"It's mind-boggling. To go from what seems like yesterday,
when I was bringing my high-school yearbook to an interview,
to this." The writer tilts her head toward the Powell's
marquee as her escort's Volvo lurches up Burnside. It's
a few hours before her reading, and in black, blocky lettering
the store proclaims: SUSAN ORLEAN.
This evening, Orlean, a New Yorker staffer since
1992, will share excerpts from The Orchid Thief,
her true account of a man's obsessive desire "to care
passionately about something." The story is being adapted
as a movie by the wonder boys who brought us last fall's
screwy Being John Malkovich. "Believe me, I never
imagined I'd be reading at Powell's," she later tells
a good-sized crowd, "but I also didn't imagine Powell's
would be this big."
The bookstore's transformation is symbolic of Portland's
coming of age since Orlean left the city (and the staff
of Willamette Week) in 1983. When she moved here
from the Midwest in '78, the names Rose Garden Arena,
Pearl District and Mayor Katz hadn't yet been invented,
after all. But even if some buildings have risen and others
have been razed, the "Portlandness" that made such an
impression on the young writer remains intact. And so,
for part of an afternoon, Orlean and I set out to find
a few last vestiges of a place that, to a young women
outrunning her law-school destiny, felt "off the grid."
When I slip into the back seat of the car, I am met with
a beat. It's a movie star beat, a dramatic second before
Orlean turns to say hello. Though colleagues had told
me so, and though the writer says as much in her book,
when I finally see her I am still surprised: She is smaller
than I imagined. Orlean looks delicate even in a fall
pea coat and thick scarf. She has impossibly deep red
hair, a fountain of fire. Her eyes are the color of emeralds
and catch everything remotely near them, like Venus flytraps.
Perhaps it is because she has recently devoted a few years
of her life to an exotic flower, but today Orlean resembles
one herself.
We have about an hour to discuss what makes Portland
Portland and how Portland helped make Orlean Orlean. While
living here, Orlean wrote often about music. I reel with
envy as she tells me that an Elvis Costello or Warren
Zevon show costing a couple of bucks wasn't uncommon.
She was a regular at rock venues like the Earth Tavern
and the Long Goodbye; she describes the latter as a sort
of private club where it seemed that "anyone who decided
they wanted to play could just...do it."
The Long Goodbye is long gone, however, so instead we
drive to Fuller's coffee shop.
Why Fuller's?
"Because it hasn't changed," says Orlean. "I was here
about a month ago, and I realized that it's the same guy
cooking and his wife is still serving. When I lived here
and I'd go back, she'd say, 'Hi, where have you been?'
It's not so much nostalgia as an anchor."
The red neon inscription on the diner's large clock informs
patrons that Fuller's has been here since 1947. The serpentine
counter encourages stranger to sit beside stranger, and
to pass the cream back and forth until a conversation
breaks out. Orlean swivels slightly on her stool and warms
her hands on a mug of coffee.
"Portland really felt out west," Orlean recalled of her
initial impressions of the city. "It felt more like the
Wild West, pre-modern in a way. Like you could turn a
corner and find a guy on horseback herding cattle. It
was really romantic."
She was fascinated by all the cowboy paraphernalia occupying
Portland thrift stores and cheapie boutiques. "Seeing
a saddle? For a suburban girl, that was like going to
the moon," she coos.
An early Orlean book, Saturday Night, examined
the night of the week with the greatest promise of passion.
John Laroche, the orchid thief of her latest book's title,
is described as a "serial monogamist" who throws himself
headlong into every endeavor. It is not too much of a
stretch to believe that Orlean honed her eye for romantic
emblems in pre-dot.com Portland.
"That's a Portland thing to me," she says suddenly, looking
through the diner's wide panel of glass toward Northwest
9th Avenue. "A 1950s pickup truck, having a car that can
last that long."
This city's enduring anchors to the past--old cars, old
diners--charmed Orlean. She reminisces about the low-lit,
clubby Ringside of the late 1970s. She and a few WW
staffers splurged at the steak house only at the odd moment
when there was a surplus of cash on hand. "When we were
feeling flush, we went out for steak and onion rings,
" Orlean says, strolling across the Ringside parking lot.
"It's funny, we would go hiking, then come back and eat
steak."
Red meat, short stacks and rock and roll--what Orlean's
Portland days lacked in healthful pursuits, they made
up for in writerly inspiration. In 1978, in the Wild West
of Portland, Orlean looked to people not like herself
for company. She still does. This year, never having sung
gospel music, Orlean is joining a New York gospel choir
in the pursuit of a story.
"It's a basic human element to want to be recognized,"
Orlean said soon after we met. "That's a theme I've written
a lot about--how people need to feel they have a place
in the world." For her part, Orlean has arrived.
