Interests 2

In the last post, I went over the countries listed in my Interests column, and I gave, like, thumbnail blurbs about why those countries are there on the list.  Pretty simple, really.  They are places I’d like to see in person and are places where my readers live – I’d like to see where they’re coming from.

I have driven through 35 American states, and lived in 11 of ’em, for longer or shorter amounts of time.  I’ll have been in Oregon most of the last 20 years come March 2007. 

Shhhh, don’t tell the Oregonians I know, but I was born in California.  Shhh!  They think it’s the devil’s state down there.

I have been to five or six countries – the USA, Canada, Mexico, Japan, Korea, and a couple in the Carribean.

I have been one or two places.

So yeah, there are some places on my interests list, but you’ll notice that the largest share of "things" on that list is the names of writers. Let’s see who I have there:

Aldous Huxley.  He was a rather influential writer, best known for writing "Brave New World".  He also wrote a book about Phychoactive plants and drugs, and a line he wrote is the basis of the name of a famous band, The Doors.  His quote mentions "the doors of perception" as being accessed with eating phsychodelic mushrooms, I think.  I have tried many of the same drugs, and his quote about perception and it’s widening is true.

Hunter S. Thompson.  Writer for Rolling Stone magazine back in the day, but most well know for his books, "Fear and loathing in Las Vegas", and "Fear and loathing on the campaign trail".  He sort of accompanied Edwin Muskie in his campaign in the early 70’s, and HST’s comments on politicans, lawyers, hell, people in general, are subversively funny and feel too true at some times.  HST is a big part of the Drug Culture of the 70’s here in the US  He died by his own hand last year, and as was written in his will, his ashes were blown out of a cannon in Colorado on New Years Eve last year.

John Steinbeck.  A great American writer of the Depression era and it’s effects on American life.  Perhaps his most well known book is "The Grapes of Wrath", about an Oklahoma family driven off their land in Oklahoma by the Dust Bowl drought of the 1930’s and into California; becoming, essentially, migrant workers chasing the fruit and vegatable crops of California.  This was made into a classic movie (which I saw, on TV, no commercials, in Japan)  I have read everything John Steinbeck wrote.  When I got out of the Navy, we moved back to Providence RI so that K* could finish her BFA, and I went to the school’s library and checked out and read everything they had that Steinbeck wrote.  I recomend all of his works highly.  He was a perceptive writer of an era not so far in the past.  and one that will return?  Could be, I think.

George Orwell.  A British writer most well known for his "1984", a view of the future that he foresaw in the late 40’s – early 50’s as a real possible future for the western world.  He had written nearly a dozen books, and I have read everthing of his I could find.  (There were great bookstores in Japan)  Orwell was a disillusioned Socialist, and his novel "Animal Farm" is about the aftermath of the revolution, and how the new bosses become like the old bosses rather too quickly.  There is a line in a Who song inspired by Orwell – "Meet the new boss, same as the old boss".

Ken Kesey.  He wrote "One flew over the cookoo’s nest" which later was made into a move that set Jack Nickolson firmly on the path to stardom.  Set in a state mental hospital, in Oregon, it followed Randall Patrick McMurphy, a former county prisoner who thought to live the easy life by becoming "insane" and committed to the State Mental Hospital.  McMurphy’s biggest antagonist is the Head Nurse on the Ward he’s sent to, Nurse Rached.  Kesey worked as an aide at the Oregon State Hospital, and wrote of what he knew, which makes for a very intense reading.  "One flew over…" is a powerful story, but to me, an even better work of Ken Kesey’s is "Sometimes a Great Notion" , a stream of consciousness novel about a lumber family on the Oregon Coast.  It is said that Kesey dropped acid and wrote the book out in just a few sittings.  Maybe so…  but it is a very good read – intense, involved, and thought provoking.  It was made into a movie, "Never give an inch" with Paul Newman.  The book is SO much better.

Kurt Vonnegut.  Very well know American writer.  His signature work is the novel, "Slaughterhouse Five".  He was an American airman, shot down over Germany in WW2 and imprisioned in the same named slaughterhouse, which had been converted to house prisoners of war in Dresden, Germany.  He was the there for the firebombing of Dresden.  Hundreds of British and American bombers converged on Dresden and dropped firebombs, which created a firestorm that killed many and destroyed much of the city.  (This was seen with a horror by the Americans, but set the pattern for attacks on Japan’s 100 largest cities in the late stages of the Pacific theater of action in WW2, all of which were laid waste.   More people were killed in the firebombing of Toyko than died in either of the cities atom bombed by the US…but horror had become part of life, and few voices, save the Japanese’s, were raised against the wholesale slaughter of Cilvilians.  Kurt has always written from a different perspecitve, and the story of his I like best is "Deer in the machine".  A small, wild, bit of nature intrudes into the man-made world of the story and runs amuck, causing much to go wrong in the carefully planned world of the machine.  We share the same first name too – points in his favor, eh?

Phillip K. Dick.  Lots of his stories must be coming off copyright – many movies of his stories have been made lately.  His book, "Do androids dream of electric sheep?" was

made into "Blade Runner" with Harrsion Ford, and depicted a dystopia that Dick imagined.  Tom Cruise made a movie of one of Dick’s stories a few years ago (the name escapes me) PKD wrote of dystopias well, I think.  He was sort of pessimistic about mankind.

Richard Bach.  He wrote "Jonathon Livingstone Seagull" about a seagull who wanted – and got – more than what there was to his life as he percieved it.  RB wrote other inspiring stories along the same lines, but "Seagull" is the best of them.

One might notice a trend in my favorite writers…  They tend to be subversive, maybe even "leftists", and certainly "Progressives", calling attention to and shining light into places and things not closely looked at enough.  Perception is everything to these writers, and it is to me too.

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