Rick Simonson

Field Trip
July 16, 2008

One supremely lovely Seattle day it's sitting and working through the good, engaging lists of Harvard (love the nest and eggs book), MIT, and Yale University Presses with John Eklund, he of the northern tier territory (Ithaca and all points west and north of Denver), followed by George Carroll and the University of Chicago and an assortment of smaller but no less worthy publishers he represents. Book and work talk of the best kind is the way of the day, including, spontaneously, having lunch with John and George both at the Turkish spot up around the corner. They get caught up, we all have a winding trail word of mouth, word that Steve Erickson's Zeroville (Europa) is so arresting it's one of those books that makes it almost impossible for the next book.

It's from that and a serious, still-to-do to-do list in one day to a late afternoon gambol the next, 1700 miles away ...  in 95-degree afternoon heat, a strong, humid, embracing sweet-grass'd wind, weaving through a head-high hillside cornfield. This ... is eastern Nebraska.

Somehow I've embarked on a trip without a book convention, panel, or publisher meeting in sight. Instead, it's an impromptu gathering of selected family.

Nevertheless, what I come back to and what I carry ...

A month, give or take, after BEA and I'm tempted to think of this as a delayed post-BEA sojourn. I haven't been back this way since the last Chicago BEA four years ago. A pattern from those years, a most enjoyable one: to find myself after all the bustle and frenzy, perched the day after on a cousin's front-porch swing, something cold to drink, stack of new things to read, no shoes, the rock and sway of quiet, the music of cardinals and a chorus of other birds. So, some reading for down the road is brought along - the heaviest part of the packing, by far.

'Older' reading is also brought along, and it doesn't take long. I've decided to make a little project of re-reading whatever of Vietnamese writer Duong Thu Huong's novels I (long ago) have read, and getting to her others. With me on the plane for the Denver-Omaha leg is the first of her books published in the US, Paradise of the Blind.

Before I can get started reading I have to get my seat, and a woman is sitting in the one assigned me. There is a shaking of her head, and enough language conveyed for one to know she doesn't speak English - she wants that seat. Short flight, no big deal - I take the middle.

When I pull out Paradise of the Blind, I notice eyes widening in what I take as some recognition. The author's name. The word 'Vietnamese' on the cover. By the brief flight's end, we have a little established. She is from there; is also, as Duong Thu Huong is, from Hanoi. Not only is there not knowing English, there is no knowing French - we might have gotten a little farther with some things, even with my inept tendencies in that language. Still, I can tell I'm enlisted in assistance - for what, if anything, beyond some basic finding of the way off and out, I'm not sure. It is, after some time - waiting is involved - basically that. There are others there to meet her, take her in. There's great embracing, in fact. Thank yous are conveyed, and we all move on. Perhaps some of this would have happened in any event, but it's hard not to feel having words by Duong Huong in hand may have played a part.

It's some time after landing, the aforementioned traipsing about the cornfields, taking in the Platte River and all the French names (speaking of) laid upon the landscape by some early 19th-century trappers, that I find myself where family expects my eventual arrival, Lincoln. Before getting to anyone's house, however, there is one more stop: Lee Booksellers, Lincoln's primary (so far as I know), pre-eminent bookstore, independent or otherwise.

It's nice to take in what's going on. Erstwhile Seattle-area author (less now) J.A. Jance is due soon for a signing, a good display is on hand. There is also a large display of Lincoln native Ted Sorenson's bestselling Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History (HarperCollins) on hand. (This book has been a pleasant surprise to me in Seattle; there have been other Kennedy-era memoirs, this one has had legs and a life unlike them; I have memory from that era of his being this hometown person in a place of national power and prestige, something I didn't think anyone from Nebraska could muster back then.)

In banter with those there, we talked of his signing and its great crowd, current Senator Chuck Hagel's book, America: Our Next Chapter (Ecco), and the political climate in general. It's nice to do this, as many passing through our place, Elliott Bay, back in Seattle, do the same. Nebraska is generally considered 'red,' for those assessing things that way, with Lincoln and Omaha tending 'blue.' Still, there was a sense some usually the former way might go the latter.  Nebraska offers a split-slate for its electoral votes, too - it isn't winner-take-all.

Tarrying and talk of this sort ... it is time to move on. First, the 'Nebraska' shelves are consulted: I get the second volume of Lisa Knopp's fine essays of Midwestern place, Interior Places; a new, signed book of essays by Ted Kooser (both from the wonderful University of Nebraska Press, often the source of a good Lincoln visit, probably not to be managed this time); and, the indispensable little book for the pocket, Birds of Nebraska.

The porch, the swing, the breezy, tree-rustled heat, and the books: for a few days, they beckon ...

Posted by Rick Simonson on July 16, 2008 | Comments (0)