Last time I promised more Siberia. Lucky you! There’s plenty of it to go around.

There’s so much Siberia, in fact, that it took Ian Frazier and two Russian pals five weeks and two days to cross it in a diesel-powered Renault step van. He wrote about the experience in a two-part article The New Yorker published last August.

Nearly anywhere Ian Frazier goes, I will follow. I first encountered his writing in Great Plains, his non-fiction account of the huge hunk of land (and its various denizens, human and otherwise) that makes up the American midsection. (Here’s a good interview with Frazier, discussing On the Rez, another of his books.)

Clearly, this is a man unfazed by size.

But if the American Midwest is big, Siberia occupies a different order of magnitude. All of the continental U.S. and most of Europe could fit in the broad swath of land – forty-six hundred miles wide – that’s loosely considered Siberia. It doesn’t exist, officially. Not as a political entity, anyway. But try telling that to the world’s largest forest, the vast expanse of tundra, and the miles on miles of steppe that comprise the region. Try telling that to the thirty-eight million Russians and native people who live there. (If you can find them.)

Try telling New Yorker readers about a landscape that foreign and that daunting – and you’d better have a few tricks up your sleeve to make it work.

My disinterest in Siberia notwithstanding, I read the article, “Travels in Siberia,” with absolute relish the first time through. And then I read it again, more carefully, to try to understand how Frazier manages to keep our keen interest while plowing through material that might more likely be encountered in a sixth-grade report.

The names of the mountains. The names of the rivers. The political borders. The climate, mineral reserves, transportation system, flora and fauna and history. Are you asleep yet?

Not if you’re reading the article. If you’re reading, you’re on the edge of your chair. The river does what? you say. No shit! How big are the logs? How cold does it get? Tell me more!

Because you are there, and that’s your buddy Ian pointing out some of the more interesting aspects of the place to you. He’s giving you some background information, weaving his presence, his agile intelligence, his wit, and his personal credibility into language that is both accessible and deftly structured for maximum pleasure.

If you give much thought to rhetoric – not just how to construct an argument, but, more broadly, how to structure any written work to persuade the reader to join your corner – this article is a goldmine of successful strategies.

The Ural Mountains, which cross Russia north to south from the Arctic Ocean to Kazakhstan, are the western edge of Siberia. The Urals also separate Europe from Asia. As a mountain range with the big job of dividing two continents, the Urals aren’t much. It is possible to drive over them, as I have done, and not know. In central Russia, the summits of the Urals average between one thousand and two thousand feet. But after you cross the Urals the land opens out, the villages are farther apart, the concrete bus shelters along the highway become fewer, and suddenly you realize you’re in Siberia.

In general, abstract facts are stingily allotted short sentences. Frazier saves his words for the tangible – what the reader can see, hear, feel, imagine – and varies the sentence length so that no paragraph feels overburdened with either fact or image. And he is constantly, constantly interjecting narrative: the obvious narrative line of his travels, and the oblique introduction of brief stories to illustrate ideas.

Makes me want to go somewhere. Kathy and I are headed to Tucson for a brief jaunt – springtime in the desert, all that jazz – but we’ve been kicking around the idea of a longer trip, too. We’re thinking maybe it would be fun to take a month and walk the Camino de Santiago across Spain.

In the meantime, I’m content to travel along with writers who can make me see and smell and feel the place they’re moving through.

Any recommendations of writers who have done that for you?

With all apologies due James Taylor, there’s something powerful about the way a place – even a place you’ve never visited – can stand in for a state of being.

Siberia? I think: Cold. Isolation. Hard labor. Okay, tundra. Maybe caribou.

There are few places in the world I don’t want to go to as much as I don’t want to go to Siberia.

Not so for the unnamed narrator of Per Petterson’s latest novel, TO SIBERIA. Called Sistermine by the brother she adores, she dreams of traveling the vast region by rail, leaving her native Denmark to escape to a place of “open skies that were cold and clear, where it was easy to breathe and easy to see for long distances.”

