How long does it take for a book to become a classic? Maybe 15 years, if we're talking about "Northwest Passages."
Actually, the book was recognized as an instant classic when it came out in 1994, under the editorial hand of Bruce Barcott. His eloquent introduction spurred Emmett Watson to declare at the time: This boy can write.
The 329-page volume contains riches, starting out with tales of Coyote and ending up in the early 1990s. In between we are treated to slices from Narcissa Whitman's letters and David Douglas' Journal (the Scottish botanist of Douglas fir fame), Washington Irving's "Astoria" and Jack Kerouac's "Dharma Bums."
Here's Kerouac headed north from Seattle: "The road ran right through the dreamy fertile valleys of the Stilaquamish (sic) and the Skagit, butterfat valleys with farms and cows browsing under that tremendous background of snow pure heaps."
Perfect.
Jonathan Raban, in a chapter from "Hunting Mister Heartbreak," describes being at the Josephinum on Second Avenue in pursuit of a room to rent.
Raban evokes that timeless, surreal sense of indoors Seattle with a view: "The room looked out over turreted flat roofs to Puget Sound: beyond the cowled air vents, plants in tubs, fire escapes and satellite dishes, ships were on the move in Elliott Bay, whose wind-damaged water looked like knapped flint. A carry ferry was coming in from the dock from a suburban island; a big container vessel, flying a Japanese flag, was being taken in hand by a pair of shovel-front tugs...
At this window, one could spend all day far out at sea, with the city laid out under one's feet. It was a cormorant's perch."
And there's a chapter from "New Life," by Bernard Malamud, where an East Coast sensibility, wielding a fine, satirical scalpel, gets off the train in a thinly disguised, post-war Corvallis, Or. There are those in that sweet, university town who still curse Malamud's ghost.
Other names whose work appears: Jonathan Swift, James Cook, Chief Seattle, Chief Joseph, John Muir, Rudyard Kipling, Owen Wister, H.L. Davis, William O. Douglas, John Okada, Murray Morgan, Gary Snyder, Theodore Roethke, Annie Dillard, David James Duncan, Raymond Carver, Timothy Egan, Denise Levertov. And, as they say, many, many more.
An Emily Carr painting graces the cover.
"Passages" is a great, essential map for exploring the Northwest consciousness through the written word.
As Barcott noted in his introduction: "But all deep history is local. Our stories of calamitous events and unexpected triumph connect people to a place, breathe the life of meaning into a mute patch of earth. Land that has meaning is much more difficult to destroy. Keep telling stories and the land stays alive. And so do we."
However many copies "Northwest Passages" has sold over the years, it can't be enough.
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