you’ll love this series! I still can’t quite believe that I was invited to this preview.
Then the screening and conversation was over. Just as mysteriously, my internet reappeared at that instant. It made me wonder how many people got invited to this “exclusive” screening, anyway?
Unlike the man on Doerr’s train, I did not get unreasonably angry when my technology stopped working. I did get stressed out though, because I didn’t want to miss the screening. The irony does not escape me that my cell phone worked while the train man’s didn’t. And for that, we have to thank the miracle of invisible light that can pass through walls.
My and your favorite posts from the first nine years of this blog have been published in my book, “Meander North.” My 101-year-old aunt just read it and approves! She’s read a lot of books in her life, so her opinion counts. 🙂
You can purchase the book from Itasca Books. Just click on this link.
One of my writer friends wrote a thoughtful review of the book, in case my aunt isn’t enough to convince you.
Debut novelist Carol Dunbar is living a dream. She’s been slogging along in the local writing trenches of the Duluth-Superior area for years. She gained some local notoriety and then hit it big, signing with an agent and getting a two-book deal with a national publisher.
But it almost didn’t happen. During a recent Wisconsin Writers Association (WWA) conference Dunbar said that ten years into her twelve-year journey writing her novel, a flood in her office made her want to quit. She printed out a draft of her manuscript and was about to begin querying agents. She had written notes in the margins and on the backs of pages – things she wanted to address before she sent out the document.
Carol Dunbar discusses her book at its launch in Duluth, Minnesota, earlier this year.
Dunbar’s writing office lies underneath two 250-gallon water tanks that serve her off-the-grid home in the woods. The tanks developed a leak. For twenty minutes, water poured into her 10 x 10-foot office and onto her manuscript.
“Water is death to all things writing,” Dunbar said. Her draft was illegible. The books lining her office were destroyed. She couldn’t see how to recover from this catastrophe, and she began to cry.
At some point in the devastation, the voice of one of her characters cut through to her. It was Ethan Arnasson, the father-in-law of Elsa, the novel’s main character. Dunbar said that Ethan told her, “Carol, just give it time.” She knew he was right and felt giddy that, “My fictional character was giving me personal life advice!”
Lucky for us, Dunbar persisted. “The Net Beneath Us,” is set in remote northern Wisconsin, where Elsa, a cossetted city girl turned country widow, must determine how to carry on with two her two children in the unfinished home her husband was building for them. To cope with the challenges she faces, Elsa forges a deeper relationship with the land, learning from the trees her husband loved.
As the book jacket says, the novel is a lyrical exploration of loss, marriage, parenthood, and self-reliance; a tale of how the natural world – without and within us – offers healing, if we can learn where to look. The story is written in a rotating third-person perspective and covers the course of a year.
As a writer with a nature bent, myself, I loved Dunbar’s descriptions of Elsa’s growing connection to the forest that surrounds her home. From a floating puffball that seems sentient, to the underground fungal connections that foster communication among trees, to a mysterious white stag, nature reigns supreme in the story.
However, be prepared. A slow grief lays heavy over it, also. Dunbar’s true account about her husband, which appeared this year in the New York TimesModern Love column, offers a huge hint about the source of her dark inspiration.
I gave the book five stars on Goodreads. The writing is so beautiful, I hesitate to nitpick. But it wouldn’t be a full review without some nits. I found that the middle section dragged just a bit. Through multiple examples, this part highlights all the various ways that Elsa feels out of place in her off-the-grid home. I felt like there were too many of these instances. I found myself thinking, “We get it, already!” The other nit occurs near the end where the symbolism of the unfinished second story of Elsa’s home is compared to an unfinished aspect of Else’s psyche. I felt like it would have been stronger and more “literary” not to spell this out for readers so clearly.
At the WWA conference, Dunbar said her book editor encouraged her to change the ending from one “where the dog dies,” (a no-no in literary fiction these days) to something else. After much thought and gnashing of teeth, Dunbar did this, opting instead for the drama of a lost child. This revision works, and it anchors the story even more strongly into the trees and to the white deer.
So, this local woman made good, and we are all the richer for it. I can’t wait to see what gifts her next book will hold for us.
I’ve been a member of an all-women book group for many years. This past fall, we read “The Wolf’s Trail: An Ojibwe Story, Told by Wolves” by Native American author, Thomas D. Peacock. Like my novel, “Eye of the Wolf,” Peacock’s story is told from the viewpoint of wolves. Set in northern Wisconsin and Minnesota, it details the long parallel relationship between wolves and the Ojibwe people.
Peacock is a retired associate professor of education who taught and served as an administrator at the University of Minnesota Duluth for thirteen years. Several of his books are Minnesota Book Award winners. He’s well-respected in academic and literary circles, plus, he’s a member of the Fond du Lac Band of Lake Superior Chippewa.
We enjoyed “The Wolf’s Trail” so much, we invited Tom to speak to our group. Despite the pandemic, he and his wife Betsy came out from their home in Duluth on a cold wintry evening and met with us outside around a backyard fire.
I wish I had taken notes about our discussion then, but I was too busy tending the fire. Lucky for me (and you), after our meeting, Tom and Betsy invited us to their other home in Red Cliff, Wisconsin, in the spring for a potluck dinner and discussion of another book of his, “Beginnings: The Homeward Journey of Donovan Manypenny.” Tom offered to show us some of the locations where the novel is set on the Ojibwe reservation there. We readily agreed to this generous offer.
The Donovan Manypenny book is a poignant coming-home story. It’s about a boy who lived with his Ojibwe grandparents near Red Cliff until they died when he was ten. Shunted into the foster system, abused and rejected, Donovan is finally adopted by a loving white couple who ultimately moved to Boston, where he remained for forty-three years until the whispers of his beginnings lured him back home to the reservation. During his journey, Donovan followed the same historic westward migration trail that the Ojibwe travelled in their search for a new land “where food grows on the water.” (This refers to wild rice.)
Finding a date that worked for my book group members pushed our meeting until after the solstice. The weather was beautiful for a drive along the South Shore of Lake Superior to Red Cliff. Tom spent his summers with a great uncle and aunt in Red Cliff, and Betsy is a Red Cliff band member, so that’s what drew them to live there.
Here’s what happened.
Blueberry Road
Blueberry Road winds its gravelly way through the Red Cliff Reservation woods, dotted with FEMA trailer homes and other modest dwellings. After meeting at Tom’s home, we caravanned down the road, stopping at the trailhead for the new Frog Bay Tribal National Park after Blueberry Rd. veered and turned into Frog Bay Road.
Tom explained that his great uncle and aunt lived on Blueberry Road, which served as his inspiration for the setting of Donovan’s grandparents’ home. “My aunt and uncle seemed ancient to me, but I was only ten at the time. They didn’t have any running water, no electricity. They had an outhouse. Like many homes at that time, they had lilacs and weeping willows in the yard. That was the setting I thought of for my book,” he said.
The house where Donovan grew up on Blueberry Road isn’t actually on that road but is off busy Highway 13 a few miles away. Tom showed us that later during our tour.
An older couple who Tom met while he was teaching an Ojibwe language class in Bemidji years ago served as inspiration for Donovan’s grandparents. “They were just old-time native people who spoke the language and ended up teaching the language. The husband would drive the wife and then he’d sit with her in class. They always sat in the back.”
Tom said people who are familiar with the area often think he named Donovan Manypenny and his grandparents after the street in Bayfield called Manypenny Avenue. “But I didn’t,” he said. “There’s a lot of native people from the White Earth Reservation with that last name. I just liked it.”
While driving to our next stop, I had the luck (or was it planning?) to be in Tom’s car with a couple other book group ladies. We discussed different parts of the book that struck us. One I particularly liked was the conversation that Donovan’s grandparents have after they’re dead. The grandmother died first and after the grandfather dies, he apologizes to her for not being able to take care of Donovan anymore. But he’s so matter of fact about being dead – no wailing, no gnashing of teeth, just, “I’m dead, that’s all, I guess . . . maybe we’ll just have to help him from here.”
Tom said, “I wondered about putting that in there. But I wanted to write it, so I did. I took it out at one point, then I put it back in again. I worried that maybe people would think it was too weird.”
We told him we were glad he included it. Plus, it set up a pattern for other (living) characters to offer their viewpoints later in the story. That brought our conversation around to “Chapter 7, Ramona of the Wolf Clan.” This was another section Tom thought twice about including because Donovan, who is married by this time and is on his solitary westward migration, finds himself attracted to Ramona, gets drunk, and almost has an affair with her.
“Some people wonder why I put the Ramona chapter in there. It seems out of character for Donovan. I thought it was important that he be tempted, challenged, to show his humanity and that he isn’t a saint. And the chapter does explain, too, the difficult position that a lot of native women are put into.”
By this time, we reached our next stop.
St. Francis Catholic Church
The quaint red and white church in town was the inspiration for the church that Donovan and his grandparents attended, and the cemetery where Donovan’s relatives are buried. Tom said the church was familiar to him as a child. “I’ve gone to a million funerals in that church.”
Across the street sits a decrepit school building that he envisioned as Donovan’s school.
Standing in the church parking lot, we discussed Tom’s own westward migration, which he took thirty-five years ago when he finished college in Boston. (He graduated from Harvard with a master’s and doctorate in education.) At the time, he did not know he would write a book about his travels – he just needed to go home.
“After school, I had to pack up everything and leave. The route west just seemed like the logical thing to do. One of my brothers came out and helped me pack up. I had an old rez car and he works on cars, so he helped me fix it up enough that I’d make it home.”
Shore of Lake Superior with view of Sand Island
Our next stop was at the end of a road near Tom and Betsy’s home. We gathered at a parking area near a small beach with a view of the nearby Apostle Islands. Near the end of the novel, Donovan, his wife, and daughter visit Lake Superior one morning to offer tobacco. They prayed and Donovan thanked the Creator for everything, “For our lives and all the blessings we have had. Just then when I prayed a slight breeze came up and caused ripples on the water. I know it was our Creator answering,” Donovan said.
Tom explained he was thinking of this beach during that scene. It’s also the same beach where he and Betsy married.
The Peacock’s Living Room
After our potluck dinner, we sat down for an extended conversation. Tom let us in on some other changes he made to the story before it was published and gave us insights into its main characters.
He explained that in his original version, Donovan discovered he had Stage Four pancreatic cancer, which is basically a death sentence. “So that’s why he made his journey home – to die. But my publisher, Jim Perlman, liked Donovan so much, he didn’t want him to die, so I had to rewrite it.” (Perlman is the publisher for Holy Cow! Press.)
When he reached Red Cliff, Donovan discovers he has a sister, Maggie. Tom said she is a character in a previous story he published, where he described her journey from the foster care system in Minneapolis to Red Cliff. I was glad he mentioned that because I noticed the lack of her backstory in the Donovan Manypenny book. I will have to find that story and read it!
The character of Uncle Eddie, who orients Donovan to Red Cliff and his past, has been featured in many of Tom’s short stories. He is also the main character in Tom’s next book, which is coming out soon from Dovetailed Press.
“Eddie is 86 years old and the story is written in first person like a memoir. Eddie’s been my favorite character. Donovan is also in the story, but more as a cameo,” Tom offered.
I’ll end this extended post (thanks for sticking with it!) with some Q & As from our living room conversation. The second question was especially enlightening, and Tom’s response seemed out of character for this soft-spoken, mild-mannered author:
Growing up, did you experience the same disconnect with your heritage that Donovan did?
“No. I grew up on the Fond du Lac Reservation and I’m very comfortable there. Even when I was out East, I hung out with native people. I think when you’re educated you can be comfortable in both worlds (the white world and native world). I feel safe on Fond du Lac. Those people who are shooting each other are all my relatives. But because I was blessed with an education – I feel comfortable in the academic world, too.”
So, you didn’t find education to be a barrier between you and your native heritage, similar to the main character in Sherman Alexie’s “The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian?”
“I think I was kind of an enigma because I liked to drink, fight, and raise hell. During prom, I was out stealing gas from all the cars and getting straight A’s at the same time. I could do that and get away with it. I didn’t feel stigmatized at all – because if they did, I’d beat the crap outta them!”
Do you think things really got better for the little boy that Donovan comforts on Manitoulin Island after they went to the police?
“No, I don’t think so. That’s a really common thing with a mom and her boyfriend – the kid kinda takes all the crap. I had to leave it at that. There are a lot of native kids who are of mixed race, black and native, and I wanted to have that in a character. It’s hard for them. They get picked on by everybody and they’re never accepted anywhere.”
What’s your writing process?
“When I’m writing, I’ll write a chapter a day. I’ll get up at five in the morning and write until seven or eight at night. Then I’ll ‘force’ Betsy to read it before we go to bed because I want someone to read it. (Laughs) And then I’ll work on it for about a week, editing.”
Do you know many people who have come back to the rez?
“In Fond du Lac, I had a nephew who showed up right around his eighteenth birthday from California. He just came and banged on the door one day. He was the spitting image of one of my brothers who passed away 20 years ago. He scared the crap out of all of us!
“One of our nieces showed up when she was eighteen, too. Then when they were sniffing around for someone to date, we had to set them down and tell them who they shouldn’t be hanging out with because, ‘That’s your first cousin.’ We had to do that with both of them.”
Why didn’t you describe Donovan’s physical characteristics much in your book?
“I couldn’t visualize what he looked like. That’s one thing I had to add in as an edit. Same thing with Maggie. I couldn’t visualize her. The characters often appear to me as voices rather than a physical presence.”
And so, sated on Betsy’s fry bread, filled with a new appreciation for Tom’s work and a deeper understanding of native issues, we said our goodbyes and each began our own journeys, homeward.
My book group with Tom in his living room. From left to right, me, Konnie, Sherry, Sharon, Tom, Judy and Diane.
This review is not by me, but was written by a poet friend of mine, Jan Chronister. She reviewed “Going Coastal: An Anthology of Lake Superior Short Stories.” One of my short stories is in the book and I helped shepherd the project to life.
The “Going Coastal” anthology sporting its snazzy Northeastern MN Book Awards seal.
Full disclosure: we exchanged books for honest reviews. You can find my review of “Decenia,” Jan’s book of poetry, on Goodreads.
*
I’m a poet and rarely write poems longer than a page, so I find short stories intimidating. The stories in Going Coastal proved to me what I have been missing as a reader. Not only am I awed by the talent and craft it takes to create such prize-winning stories, but the time I invested in reading the anthology has rewarded me with new knowledge and insights.
Especially impressive are two young authors, Teresa Allison-Price and Maxwell Reagan, whose stories are their first published pieces. Without reading their bios, I would never have guessed this fact. After reading Johnna Suihkonen’s “What a Fire Weighs,” I will never look at an agate the same way again. Her metaphorical piece with its poetic feel reached out to me. Marie Zhuikov’s “Water Witch” kept me mesmerized with its well-paced narrative and intriguing subject matter. “The Urge for Going” should be required reading for anyone planning a trip up the North Shore. Following in the steps of Phil Fitzpatrick’s protagonist will deepen the experience and give every stop special meaning.
Two stories brought me to tears. I have always felt the natural world was where we should worship and Evan Sasman’s “The Painting” reinforced my belief. “Superior Mordant” by Judy Budreau pulled me in and had well-developed characters I could relate to.
Eric Chandler’s “The Heart Under the Lake” could only be written by someone who loves Lake Superior and the lands around it. It is a satisfying, well-crafted coming of age story that blends science with verbal artistry and maritime history. It was a delight to read.
I sensed autobiographical elements in many of these stories. That, admittedly, is one reason writers write. Another reason, perhaps not always acknowledged, is that they hope to enable readers to discover (or rediscover) thoughts and emotions that are often hidden under the cares of daily living. I’m glad I spent time with this collection that fosters self-reflection through superb short stories.
Back in 2010, I Googled my parents’ names, just to see if any information about them was out on the internet. They were aging, and I wanted to ensure their safety, both online and off.
I was also curious. Neither of them had ever owned or operated a computer. Heck, even operating a cell phone was a stretch, and I’m not sure either of them ever used the one they bought for emergencies, despite my repeated and patient instructions. Would anything be on the internet about people who had never been on the internet themselves?
I was surprised to find my father’s name (Howard Pramann) associated with a blog called, “My Musical Family” by Joy Riggs, a writer based in Northfield, Minn. The post was titled, “Music: The Anti-Drug.” It featured an interview with my father about his experience playing the cornet under the instruction of Joy’s great-grandfather, G. Oliver Riggs (the G stands for George, a name Mr. Riggs did not like so did not use). Mr. Riggs was adamantly against smoking, especially since his musicians needed good lungs to play. His anti-smoking lectures no doubt kept many a young man from taking up the habit.
After reading the post, I vaguely recalled my parents recently mentioning something about my dad being interviewed, but I didn’t understand that it was for a blog.
My father, Howard Pramann, in his spiffy band outfit in St. Cloud in 1937.
I shared the post with my family members and parents, and wrote a thank-you e-mail to the author. She responded quickly, and we corresponded a few more times. She explained she was writing a book about G. Oliver Riggs, who was an influential and prolific “Minnesota Music Man.” He developed and directed bands in communities like St. Cloud and Crookston, Minn., and even in Montana. My father, Howard, played in the St. Cloud band for eight years, from age 10 until he graduated high school.
Late this summer, I received a message from Joy through my author website. She noticed I was a presenter at the North Shore Readers and Writers Festival in Grand Marais, which she planned to attend. She was looking forward to meeting there, plus she had published the book about her great-grandfather.
After receiving her message, I looked at Joy’s author page to see how I could lay hands on a copy of her book. I noticed she was doing a signing at a local bookstore a few weeks before the festival. I told her I would see her at her signing and later at the festival.
We met at the bookstore and had a nice chat. Not long after, I read her book, entitled “Crackerjack Bands and Hometown Boosters: The story of a Minnesota Music Man.” (Noodin Press, 2019.)
What immediately impressed me is how Joy interweaves her personal story with information about her great-grandfather’s life. This made the book much more interesting, as readers are able to experience the thrill of discovery that Joy found during her research process. Readers also learn that this book was her return to journalism after many years of subsuming her career to her growing family’s needs.
Her vivid prose won me over to the importance of her topic – bringing to life a bygone era, when public bands were the best form of entertainment in town and brought communities together. Although G. Oliver was a stern taskmaster, Joy’s book shows how his methods and discipline influenced his young pupils in a positive way throughout their lives.
Since my father was one of those pupils, it was thrilling for me to see photos of the venues where he might have played, and learn about the people he performed alongside. I was particularly interested in seeing pictures of my father’s piano teacher, who was G. Oliver’s wife, Islea.
Reading Joy’s book made me wish my father (who died in 2016) had spoken more about his community band experiences. When I complained about having to practice the required half-hour per day on my French horn in junior high and high school, he could have retorted with things like, “When I was your age, we had to practice four hours per day. What are you complaining about?”
I would have liked to hear him describe the contests his band won, and the parades they marched in. But through Joy’s book, I was able to follow the band’s triumphs and challenges across the years.
Joy describes her interview with my father in Chapter 13. He’s mentioned again on page 228 as playing a cornet duet before an audience of 5,000 people in a theater in St. Cloud.
To my surprise, Joy even refers to me on page 200, although not by name, when she discusses our initial correspondence.
Of course, I’m going to like any book that has me in it (ha, ha). But even if I wasn’t included, I’d still recommend Joy’s book for anyone who is interested in Minnesota’s musical history and the important role the arts can play in people’s lives. I gave it five out of five stars on Goodreads.
Phil Fitzpatrick talks about his book “Hawks on High” recently at Zenith Bookstore in Duluth, Minn.
It’s about time someone wrote a book of poems about Hawk Ridge in Duluth. And it took a newcomer to do it. Author Phil Fitzpatrick (Hawks on High: Everyday Miracles in a Hawk Ridge Season) has only been coming to the popular bird migration counting station on the ridge for two years. However, with his “new eyes,” that was long enough for him to amass enough poems for this book. His poems are combined with pen and ink drawings by artist Penny Perry.
My favorite poem is “Pringles Prize.” It describes how the hawk ridge workers use Pringles potato chip cans to contain the hawks they catch in mist nets on the ridge. Once the hawks are slipped into the cans, their legs can be easily banded for later identification. Before a hawk is released, the birder eases it “from its cardboard confines” for a short show-and-tell to the gathered bird-watchers. Then it “lifts above wide-eyed kids who now love hawks even more than Pringles.”
Love the wonder and subtle humor of that ending! I gave “Hawks on High” five out of five stars on Goodreads.
The first version of this book, published in 1987 and later made into a video, helped me understand my own culture. Before reading it, I never understood that the “long good-bye” was something unique to my state of Minnesota. (The long good-bye is where it takes at least three tries to leave a friend’s home before they will actually let you go.)
Also helpful was the “angle rule,” which describes how many Minnesotans talk to each other without actually looking at each other. Instead, they stand at 90-degree angles, looking off at some mysterious distant point while conversing. I had seen that many times and just thought that’s how everyone did it. I was not conscious that these were Minnesota “things.”
I watched the “How to Talk Minnesotan” video so many times, I had the lines memorized. So when I heard the book had been updated (in 2013), I put it on my list to read.
In reading the recent edition, it didn’t seem like a whole lot had changed. Although it now contains sections on Tweets, Facebook, and smart phones, the same lines from the video are there on the page.
However, in reading this new version, I realized something that nagged me with the first version, which is that this is not a book that encompasses the whole of my dear state. The traits described in it are more common in farm country. I’d say that’s about from Hinkley, Minnesota, and south. With token mentions of smelt and lutefisk, this book has a bit of relevance to northern Minnesota, BUT, there’s not one mention of a sauna etiquette, iron ore mining, Lake Superior, Ole and Lena jokes, or wilderness camping. It lacks northern nuances.
A more accurate title for this book would be “How to talk Mid- to Southern-Minnesotan.” If you live north of Hinkley, reading it will be helpful, but it won’t get you the whole way. If a third version is ever done, the author should come on up here and talk to us northerners for some new material, don’t cha know.
Sinclair Lewis. Image courtesy of the Encyclopaedia Brittanica.
I was motivated to read “Babbitt” because the author lived in my hometown in the 1940s for a time. I periodically drive by the house Sinclair Lewis used to own and it made me curious to read his works.
Also, my mother had a brush with Lewis. As a home economics major at the University of Minnesota, to gain experience she worked as a cook for a professor who had Lewis over for dinner one night. As I recall, my mother was not impressed with the author, saying that his face was pock-marked, he seemed unhappy, and was inordinately self-absorbed.
Although the book and its slang are dated, I found the tale eerily relevant, given the current political climate. It’s not so much a story as it is an extended character study of George Babbitt, a real estate broker in the mythical town of Zenith (which is patterned after Sauk Centre, MN). And if you ever wondered how white male privilege came about, this story reads like a propaganda packet for it and it will enlighten you.
During Babbitt’s time, cigar lighters in cars were a big deal. Ads were written in flowery language with fountain pens, and protracted descriptions of electrical outlet covers could make their way into novels. “Boosterism” was big. Prominent community members were expected to extol the virtues of their small towns far and wide to encourage business and prosperity.
Babbitt is a 48-year-old economic booster who faces a mid-life crisis – kind of like if Donald Trump ever got a conscience or sought spiritual enlightenment. The story follows him from his rise to the ultimate booster, to his decline after his friend is jailed for a shooting. Babbitt begins to question the social culture of his town and he rebels to the point of drinking heavily, having an affair, and consorting with **gasp** liberals and men deemed as socialists.
Babbitt is brought back to the fold of social respectability after his wife contracts appendicitis and the community rallies around his family. However, after his wife’s recovery, the old rebellion starts in on him again. He feels powerless to act on it because he’s finally back in the good graces of the town’s powerful men.
It is at this time [spoiler alert!] when his son elopes with the neighbor girl. After they come back home and announce their news, the shocked families start expressing their disapproval, except for Babbitt, who takes his son aside into another room. Babbitt praises him for having the guts to buck society and do the things that Babbitt was never strong enough to do. Thus, he passes the torch of social rebellion onto his son to carry.
My favorite scene in the book involves the subtle satirical humor at a dinner party where all the men complain about small town hicks who repeat the same things over and over again during their dinner parties because they are so uncultured. Each big city cultured Zenith man at the table expresses this same complaint, just in different words.
Although Lewis is an astute observer of human nature and his story is meant to be a cutting social commentary, the language makes it rather quaint today. It’s full of words like “zip” and “pep,” and such shocking swear words as “golly,” and “rats.”
But I liked the story. I gave it three out of five stars on Goodreads. I feel I’ve done my duty in reading a local author. Next time I drive by his former house, I’ll utter a couple of “gollies” in his honor.
We met at the bookstore and had a nice chat. Not long after, I read her book, entitled “Crackerjack Bands and Hometown Boosters: The story of a Minnesota Music Man.” (Noodin Press, 2019.)
The first version of this book, published in 1987 and later made into a video, helped me understand my own culture. Before reading it, I never understood that the “long good-bye” was something unique to my state of Minnesota. (The long good-bye is where it takes at least three tries to leave a friend’s home before they will actually let you go.)
Marie's Meanderings 