Like Petterson’s 2007 OUT STEALING HORSES, TO SIBERIA gathers its emotional weight from the intersection of personal life with the rise of the Nazi threat in northern Europe. As her brother becomes increasingly involved in the Resistance movement, her own isolation and disengagement grow more profound as she watches the effect of the war on her parents, her neighbors, her schoolmates, her town.

Many of Petterson’s gifts evident in OUT STEALING HORSES – the later, more mature work – are on display in this novel as well. His long lines, with their unconventional breaks. His descriptions of place, less often as landscape and more as a felt experience of water and rock, a way of breathing, the chill in the bones and sounds carrying down the streets of the town. Some of his images are breathtaking: a fisherman approaches, the holes in his layered wool sweaters overlapping at places; the girl and her brother lie on cows for their warmth, matching their breathing to the animals’ deep respiration.

TO SIBERIA is no match for OUT STEALING HORSES in its psychological acuity, though. For me, there’s something off in the author’s efforts to capture the sexual awakening of a young woman. There’s a kind of narrative flatness in the sex scenes that seems intended to stand in for the character’s overall social estrangement – making them function more as a device and less as a natural outgrowth of who she is.

But when she dreams of Siberia, it’s a place where “the houses are built of timber that gives off the good smell of tar and warmth in summer, and when the long winter sets in the glow stays in the logs and never fades. The wood contracts and waits and stretches out when spring comes and drinks in the wind and the sun.”

That’s sexier than it ever gets in the rest of the novel.

Next up: Ian Frazier goes to the real Siberia – and gets bitten, real bad. Stay tuned.

And for you?  Any place carry a mythic weight?

I spent much of last night watching the TV and staring at the computer screen, stunned by the images of a Haiti under siege. The disastrous earthquake and its death toll, the very literal ticking clock as relief workers toil to rescue those still trapped, and the misery among the survivors – who will face not days or weeks but years of work to rebuild their lives – it’s a disaster of such scale that it’s almost impossible to comprehend.

Haitian-born author Edwidge Danticat is a MacArthur Fellow and the author of Krik? Krak! and Breath, Eyes, Memory, among other books. She spoke with Amy Goodman of Democracy Now about Haiti’s troubles (“Haiti devastated…”). In the report – which combined reports of collapsed buildings and general mayhem with some history of Haiti and Haitian immigration to the US – Danticat mentioned the work of some of the long-standing relief organizations doing positive work in the country.

One of those, Paul Farmer’s Partners in Health, was profiled by author Tracy Kidder in the bestselling Mountains Beyond Mountains. The organization’s mission is “to provide a preferential option for the poor in health care,” and they’re fulfilling it in an inspiring way. Right now is a good time to donate at the Partners in Health website.

The health care needs of this country, always enormous, have increased exponentially in the wake of this disaster. The Red Cross, USAID, and teams of rescue workers and medical providers from around the globe have rushed to bring aid to the injured and supplies to those in need. Part of the problem, though – said a weary Nan Buzard, a senior Red Cross coordinator in the country – is the difficulty presented by the need to transport supplies through a devastated countryside.

Accurately updated maps and other geographic information is critical in any disaster. That’s why I’m so impressed by the work of MapAction, a British-based NGO that works to provide “frequently updated situation maps showing where relief help is most urgently needed.” They take a boots-on-the-ground approach to gathering and assembling geographical data that can help advise relief agencies on blocked transportation routes, physical dangers, and other impediments to their work, helping them make decisions and save valuable time.

They’ve published a free downloadable handbook called MapAction Field Guide to Humanitarian Mapping. It teaches relief workers how to use free, open-source Geographic Information System (GIS) software to guide their humanitarian operations.

The last blog post I planned to write was on how you could tell it was fall in northern New Mexico by the procession of big, hairy tarantulas crossing the road. Instead I looked out the window this morning to find a white-out. Kind of Rip van Winkle, you know?

Paul Moody's snowstorm

It’s not that I missed the fall entirely. Kathy and I had a glorious day up Columbine Canyon, the aspens in full golden glory. I caught a few glimpses of the fog that clings to the Rio Grande on fine October mornings. But I passed too many days inside, my nose to the grindstone, while outdoors the temperature teased with lingering warmth that promised to last forever even as the days shortened and the trees shed their leaves and the chamisa flowers grew bleached and brittle.

Today, there’s no question: winter’s here for good. The mountains are shrouded and the dog and I got lapped by three separate snowplows as we made a circuit of the neighborhood. It’s a powder day in Taos. But if I don’t pick up my head and pay attention, it’ll be spring before I know it.

–

Got some good news to share with you all. WRECKER, my second novel, is slated for publication in winter 2011 by Bloomsbury USA and Bloomsbury UK.

Can we pause for a moment of silence? And then… A DEAFENING ERUPTION OF CHEERS AND CATCALLS? Whistles? Maybe a kazoo?

I’m thrilled, to say the least. And overwhelmingly grateful to (and humbled by) the deep list of people who have contributed to this moment.

And I’m excited about what’s to come. The US editor, the fabulous Kathy Belden, says she thinks WRECKER’s “got legs.” As in … go the distance.

Hell, yeah! I didn’t raise that boy to give up early!

Seriously, I can’t wait to hear what you all think of it.

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More news? The Taos Big Read – during which, for the month of November, a whole lot of people up here read BLESS ME, ULTIMA – has come to an official close. November 20^th was “Big Read Day” by official proclamation of the mayor. (How many of you picture a Dr. Seuss-style Burgher-Meister-Meister-Burgher ahem-ing over a scroll? Is it just me? – Our Darren C. is much hipper than that.) You can read “Crack a Book for Big Read Day”, my opinion piece for The Taos News, if you like.

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One more thing. When you’re shopping for presents, don’t forget your local bookstore. And if you’re not sure what to buy, let me give you a hint. It’s called MORE OF THIS WORLD OR MAYBE ANOTHER, the breathtaking debut by AROHO’s Fifth Gift of Freedom Recipient, Barb Johnson. I’ll talk with Barb in a later post, but for now, take my word for it: these are gorgeous stories guaranteed to grow your heart. (Rough it up a bit, too – but isn’t that part of the process?) And for only ten bucks. What else can you buy for that that’s one tenth as good?

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Sooner, I promise. Now I’m going outside to enjoy the snow.

It got me to thinking, where do I write? Is it anything like the book- and computer-strewn enclaves of these sci-fi wizards of the word?

Well… no.

It’s a timely moment to ask the question. I’m fresh off a (nearly) two year stint of support from A Room of Her Own Foundation. It was a blessed period that gave me the time and wherewithal to complete WRECKER, the novel I’ve been loving and laboring over since ARROYO first came out in 2001. Part of that wherewithal was, yes! A room of my own. Complete with bookshelves and file cabinets, and furnished with the infamous kelly green couch that’s been bearing the backsides of our family members since 1991 and of others since the thirties.

It was great to have my own room. It was a luxury that came to feel like a necessity. It was a place for me to store the notebooks and stack the piles that organize my thoughts, and it was a place for my computer to reside, a place to go when it was time to turn my scrawls into an electronic commitment to for-keeps.

But did I write there?

Sometimes I did. Lying on the couch, sitting at the desk, looking out the window.

But now that we’re in the process of moving (I call it a process because of the serious construction commitment that moving always seems to entail for us), and we’re living in two tiny rooms as I make slow headway on rendering the rest of the house habitable, I find that my old habits die hard. I write on the wing. It’s not so bad.

Here’s a partial list of some of the places I write:

- in the cab of my truck. Better if I’ve pulled over, but I’ve been known to scrawl thoughts while in transit. Something about driving – especially in these wide-open spaces of the west – opens the faucet for me.

- In the armchair. Legs akimbo.

- Out in the yard, where I can be profitably distracted by such wonders as mating dragonflies and the changing colors of the leaves on the neighbor’s pear tree.

