God Lives in St. Petersburg / Oregon Fever: An Anthology of Northwest Writing 1965-1982

[April 6th, 2005]

^God Lives in St. Petersburg

By Tom Bissell

(Pantheon, 212 pages, $20)

The verdict may still be out over whether the U.S. can maintain its empire, but our literary sentries are beginning to sound a furtive call of anxiety. In You Shall Know Our Velocity, Dave Eggers conjured two guys determined to travel the globe to aid the needy. They return from their generosity-based "Amazing Race" with a complicated sense of guilt and futility. Tom Bissell performs a similar act of transplantation in his small but powerful new book of stories, but whereas Eggers' tale had the faintest whiff of optimism, Bissell's are bleak and dour.

In "Death Defier," a war photographer attempts to collect medicinal grass from the ordnance-littered mountains of Afghanistan. His partner is dying of malaria, and he wants to save the man's life. Only through this desperation does Bissell's protagonist realize what a mess war has made of the place. Other stories feature environmental researchers, English teachers, a covert missionary, tourists who congratulate themselves on their open-mindedness, and the playboy son of an ambassador. All of them run up against the specter of American paternalism.

Although they're not so far gone as Graham Greene's bitter progeny, Bissell's characters operate with a similar desiccated decadence. Those who fight to hold onto their worldview have the worst time here.

Stories about moral dilemmas have a tendency to become moralistic, but not so here. In spite of its grim settings, God Lives in St. Petersburg is a hoot to read, full of laugh-out-loud turns of Bissell's world-weary humor. John Freeman

^Oregon Fever: An Anthology of Northwest Writing 1965-1982

Edited by Charles Deemer

(Avellino Press, 222 pages, $19.95)

Much of this collection of old newspaper stories from Northwest, The Oregonian's defunct Sunday feature supplement, reads suspiciously like, well, a batch of old newspaper stories. The anthology is shabbily edited, drably designed and, at nearly 20 bucks for a trade paperback, overpriced. Still, some of these stories display a certain raffish charm as examples of what passed for "edgy" journalism almost 40 years ago. In fact, some Northwest scribes-writers like Larry Colton and Art Chenoweth-would go on to become frequent WW contributors.

According to editor Charles Deemer, Northwest's bohemian street cred first emerged with the publication of two pieces in the mid-'60s. The first, by Trask author Don Berry, featured a premise now so cliché that no feature editor would stoop to publish it, namely that philistine audiences were to blame for Portland's moribund arts scene. The second, by short-story writer Rick Rubin, now seems patently absurd, arguing that westside Portland constituted the essence of the city while eastsiders were little better than Greek slaves "necessary to support the more meaningful few." Not surprisingly, these stories ignited a firestorm of reader protest, and suddenly Northwest wasn't just a magazine of sleepy prose about gardening anymore.

If only Deemer had earned his keep as editor of this anthology by adding footnotes to explain some of the stories' more dated references. Who under 50, for instance, will remember that "Holbrook and Haycox" were, respectively, the H.L. Mencken of the Pacific Northwest and a prolific Oregon author of westerns, including Stagecoach? Larry Colton's story on Blazermania breathes renewed life into that magical championship season of 1977, and Northwest's feature coverage of Mount St. Helens' eruption in 1980 remains vivid. But the works included by later big-name authors like Barry Lopez and Ivan Doig are slight and indifferent. Matt Buckingham