Roots Make a Difference
In 2009, I resolved to read a book set in, concerning the history of, or written by an author from each State, only to become disheartened to discover that Matt Weiland and Sean Wilsey had pretty much had the same idea in 2008. The two Mr. W's brought together 51 young, talented and often award-winning writers (with an occasional cartoonist, actor and chef thrown in for good measure) to do an updated, more personal reprise of the WPA's American Guide series created through the Federal Writers' Project in the 1930s. (And here I am, a would-be author, dealing with the latest depression recovery/stimulus funds as a government worker where the only writing I do is to compress grant announcements and summarize award recipients for web page content, hardly either personal or insightful about my home State.)
Statistically, the two Mr. W's pulled together a stronger selection of excellent storytellers than my effort to identify 51 books wherein the essence of a place played the lead role. Of the 50+ I plowed through this year, I gave 20 solid high marks, as the kind of books you grab someone by the shoulder and say "read this book," or better yet, you lend your copy to a friend who has a long bus commute to work each day. In State by State (SxS), more than half of the essays hit the bull's eye and only about a dozen make their States so boring that they wouldn't seem worth the trip, whether land-based or across the written page.
I thought it would be fun to align my preferences from this anthology against my rankings of the 50 State list I compiled, to see if there was something in a State, per se, that emerged irrespective of how or who wrote about. (See I am too much of a governmental bureaucrat, thinking my statistics would be meaningful, but thankfully, too much of a budding-writer to acknowledge that this was a pointless exercise.) Nonetheless, Florida came through in both top rankings. I've already extolled Susan Orlean for showing that the crimes of her orchid thieves had to take place in the Floridian swamps. Here, Joshua Ferris writes about how it was to grow up on the Florida Keys after relocating from Illinois in the mid-80s. He recalls an almost Huckleberry Finn kind of childhood, with open water, including swimming in the front yard during the eye of his first hurricane, with societal fringe neighbors and employers, and with his discovery that even after personally meeting Jimmy Buffet, his adulthood began with a car ride singing American Pie. (By the way, Susan Orlean also contributed to State by State but for Ohio where she grew up, and sorry Susan, compared to The Orchid Thief, this essay wasn't as compelling.)
Will Blythe writes of New Hampshire, as a native North Carolinian currently living in New York City, not as a resident, exile or transplant. He compares his appreciation of NH thus: "Maybe as a traveler, I'm like a mistress to a great man; my nocturnal privileges allow me to know things the good wife can only dream." Blythe is broad in his essay: writing of religious history, transcendentalism, frost heaves, and the forty varieties of silence in the State -- sort of like the number of shades of green in Ireland. It has the same look, feel and people that I found in Irving's Hotel New Hampshire.
Other renderings in SxS glistened and lured me into the highly visual landscapes and made interesting people attractive, in contrast to many more mediocre stories I ran across in my blog list. Lydia Millet leaves New York City for Arizona and immediately buys a house in the desert "where the horrible meets the divine." She makes the scenery spectacular and the distances immeasurable, but it is her comparison of these geographic treasures against the diminished and marginal lives of the community congregating at the local mini-mart that fully fleshes out her place there as a transplant.
Ellery Washington moved from Chicago in 1965 to Albuquerque when his father got work in the nuclear labs. As practically the only Black family in the area, his observations of New Mexico are somewhat similar to Millet's. Washington returns to New Mexico on a visit with his French boyfriend where he tour the sites of NM but discover instead his "defensive kind of local patriotism."
A short essay on Montana by Sarah Vowell is rich in history and has one of the best wrap-up lines: "memorize this line from a Richard Hugo poem set in Philipsburg so you have it handy for life's cold snaps -- "The car that brought you here still runs."
Jack Hitt lures the reader to South Carolina, the real SC, not the Colonial Williamsburg-like theme park of restored Charleston. He and his family are such generational residents, that his encounters with rich, absentee new home owners outshines their wealth and pretensions when he can name the people who previously owned each house in his neighborhood.
Alexander Payne, the man who brought us "Sideways," tours his State of Nebraska like movie's vineyard road trip, infused with humor: "that long flat State that sets between me and any place I want to go ... in fact, you're probably just skimming though this chapter on your way to Nevada."
Yes, there are a couple of States that I think don't stack up as well. The chapters for both Oregon and Vermont are done as cartoons, I guess a new genre that young'ns find attractively concise, but which I conclude doesn't give a sense of place, despite maps and drawings, nor of how a setting and local culture impacted the author. Both Kentucky and California left me flat.
State by State was a perfect way to wrap up my 2009 book list resolution. I ventured forth on a journey to look for how essential a story's setting was to the advancement of its plot. I also wanted to see if that setting took on a unique character because it was anchored in one place or another across America. SxS, especially when read over a short period of time as I did through my second reading, shows that people need to identify with a geographical home base. Others routinely ask new acquaintances where do they come from as a kind of short hand way of placing them in a culture or history. But that is other-imposed and too often stereotypical. Daphne Beal in her essay on growing up near Milkwaukee says her DNA is encoded "WISC." Neighborhood, town, and eventually State, become a more than a stage setting or backdrop for peoples' lives. The symbol of family trees implies family roots, roots that take hold and nourish memories.