- In bed. That’s my little secret. Writing drops me into a state of suspended animation alarmingly close to sleep, and sometimes a nap is the best way to dream my way into the next scene.

Yes, it’s on the books to build a tiny writing pod, a place to sit at my computer and store my papers and even lie down on a cot and catch a few z’s while waiting for the words to catch up with the characters. And I”ll be better organized and more efficient for it.

But I’ll bet you anything that having that space won’t stop me from writing in the less orthodox places I’ve found. Maybe it’s just that it takes some of the pressure off to write away from my desk. Maybe it’s just that I’m unwilling to give a place – my own room, my own desk – so much power that, in its absence, I’m unable to write.

How about you? Do you have a special place to write? Certain conditions that make it possible? What’s the view from your window?

Send me your responses and I’ll post the longer ones on a special page. You can email me at summerwood@thewhereofit.com.

Happy writing, wherever you are.

In the northwest corner of New Mexico lies a small jewel called Ghost Ranch. Its redrock landscape is familiar from the paintings of Georgia O’Keeffe, who lived and painted there for fifty years; and in August of every odd-numbered year, a bunch of women writers from across the country gather to write, to learn, to share their stories, to drink wine, to hike the backcountry, and to have the tops of their heads blown off by that thing called poetry.

Well, poetry and fiction and drama and memoir… all these genres are represented at A Room of Her Own Foundation’s Women Writers Retreat. This year, the fourth incarnation of the conference, faculty included fiction writer Pam Painter, actor and playwright Ellen McLaughlin, memoirist Meredith Hall, poet Dana Levin, and a host of others at the top of their game. The quality of the evening readings blew my mind. Rita Dove, former Poet Laureate of the U.S., was in good company when she read for the group on Wednesday; her spectacular performance, remarkable for the intimacy of the setting and for the generosity with which she shared her thoughts and life experiences, fit seamlessly into the lineup of gorgeous work we listened to all week.

It was especially poignant for me, as it confirmed once more that this organization is one of the most unique, positive, and effective supporters of women writers that exists. I’m fresh off a two-year stint as recipient of their $50,000 Literary Gift of Freedom Award, a grant which allowed me to write WRECKER, the novel I’ve wrestled with since ARROYO came out in 2001. I’m immensely grateful to the organization for its support, and it was with the greatest joy that I passed on my imaginary tiara to the 2009 recipient, New Orleans writer Barb Johnson.

Haven’t heard of Barb? Trust me: you will soon. She’s an amazing talent wrapped in Southern humor and graciousness, a writer who conveys with strength and delicacy the heartbreak of life in Mid City, New Orleans – and the love that redeems it. I’m a new fan, about to be joined by thousands more when her first collection of fiction, More of this World Or Maybe Another, hits the bookstores in October. I’d spoken to Barb a few times before, but spending these days together at Ghost Ranch, and hearing her read a story to the group, assured me that she’s the real thing: smart, funny, original, generous; a writer whose intense language lets her story leap from the page and change the reader’s life.

I felt overwhelmingly grateful to be there, and to stand between two writers – Barb to one side, Meredith Hall, 2004 Gift of Freedom recipient and author of the already-classic memoir Without a Map (a runaway bestseller), to the other – whose work I admire and whose friendship I cherish. It seemed to me a great example of what AROHO does best, which is to bring together women writers whose work and lives enrich each other and spur each other to work harder, trust deeper, believe more strongly in the power of literature to transform our personal lives and to – yes, I’ll say it – make a better world.

That week at Ghost Ranch was a better world, and it was this world: no fantasy, but a real example of what work and intention and love can do when yoked to a worthwhile cause. A tremendous amount of all of those things went into the making of the retreat, and I offer my greatest thanks to Darlene Chandler Bassett and Mary Johnson, founders of AROHO and directors of prior retreats; to Kim Ponders, extraordinary novelist and teacher who threw herself into directing this retreat; to Tracey Cravens-Gras, a writer herself, who worked tirelessly to keep all the ducks in a row; and to all the gifted and generous participants who came together to make this week so tremendous an experience for all.

No question about it: I’ll be there in 2011. Can’t wait to see you then.

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By which I mean to say:  this story is the real shit, and you should rush to read it.

We talked a lot in the workshop in Taos about ways writers reveal place, and I looked at this story with a special interest in how Quade tackled the task.  (I’ll try not to spoil your experience of the story by giving away plot points.  Seriously, you’ve got to read it.  It’s online.  Click on the first link above.)  First – clearly – there aren’t many other places in the country where secret societies of men reenact the Passion annually.  “This year Amadeo Padilla is Jesus,” the story starts.  “The hermanos have been practicing in the dirt yard behind the morada, which used to be a filling station,” and – bingo – we’re set not just in place, but roughly in time.  The story continues to accrue details that set it squarely in present-day northern New Mexico: we learn we’re close to Espanola, we get “Law and Order” and “America’s Next Top Model” on satellite TV, we meet Amadeo’s fifteen-year-old daughter Angel, pregnant and enrolled in parenting classes.  This is no caricatured New Mexico; this is the place in all its rough glory, with its cholos and its lowriders, its fringe Catholicism and contorted views of women and sex, its sense that family is all you have and that that’s why you betray them, again and again, for the sin of their importance to you.

What we don’t get are sweeping vistas of iconic landscapes.  We don’t get blue-framed windows or blossoming hollyhocks or adobe walls or howling coyotes.  We get exactly the details this story requires: nothing less, and nothing more.  An unnamed village where Amadeo Padilla grew up, the “roll of skin where skull meets thick neck,” the crucifix, “violence in the very carving,” hanging in the morada.  These are the details we need to understand the movement of the story, the slow burn of Amadeo Padilla’s growing awareness of his role in Christ’s Passion as well as in the human one unfolding before him.

I have nothing against hollyhocks.  I like adobe walls.  But in the same way that writers can rely on readers to conjure a picture of Paris in their minds without mentioning the Eiffel Tower, I’m happy to see this particular writer lay off the iconic images and direct our attention to the details that matter.

I’m fresh off the experience of teaching at the Taos Summer Writers’ Conference, a seven-day rush of great words, wonderful people, and – certainly for me, and I’m hoping for the 25 writers (in two groups) who traipsed about Taos by my side – terrific visits to places that reveal the heart of this region. The week started with a five-day “Writing the Where of It” course, alternating days in the classroom with days in the field, and closed with a weekend workshop, “Writing Around Taos,” spent exclusively out and about. I got to hang around with a bunch of talented, interesting, exuberant, good-spirited people who share a love for writing and a curiosity about Taos. What could be better? Well, watching people’s ideas and images bloom on the page in real time – and that’s what the workshops afforded me: the real-time unfolding of beautiful work inspired by the question of place and by the real places we visited.

I’ve got a few people to thank for all the fun I had. First, hats off to Sharon Oard Warner, who launched the first Taos Summer Writers’ Conference eleven years ago on a wing and a prayer, and who must be crazy-proud to see it grow into such a tremendous success. She’s got a crackerjack team working with her. Barb van Buskirk has an infectious smile and a handle on every last detail, and the MFA student interns are smart, cheerful, and always a step ahead of any trouble, quick to head it off at the pass. Teddy Warner (sex and pumpernickel, Teddy? – well, you got us all to smile for the group photo) was everywhere and did everything that needed doing. And Sam Tetangco, Lucy Dupertuis, Robin Brontsema, and Bruce (what’s your last name, Bruce?) were each stellar in carrying out their duties as van drivers for the groups – and brilliant writers to boot.

And the participants? I don’t know how I got so lucky, but to a person both groups were filled with the most engaging, accomplished, good-hearted writers a teacher could ever hope to meet. Watching you guys get to know one another, loosen up in your writing, and enjoy this place I love so much was a true delight for me, and one I won’t forget soon. Sam, Linda, Nancy, Pintki, Ian, Dove, Susie, Valerie, Cathy, Allyson, Lucy, Anne, and Leslie in the first group, and David, Tom, