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Andre Dubus
Yesterday we saw We Don't Live Here Anymore, a new movie based on two short stories by Andre Dubus, "Adultery" and one with the title of the movie. Like In the Bedroom, it's an intense character-driven movie, quite fine. I'm happy to say that I was an early champion of Dubus' work, giving his collection Adultery and Other Choices, with the stories here, a rave review in The New Leader magazine at a time before the larger press was aware of him. Dubus even wrote me a thank you note and we had a brief correspondence. Obviously I love his work and today as much as when I discovered him in the 1960s. I'll see this movie again. The critics don't like it as much as the first, although I like it a tad better perhaps, and The New Yorker did call it the best movie of the year so far.

Got some work done yesterday downtown, with my laptop at a coffee house before the movie. Some more lyrics, a start on a novel chapter. Baching it for a couple days and hope to get lots of work done. Onward.
    
8/31/2004 02:54:34 AM | 0 comments

Monday, August 30, 2004  
Sunny Monday
Going to campus this afternoon, take care of some things, hang out in a coffee shop with the laptop and get some writing done, then meet Harriet for a movie, We Don't Live Here Anymore, another film based on Andre Dubus' stories. New Yorker loved it.

Scribbled lyrics for the new opera first thing in the morning since I awoke with them in my head. Thinking a lot about part two of the novel. Continuing to add stories to the anthology manuscript. All projects crawling forward. Onward.   
8/30/2004 12:53:20 PM | 0 comments

Sunday, August 29, 2004  
Sunday II
Late afternoon energy, did a first polish of act one of libretto.   
8/29/2004 07:40:37 PM | 0 comments

 
Sunday
Lazy. A tad of work on the anthology.   
8/29/2004 03:51:40 PM | 0 comments

Saturday, August 28, 2004  

Olympics: Almost over but for the party    
8/28/2004 11:52:36 PM | 0 comments

 

5000m and 1500m golds
A highlight of the games.    
8/28/2004 11:48:04 PM | 0 comments

 

Argentina basketball gold
and the USA millionaires were relatively gracious in getting bronze.    
8/28/2004 11:46:42 PM | 0 comments

 
Politically incorrect
Due to miscommunication, both the USA and Lithuanian basketball teams, playing for the bronze medal, show up in white uniforms. The USA must switch -- but their other uniforms are already packed. Game delay while they find them and unpack them and get the players into them. Is it insensitive to suggest that the black players on the USA will not be mistaken for the white players from Lithuania, no matter what they wear?   
8/28/2004 12:02:29 PM | 0 comments

 
Varmints libretto
I have a good draft of act one. Should find time to polish this weekend.   
8/28/2004 09:15:25 AM | 0 comments

Friday, August 27, 2004  

Joaquin Miller & Varmints
After weeks away from it, today I returned to the libretto-in-progress Varmints, based on my stage play -- and love what I have. This is a dark comedy about greed set in the Oregon gold fields in the 1840s, featuring the historic character Cincinnatus Hiner "Joaquin" Miller, whom I turn into the poet as clown. I worked some more on the libretto today and now am one scene, I think, from the end of act one. I hope John likes this stuff as much as I do. Onward.    
8/27/2004 02:47:24 PM | 0 comments

 
Update
Another short chapter done. Can I finish the draft before school starts? A horse race. But I'll be close. Meanwhile waiting for more stories from the typist. 8 down, 7 to go in batch one; 10 more stories in batch two. Once I drop the stories in, the manuscript is done and ready for the copy editor and another reading by myself. Then to the designer and we're close to home. Onward.   
8/27/2004 08:11:01 AM | 0 comments

Thursday, August 26, 2004  
50 yrs. a fan
It occurred to me there's a lot of music I've been listening to regularly for half a century now. In rough order of my becoming a fan in the 1950s and early 1960s:

• Little Walter
• Tom Lehrer
• The Weavers
• Brownie McGhee and Sonny Terry
• Gerry Mulligan
• Horace Silver
• Ray Charles
• Ramblin' Jack Elliott

End of an era    

Gold in overtime!
But NBC hasn't even shown it yet, delaying the match 3 hrs. All the other games were live.
    

Gold for Greece
Always good to see the host country, especially a small one, get gold. Here it is Fani Halkia in the 400m hurdles. She was such an underdog that the cynics in the media suspect drugs -- but she says her Greek soul is responsible. I bet she's right. The Harvard lady came in next to last.    

Rowing-8: USA men gold, women silver
Several of the women live in Portland. They are not "local" athletes.    

First gold for USA beach volleyball    

Paraguay 3, Iraq 1
Iraq next plays Italy for bronze.    

Class act
Alexei Nemov tries to quiet down an unruly crowd, which interrupted gymnastics for ten minutes in loud protest of Nemov's score on high bars, which clearly should have been higher. The least upset man in the building appeared to be Nemov. Well, he already has 12 Olympic medals. He sat quietly, a wise smile suggested now and again on his lips, as if he's been through all this before. What a far cry from the Russian diva who sulked and made accusations and stormed into retirement full of anger. This guy is a class act.
    

China: women's tennis doubles gold    

Greece: 20k walk gold    

Tears, tragedy & triumph
The women's marathon in Athens, a brutal course. Miles and miles of uphill, much more than at any established venues. Paula Radcliffe, the recent prodigy, world record holder, the favorite, tens of thousands of English fans there to root for her. Deena Kastor, the American, believing she has a long shot at a medal, hangs in at 18th in the early stages of the race, which is led by Radcliffe. A hot oppressive day. Radcliffe runs near the front for the first half of the race, then fades to 3rd, 4th, but comes back to hang in at 3rd during the steep climb at the end of the hills. But suddenly, without warning (her normal head-bobbing running style looking stressful), she stops, bends over, tries to start again, stops, breaks into tears, and finally sits on a curb to weep.

After the summit, six miles of downhill and Kastor slowly moves forward. She's 10th, 8th. And then 6th. And 4th, with the bronze medal in her sight. She moves to third, a medal, before entering the stadium where Americans go crazy cheering her on. Before the end, during her last fifty yards, she runs in tears, not Radcliffe's tears of course, tears of joy. She won the bronze medal.

Two women in tears at the marathon, one from tragedy, one from triumph.    

8 games. 8 shutouts.
The amazing USA softball team plays Australia tomorrow for gold. They've already beat them twice, 10-0 and 5-0. I love underdogs. Should I root for Australia?    

Feelin' good
The more I mull over this new structure for the novel, the better I like it. Otherwise there's too much relative dead time in the middle of the story. With a two-part structure, I can skip it and bring forth only what is essential. It's so easy to get stuck into chronology when telling a story. Now I think I can wrap up part one in a few days, print it, polish it a tad and move on into part two, where most of the fireworks are. Renewed energy! Onward.
    

Go, Harvard!
Harvard-educated Brenda Taylor makes it to semifinals in 400m hurdles.     

Amazing Iraq makes semifinals
where 3 of the 4 teams left will win medals.    

Team spirit over Ego: track stars take note
Michael Phelps gives up his position on final relay team. "We came into this meet as a team and we're going to leave it as a team," Phelps said. "It's the right thing to do."    

USA 41, World 0
The amazing streak continues with a 3-0 shutout of Chinese Taipei.     

Practice makes perfect    

4 gold and counting
Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.    

New world record
set by USA swim team for the 4x200 freestyle relay. Meanwhile, in a major upset, the USA women's volleyball team lost to the Dominican Republic.
    

Venus upset
by France's Mary Pierce, 6-4, 6-4. Upsets make the Olympics go round.    

USA 31, World 0
After 5 games, no one has yet to score a run against the USA women's softball team.    

USA upsets Australia for gold    

Aussies tie USA
but USA soccer women still move on to quarterfinals.    

Hometown lady wins gold!
Muriel Zagunis of Beaverton gets the fencing gold.    

Greek gold
in men's synchronized diving, a wonderful upset.    

USA beats Japan    

Iraq soccer team wins again    

William Blake
From the wonderful website Today In Literature:

On this day in 1827 William Blake died at the age of sixty-nine. Blake's last years passed more or less as his others: in such poverty and obscurity that his burial in Bunhill Fields was largely unnoticed and on borrowed money -- nineteen shillings for an unmarked grave, the body nine feet down, stacked on top of three others, and eventually followed by four more.

Read the full story.
    

Good news from LaLaLand!
Ah, some good news out of Hollywood. Notice the psychology here -- how In the Bedroom paved the way. This story by Andre Dubus, by the way, is one of his best.

By Bob Tourtellotte

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - It has been a long, sometimes painful 26 years for writer Larry Gross and his film "We Don't Live Here Anymore," but when the independent movie debuts on Friday, a part of his soul will have finally been saved.



The movie, which earned Gross the Sundance Film Festival (news - web sites)'s writing award this year, was a labor of love for most of his career, but by Hollywood's action- and effects-filled standards, its human drama of troubled marriages and infidelity failed the test of big studio commercial viability.

It wasn't until the emergence of another independent film, 2001's "In the Bedroom," and four stars who would trade a big paycheck to work in "We Don't Live Here Anymore," that Gross's screenplay finally felt some life breathing into it.

"This project, and a piece of my soul, were rescued by independent films," Gross told Reuters in a recent interview.

"In the Bedroom" was significant because it is based on work by the novelist Andre Dubus, and "We Don't Live Here Anymore," also, is based on work by Dubus.

When the former movie, directed by Todd Fields, earned Oscar nominations for best film and for actress Sissy Spacek, suddenly every producer had to have his hand on a screenplay from Dubus' work. Gross and his partners already had one.

"I knew "In the Bedroom" would clear a field. Everybody wants to follow on the heels of something else. That's just one of the ways (Hollywood) works," Gross said.

Then came the stars: Mark Ruffalo, Naomi Watts, Laura Dern (news) and Peter Krause. With a relatively small budget of $2 million, the movie was put into production.

GAMES PEOPLE PLAY

Ruffalo portrays Jack Linden and Laura Dern is his wife, Terry. Jack is having an affair with the wife, Edith, of his best friend, Hank Evans. Watts and Krause play Edith and Hank.

There are no special effects in the movie, and the only action that goes on is behind the other couple's back because Jack, by having an affair with Edith, is playing mind games with Terry. He is coaxing her into having her own affair.

Hank, a struggling writer, is having his own affairs, and as a result he either doesn't know or doesn't particularly care what Edith is doing with her days.

As "We Don't Live Here Anymore" plays out, audiences see the consequences -- good and bad -- of relationship games people play with one another.

"The stories are just incredibly truthful about the emotional needs ... that apply to anyone anywhere. Everyone is a creature of needs, and those needs drive them," Gross said.

Gross said he wrote the first draft when he was 26 years-old and has since gone on to make some of the same mistakes in his life that Jack, Terry, Edith and Frank make.

But all those errors helped him continually fine tune and craft the screenplay that earned the Waldo Salt Screenwriting Award at Sundance, which is named after the writer of acclaimed movies like "Coming Home," "Serpico" and "Midnight Cowboy."

Gross has had a successful career in Hollywood writing for both television and film with credits for "True Crime" and "Crime and Punishment in Suburbia," among others. But "We Don't Live Here Anymore" is especially gratifying because it is his.



"Every writer will tell you that if your own material isn't getting made, it's not very satisfying. The hunger to express yourself, especially the work you value, doesn't go away," he said.

Perseverance is the name of the game.
    

What a rush!
John sent me a complete file for scene one in Dark Mission -- and for the first time I am able to hear the full orchestration with the vocal line (he had to tell me how to set up the software for this) and what a rush it is to hear it! Man, I can't wait to sit down and listen to the entire opera this way. Very cool software that does this. Very talented composer who writes this. More files, John, more files!
    

Dummy Land
I've been reading Graham Greene's brilliant novel The End of the Affair in an increasing state of shock. It's been decades since I read it -- long enough to forget a few things when I saw the movie a year or so ago, then saw it again on cable recently, a viewing that led me back to the novel. I was shocked to learn -- but should have guessed -- how much Hollywood changed the book in order to replace textured complexity with simplicity any fool can see.

I'll have more to say after I finish the book but let me point out several changes. The book, in part, is the story of a jealous man who hires a detective to follow his ex-lover. Who is she seeing now? The time is World War II and he's also wrestling with the meaning of religious faith, as his lover was at the time.

In the movie, the detective has a young son disfigured by a strawberry birthmark on his face. The woman has been visiting a priest -- is this her new lover?

In the novel, the woman has been visiting a Rationalist/Atheist -- and it is he who has the strawberry birthmark!

I'll talk about the consequences of these changes later. Suffice it to say for now that here, as more recently in The Hours, LaLaLand apparently fears that its audience is too stupid to get the original dramatic tensions in the story and therefore goes out of its way to simplify them. Changing an atheist to a priest, of course, suggests other motives as well -- man, would that have been a story conference to listen in on!

At any rate, I love the novel and think considerably less of the movie, which is perhaps why one should never go to the novel after a film. Except for From Here to Eternity, I don't know if I've ever seen a movie better than its source novel.
    
8/10/2004 01:02:32 PM | 0 comments

Monday, August 09, 2004  
New column
My new column at Screenwriters Utopia is called Understanding Spec Scripts.   
8/9/2004 11:35:33 PM | 0 comments

 

Composers
Man, it's hard to be a composer. Put lyrics to another of Robin's songs and noticed, after 6 or 8 songs finished so far, how some are beginning to sound too much alike, especially rhythmically. John in the opera has a gift for keeping the music both fresh and yet reflective, returning to prior themes. Robin is getting a tad monotonous, I think, and I kindly suggested as much. Maybe it's harder to write pop songs than opera ha ha! More restrictions, like it's harder to write a great sonnet than free verse.
    
8/9/2004 09:17:58 PM | 3 comments

 
Back in gear
A good morning, finished a chapter and also lyrics to a new song by Robin. He must be out of his slump, he sent three in last few days, so I have two more to go. Plan to get back to the new libretto this week and the grief project as well. But the novel stays front burner for the rest of the summer.

Picked up tickets to Miss Saigon and PSU's first football game, good seats for both, both in September. Wed morning the Olympics actually begin early with a morning game (our time) between the women's soccer team and Greece. I'm ready for the Olympics. One actually sees good sportsmanship there now and again.

Speaking of which: Barry Sanders inducted into NFL hall of fame yesterday. He's the guy who when asked why he handed the ball to the ref when he scored, rather than doing one of the fashionable endzone dances, he said, "Act you've been there before and will be there again, act like it's no big deal." Class!!!!

John Elway has class, too. He ended his induction speech with the Mile High Salute to his fans in Denver.

I miss jocks with class in these ego-maniacal days.   
8/9/2004 03:15:09 PM | 0 comments

 

Perseids 2004
Astronomers predict an unusually good meteor shower this year, best this Wed-Thur night. The moon is new and will not interfere. I plan to check it out.    
8/9/2004 08:32:25 AM | 0 comments

 

The sun, the sun!
Forecast says 100 today, my kind of summer!

Yesterday was one of those days of good intentions that ended up being something else. Morning was so beautiful, I thought I'd drive east up the Columbia, pull into one of the state parks on the river, work at a picnic table on my laptop and let the dog enjoy the park. Off I went. First, the ramp was closed to get me onto the eastbound freeway -- and not far ahead, I got trapped in an incredible traffic jam. Ends up it was some kind of bike day, with 15,000 cyclists taking over the bridges and freeways, and by the time I was able to get out of traffic and out of this mess, an hour had passed. And I still had no uncrowded way to get where I wanted to go, so I just came on home. Ending up getting some grunt work done but nothing else.

Later, an incredible email arrived in my box -- from Paul Finot, the high school teacher I wrote about a few weeks ago! The Internet makes the world a very small place.

I've gotten a bit done on the novel today already. Supposed to stay in the 90s all week. My wife, who returns today, will hate it, and I will love it. Onward.
    
8/9/2004 08:11:52 AM | 0 comments

Saturday, August 07, 2004  

Musing about Moore
Just finished a quick read of the recent book Michael Moore Is A Big Fat Stupid White Man, and it documents many (certainly as many as the authors could find) of the inaccuracies in Moore's films over the years. I was familiar with the way he messed with Columbine but not with Roger and Me. At any rate, Moore believes accuracy is an irrelevant issue because he is writing "comedy," or at least this is what he said in a widely quoted interview with Lou Dobbs, which I happened to see live. But audiences seem to take his movies as being documentaries, and therefore having some relationship to truth. In Idaho recently, a woman who had just seen F 9/11 came away believing Bush was in on the terrorist attacks!

I loved Roger and Me but I think much of this came from believing it was actually a documentary. That it is a work of fiction -- its entire premise is compromised by the actual order of historical events depicted -- pisses me off in a way. When I tried to watch the movie again on cable, I turned it off -- it was far less interesting as fiction, as contrivance, than as documentary. Columbine seemed to me to show Moore more as bully than clown (as in the other), and I was also pissed at him for something he did during a visit to Portland just before I saw the film -- he gave out the unlisted number of a right wing radio commentator so his left audience could call and hassle him. I am no fan of the commentator but I also am no fan of cheap shots and bad manners. At any rate, I found myself feeling sorry for Heston in Columbine, being set up and used so blatantly, and I've avoided seeing the recent one for fear of coming out feeling sorry for Bush! Bush is the last person I want to feel sorry for.

So I'm not a great fan of Moore's methodology. I am a greater fan of Peter Watkins, the 1960s British filmmaker who also made "fictional documentaries." However, he did not act in them, he was not a "personality" (not a muckraker), and he marketed his films as fiction, even though "in form" they were documentaries, rather like the old Cronkite "You Are There" TV series, only with stories about current events. One film, Punishment Park, was about a desert camp where arrested student radicals were sent during the 60s, where they were given a 12 hour head start before being chased across the desert by soldiers -- they had three days to reach an American flag and kiss it before the soldiers caught up with them and killed them. Obviously this was a powerful and controversial film in the 60s -- I don't think it played anywhere except at universities -- and far too many students came away thinking it was true. But Watkins, unlike Moore, never claimed he was writing more than "a story" and invented events, reporting on them in a docu style, rather than taking real events and manipulating them for a purpose, which is Moore's methodology.

A documentary is coming out soon called Michael Moore Hates America, the first of several to come out critical of Moore, although the website for this one claims no Moore bashing but instead an alternative and more optimistic picture of America than the one Moore creates. At any rate, I look forward to it and more varied viewpoints on Moore and on the methodology of documentaries.

I've written a lot of historical drama. I manipulate historical events for my own purposes. I call them "plays," not documentary films (and I suppose Moore calls his movies "films" or "comedies") -- but everyone I deal with has been dead a long time. I try to tell "the truth," which is to say, I try to be true to my understanding of the people and the period involved. I've written more about this in my essay Writing the History Play: Why Dramatists Lie in the Pursuit of Truth.

But I wonder how many of Moore's fans think they are watching documentaries and not comedies?
    
8/7/2004 04:01:08 PM | 0 comments

 

Moving forward
A good morning, getting more done on a chapter of the novel, plus sketching out a chapter outline for the remainder of the book. Feel like I'm finally getting back in control. Not sure, after looking at what's left, I can finish a draft before school starts but I should come close.

Weather turning good again, into the 90s tomorrow. Should help my rhythm as well. Onward.
    
8/7/2004 01:46:04 PM | 0 comments

 
The cesspool of politics
I'm already disgusted with the campaign, so much dirty politics from both sides. I'll try to avoid as much as possible until the debates, the first of which I'll watch out of curiosity and go from there.

I'm reminded of what a 90-something year old woman told my friend Dick once. She had quit voting at age 70. Why? "I don't want to encourage them." Sad to say, it's getting easier to see what she means.   
8/7/2004 07:23:57 AM | 0 comments

 
Up and at 'em!
Up early and full of energy with many things on the docket today. Will work on the novel this morning, then get the new libretto out, then two new songs Robin sent me last night that need lyrics, then the grief project ... busy! I like being busy. One project somehow energizes another. I hope for a very strong week of work so I can "get ahead" and therefore ease back to watch the Olympics when they start next week. By the way, while waiting for The Book of Daniel from the library, I started Graham Greene's The End of the Affair (a reread) after seeing the movie again on cable recently -- another fine book by a top notch author. After I renew my reading of Doctorow, maybe Greene is next. These books are so much more satisfying than 99% of the recent stuff I start. The exceptions -- Plainsong, Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress -- are few and far between.   
8/7/2004 04:40:56 AM | 0 comments

Friday, August 06, 2004  
Olympics
In a week, the summer Olympics begin and I'm ready. One of my favorite sporting seasons. I especially like the longer distance races, swimming, gymnastics and some of the obscure sports you don't see often on TV. I can do without the arrogant USA men's basketball team and some of the individual egomaniacs (some of them millionaires). I like underdogs from small countries surprising everyone. I hate the medal by country counts. Who cares? Actually we begin Wed. with a USA women's soccer match. I'll be watching.   
8/6/2004 09:48:08 PM | 0 comments

 
Progress
Wrote a bit in the novel today -- not much, maybe 600 words, but enough to feel like I'm moving back into it. Interestingly enough, I awoke with words in my head but they belonged to the next novel, a new way to get into the seniors road trip story, which I jotted down early this morning. So it's still slow going -- but at least it's moving forward now. Onward.   
8/6/2004 07:19:49 PM | 0 comments

Thursday, August 05, 2004  
For posterity
Here is Don Berry's article "Kultur in Apathyville" that set off such a firestorm in Portland in 1965. I'm including it in the anthology but post it here for the historical record and easier access in years to come.


Kultur in Apathyville

Don Berry


Dear gray Portland. last and finest bastion of the oatmeal mind, where the principal entertainment is sitting around in coffin-like solemnity telling each other what a shame it is that 'nothing ever goes on in this town.' It is our own private pleasure, our masochistic solace under leaden skies, a kind of ritual self-immolation to no discernible end. Not for us the flamboyant dramatic gesture. But we mutter quite a lot.
Occasionally, of course, the old cadaver gives a little twitch, a sort of involuntary spasm (there must be a medical term for this specious illusion of life), but it quickly subsides, to everyone’s great relief. A bit ago this newspaper examined the state of culture in the state of Oregon. What a disaster. Most of the writers – with a few marked exceptions – went at it with all the enthusiasm of men assigned to search out maggots in bad meat. They appeared to resent being snatched away from their contemplation of automobile accidents and Friday Surprise goodies merely to see if anything was actually happening in this state other than collisions, politics and other such familiar catastrophes. It was no wonder that the picture painted was of a dismal wasteland, broken only occasionally by a sulfurous bubble of fermentation, probably unsanitary in nature.
And if the newspapers do it badly, television and radio don’t even bother with the pretense. Their silence is so total you would think culture had become slightly controversial, perhaps upsetting to potential sponsors. The broadcast media, of course, have the inestimable advantage that their own sins are swept magically away when you turn the set off, while print remains.
In this the mass media faithfully reflect the general attitude of its audience.
Total indifference, tinged with faint revulsion and suspicion. (This, incidentally, can be regarded as an outline of the Portland mentality. Color it gray. Dark gray.)
In fact, it is not the local culture that is impoverished, but the local perception of it. There is an almost total lack of connection between the makers in Portland and the appreciators, with their low moans.
It is my contention that this enormous chasm has been deliberately bulldozed out of the oatmeal mentality in order to protect itself from undo stimulation. Portland determinedly insists that nothing goes on; activity is bad, per se. We resolutely peer at the world through dead-colored glasses which are donned at the least suspicion of a breaking ray of light. Our winters give us the photophobic vision of troglodytes – and apparently our minds, such as they are, are equally affected.
Examples come quickly. I have never met Mr. Don Zavin, but in my mind’s eye I picture him as being equal parts naiveté and bafflement. Naïve enough to believe all those nice people who tell him they want some theater in Portland, want someplace to go, something to do. And when he comes up with such – stay home. That’s where the bafflement part comes in.
For a while there were two poets in this city simultaneously, each of whom is generally regarded by critics as being among the most important of his generation. Jim Dickey was at Reed and William Stafford was, and is, at Lewis and Clark. San Francisco would have done some fancy feather-preening at such a happy coincidence. Portland? Not a ripple. A local columnist, who actively prides himself on searching out writing talent, had never even heard of them.
Where, comes the wistful cry, are the grand old days of Portland writers like Holbrook and Haycox? Where, indeed? How come nobody seems to notice that William Sanderson of this newspaper has as good an understanding of Oregon as Holbrook ever had, and writes as well? And I haven’t been deafened by bands playing welcome Janet Stevenson, a writer whose Civil War novel “Weep No More” is a classic, and whose biography of Fanny Kemble is the definitive one. And, if that kind of stuff is too “lit’ry” for the oatmeal mind, did you know that Rick Rubin was back in town? Who he? He’s published fifty-odd short stories in national magazines in the past five years, including Esquire and Playboy and others even a Portlander might recognize.
Of course, Mr. Rubin has a lot going against him in Portland. He has, I understand, both a beard and a beautiful wife, which is unseemly of him. Either, alone, is enough to make a good gray citizen uneasy. He must be a beatnik or something.
The list of people doing important work in this town is too long, I can’t get it into this space. And I don’t mean regional poets and Sunday painters. I’m talking about people of national stature like Lloyd Reynolds and Jacques Avshalomov and Tom Hardy and Manuel Izqulerdo and Carl and Hilda Morris and dozens of others who are so busy working they won’t even be insulted I didn’t mention their names.
The point I'm hacking away at is this: there is plenty going on in this town, plenty of real work. What is missing is the dilettante fringe, which is what passes for culture in most cities. And it is in fact the absence of the dilettantes that our appreciators complain of. Culture to the oatmeal mind means that they want somebody to talk arty over cocktails, and that's all it amounts to. Pure hypocrisy, which is another of the mainsprings of the Portland mentality.
It’s a no-connection city, where reporters talk only to other reporters and politicians to other politicians. It’s full of little social daisy chains, self-fertilizing and self-contained. Portland is the living refutation of the old biological principle that an organism cannot survive in an environment composed solely of its own waste products. Mentally, we do exactly that. Not only do it, but glory in it, and stubbornly resist any infusion of fresh air into our bleak atmosphere. If a magazine starts -- we kill it. If a theater group struggles up out of the mud -- we softly muffle it to death under pillows of leaden silence. The plain fact is that we don't want anything around that might stir up the mush.
I end this rash note to my city with a piece of advice on fitting in, being a true gray Portlander. I modestly call it 'Berry's Law of Survival in a Bowl of Cold Oatmeal.'
Don't make waves.

12-12-65

  
8/5/2004 03:46:21 PM | 0 comments

 
Bacheloring
My wife is going out of town for a few days, and I'm hoping to use the time by finding my rhythm in the novel again -- but literally living with it all my waking hours, as one can in an empty house. We begin this evening.

Meanwhile, still waiting for act one orchestrations. My dear composer gets me all excited -- then doesn't send them!   
8/5/2004 09:51:15 AM | 0 comments

Wednesday, August 04, 2004  

Rogue River
Finally, after putting it off for months, I tracked down the award-winning blue cheese from Rogue Creamery in Southern Oregon and bought some. Incredible! Yes, the best blue cheese I've ever tasted. Spendy but worth it. Check out the Rogue Creamery Website. If you love cheese, don't miss this.
    
8/4/2004 05:44:12 PM | 0 comments

 
Progress
Learned from John that he's finished the orchestration for act one of Dark Mission. Can't wait to hear it! Meanwhile, pleased with revised intro to anthology ... it's looking good. Joe talking about 2005 publication so we can hit the summer book festivals with it, rather than coming out late in 2004. Fine by me. Tracked down widow of last "missing" writer and got permission, so I can use all the stuff I finally decided on.   
8/4/2004 12:31:09 PM | 0 comments

Tuesday, August 03, 2004  
Intro to anthology
Here is a draft:



INTRODUCTION:

JOE BIANCO, NORTHWEST MAGAZINE AND THE OATMEAL MIND

By Charles Deemer



On a fall evening in 1965, Joe Bianco answered the telephone to find his Managing Editor, Ed Miller, on the line. Miller told the Agricultural Editor that he wanted him to revive Northwest, a Sunday supplement The Oregonian had published briefly some years before, with Miller as its editor.
Bianco, with a couple of after-work Scotches under his belt, remembers feeling "vulnerable." He accepted the offer. But on Monday morning Bianco hurried into Miller's office and retracted his acceptance. However, Miller wouldn't take no for answer. Suddenly Joe Bianco was a magazine editor.
On paper, the farm editor looked like an unlikely choice for such an assignment. Bianco had come to The Oregonian somewhat reluctantly in 1955, thinking of Portland as a stepping stone to San Francisco. He'd already established an award-winning career in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, as a crime reporter. He'd been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize for solving a case involving serial murders on the turnpike. Without formal training in journalism or writing, Bianco managed to make a reputation as an aggressive, hard-working investigator. He'd come west to Oregon because his wife was from here and to find new challenges.
Tired of police work at The Oregonian, Bianco became Agricultural Editor at the conclusion of the ugly newspaper strike of 1959-60. Once again he quickly made his mark, exposing the realities of migrant labor life in a series of articles he wrote after posing as a worker in eastern Oregon. Bianco's work received national recognition:
"It took months of preparation," said an article in Editor and Publisher on November 13, 1971, "before Joe Bianco, Agricultural Editor of The Oregonian, was able to assume the role of a migrant farm worker for a week. His portrayal resulted in a series of three articles which aroused the interest of state and federal authorities concerning the plight of these people."
Bianco, Miller must have thought, was just the kind of high-energy, fearless investigator who could turn the bland supplement Farm, Home and Garden into a general features magazine, something more widely readable.
When Miller refused Bianco's retraction, the new editor asked if he would be free to make all editorial decisions for the magazine. Miller gave him free rein.
What happened in the next few years was the gradual evolution of Farm, Home and Garden into Northwest Home and Garden into Northwest magazine. A number of important benchmarks were reached along the way.
Bianco's first challenge was to bring feature articles into the existing supplement, initially placing them in the back of the magazine behind the home and garden stories. He tried to lure Oregon's best freelance writers to contribute but many were hesitant to participate, having experienced little cordiality from The Oregonian in their careers. Ken Kesey refused to be associated with the state's largest paper, citing the way they had treated him in the past. Oregon novelist Don Berry, suggested as a contributor by Bianco's artist wife, finally agreed to send him something - and then dared him to print it.
The story that Berry submitted was entitled "Kultur in Apathyville." Earlier The Oregonian had run a story about Portland's cultural life and Berry's story was a direct challenge to this appraisal. The problem was more with the audience than with the artists. Portland, he wrote, was the "last and finest bastion of the oatmeal mind," a place where culture was nothing more than somebody talking "arty over cocktails." Artists and writers here were not appreciated.
Bianco kept the story in a desk drawer for weeks. He expected to be fired if he published it, but his wife encouraged him to publish it anyway. Finally making his decision, Bianco told his editorial assistant to prepare to take over the fledgling magazine. Next week Bianco expected to be looking for a job.
Berry's article created a firestorm. Letters to the editor poured in - both for and against the opinion. Subscribers cancelled the paper, and even the Oregonian's editorial page criticized Berry and Bianco, one section of the paper reprimanding another. However, Bianco's immediate boss, Ed Miller, supported him and the editor kept his job.
Berry's article encouraged formerly reluctant writers to submit to the new magazine. Rick Rubin, a local writer with credits from Playboy, submitted an article that Bianco published only one month after Berry's piece - and which created yet another controversy.
In "Westside, Westside, All Around the Town," Rubin argued that only downtown Portland represented "the essence of Portland." Folks who lived eastside over the river were merely "necessary to our continuing intellectual and cultural growth, much as the slaves of Greece in the Golden Age were necessary to support the more meaningful few."
Most of the paper's editorial writers lived across the river and didn't appreciate Rubin's attitude. In only four issues, as 1965 ended and 1966 began, Northwest had created two firestorms of controversy - and the voice of Miller's dream of a resurrected magazine was born in a feisty, sometimes irreverent and always challenging brand of journalism, enthusiastically nurtured by the new editor.
Early on, this style of writing was relegated to the back pages of the magazine. The primary content continued to be about home and garden. Bianco slowly began to change the focus and appearance of the magazine.
1966 started with a slight name change, to Northwest Home and Garden. Interestingly enough, at this time there was no masthead to identify Bianco as the editor at the helm. Not until the issue of February 20, 1966, does his name appear anywhere in the magazine - and then his contribution is listed as "Editorial Supervision," which in September was changed to "Editorial Direction."
At the end of 1966, Bianco wrote a short editorial introducing a new format and title for the magazine. Finally he was identified as the editor. "Features" became the first section of the magazine, receiving primary billing, with the home and garden stories now following behind. This was the format that would define Northwest magazine as it moved into the 70s. In April, 1976, an Arts section was added. Six months later, a poetry page.
By 1969 Northwest already had gained national attention. In an article called "Not For Oatmeal Minds" in the May, 1969, issue of Quill, the Magazine for Journalists, James J. Doyle wrote:
"Much of Northwest's high-voltage has come, and has been retained, by its dynamic editor Joe Bianco. Trained in the hard school of East Coast dailies, Bianco works from the premise that this country is undergoing a great social upheaval - a potentially rapturous calamity which calls for investigation and social analysis beyond the scope of newspage content. What has resulted is an open forum of ideas for freelance writers and professional reporters."
A 1967 survey identified Northwest magazine as the most popular and widely read section of the newspaper. Ed Miller explained to Doyle: "I suspect a large share of our readers pick up the section now with the subconscious query, What the hell is Northwest up to now?"
About his hand-picked editor, Miller said, "Bianco has a talent for picking today the controversial subjects of tomorrow."
One of the ways Bianco brought these subjects to his readers was through frequent theme issues, in which a series of articles would look at different aspects of the same subject matter. The content of theme issues varied widely, including:
· practical subjects -- a gardening issue each spring, a skiing issue each fall, periodical Northwest travel issues
· current events -- hippies and the counter-culture in April, 1967; student revolts in January, 1969; the gasoline crisis in August, 1979; a royal wedding issue in August, 1981
· social and political issues -- abortion in March, 1969, and again in October, 1979; family violence in February, 1977; Oregon's rural poor in July, 1968; the role of the church in the urban jungle in December, 1980; the changing family in May, 1981; victims of rape in July, 1981
· issues not receiving the attention Bianco believed they deserved -- cults and deprogramming, an ambitious three-issue series in July and August, 1977, largely written by Bianco himself; Portland's air pollution in August, 1973; the gay lifestyle in April, 1975; blacks in the community in January, 1968, followed by a special issue on the black woman in January, 1972; the controversy surrounding Portland's downtown redevelopment in December, 1973, with a magazine proposal for its own priorities of development; and even a behind-the-scenes look at The Oregonian's own power structure in February, 1979
About the special issue on the hippies, Doyle wrote: "…before the hippie sub-culture had its own periodicals, Northwest blasted the minds of editors and readers with a cover story on the burgeoning pop culture, light shows and hippie enigma. At the time, few national magazines had examined this phenomenon to such an extent." Thus did Joe Bianco exercise his talent "for picking today the controversial subjects of tomorrow."
Doyle concluded his Quill article by writing, "But Northwest has proved beyond all doubt that a magazine can grow and develop and reveal the controversies that readers seem to want more and more, time and again. It has also proved that readers in what was once an easy-going and folksy town, have less fear of social icons than newspapers normally presume."
Don Berry had ended the article that catapulted Northwest into public consciousness with advice to those who were happy with Portland's gray complacency: "Don't make waves." Northwest magazine - even as it offered advice on home and garden, even as it wrote in praise of the Oregon landscape and offered travel tips over the state's backroads, even as it profiled interesting Oregonians known to all or unknown by many - never turned its back to a story that Bianco thought its readers needed to know about, it never ran from controversy or avoided a new challenge. Northwest was where the action was.

In the summer of 2004, I spent many happy hours preparing this book by going through the archives of Northwest magazine. Even though I had been a regular contributor myself for a time, much of the history of the magazine was unknown to me. After my first issue-by-issue inspection of the archives, 1965-1982, I found myself with a list of several hundred stories I wanted to reprint.
Clearly I needed criteria by which to retain and eliminate stories. I also wanted a device by which to communicate the wide field of interests in the magazine, yet without producing a book too large to attract average readers. I finally decided to organize the stories into sections: People, Place, Issues and Concerns, Sports, History and Nostalgia, Arts, the Lighter Side. My strategy for suggesting the abundance of material in each category was to reprint a few stories in their entirety and provide excerpts from many more.
The most challenging section to put together was Issues and Concerns. Here was the very heart and soul of Northwest's primary thrust, the source of most of its controversies, and yet here, too, was the material most topical and in need of contextual explanation to be appreciated by contemporary readers. Soon enough, however, I identified the issues I should focus on - because these same issues still face us today. The stories here about the Environment, Civil Liberties and the Changing Family, which were published by Northwest between 1969 and 1981, could have been written today.
Our title, Oregon Fever, comes from the affliction attributed to families who would abandon everything at home in the East or Midwest to take to the Oregon Trail in a sudden search for a new beginning, a new life. A similar journey and mindset informed the journey of Northwest magazine and its adventurous writers and readers. This was an exciting era, as anyone who lived in it will tell you. Northwest was both a product of and an instigator of the era, a magazine made possible by Joe Bianco's vision and personality and The Oregonian's "hands off" supporters, people who understood the times. What resulted was a magazine that attracted writers like Don Berry, Rick Rubin, Barry Lopez, Thomas Gaddis, David Shetzline, Ivan Doig, Larry Colton, Larry Leonard, Charles Gould, Art Chenoweth, Daniel Yost, Dorothy Velasco, Paul Pintarich, Beth Fagan, Buck Hannon, Don Holm, Jack McCarthy, Ralph Friedman, Penny Avila, Jean Henninger, Ferris Weddle and others too numerous to mention, writers eager to participate in such an energetic and era-defining regional forum.
When Don Barry threw down the gauntlet - "Don't make waves" - even he must have been surprised to see how creatively and energetically Joe Bianco would respond to create a "wave-making" special publication for a special time, a newspaper Sunday supplement like none before it and few after, a weekly publication full of good, great and challenging writing, a magazine "not for oatmeal minds."
We begin, then, with the two controversial stories that started it all.
  
8/3/2004 07:13:38 PM | 0 comments

 
Northwest Magazine
Interview Bianco early this morning, research for my intro to the anthology, which already has some shape in my thoughts. Joe took over the supplement Northwest Home and Garden in the fall of 1965 with a charge to turn it into a Sunday supplement with wide appeal. He took the bull by the horns and "appeal" quickly came to mean controversy when he published two articles, one in December, 1965, and the other in January, 1966, that attracted much attention.

The first was called "Kultur in Apathyville" (by Don Berry) and lambasted Portland for being the home of "oatmeal minds" -- not your run-of-the-mill Sunday supplement story! Excerpts:

"Dear gray Portland. last and finest bastion of the oatmeal mind, where the principal entertainment is sitting around in coffin-like solemnity telling each other what a shame it is that 'nothing ever goes on in this town.' It is our own private pleasure, our masochistic solace under leaden skies, a kind of ritual self-immolation to no discernible end. Not for us the flamboyant dramatic gesture. But we mutter quite a lot.

"...In fact, it is not the local culture that is impoverished, but the local perception of it. There is an almost total lack of connection between the makers in Portland and the appreciators, with their low moans.

"...The point I'm hacking away at is this: there is plenty going on in this town, plenty of real work. What is missing is the dilettante fringe, which is what passes for culture in most cities. And it is in fact the absence of the dilettantes that our appreciators complain of. Culture to the oatmeal mind means that they want somebody to talk arty over cocktails, and that's all it amounts to. Pure hypocrisy, which is another of the mainsprings of the Portland mentality.

"...If a magazine starts -- we kill it. If a theater group struggles up out of the mud -- we softly muffle it to death under pillows of leaden silence. The plain fact is that we don't want anything around that might stir up the mush.

"I end this rash note to my city with a piece of advice on fitting in, being a true gray Portlander. I modestly call it 'Berry's Law of Survival in a Bowl of Cold Oatmeal.'

"Don't make waves."

Homeland Security
I never have understood the policy of announcing intercepted intelligence about terrorist threats. I recall no previous war when this was done. Presumably it's a deterrent -- and yet there are clear down sides beyond the "boy who cried wolf" syndrome. It's like showing your hole card in stud poker. It's jeopardizing the sources of intelligence. It's letting the enemy watch you prepare in a specific context. Besides, terrorists aren't stupid -- surely they plant false leads when something big is in the works. I just don't get it. It all begins to feel like grandstanding, See how well we are protecting you. I think it stinks.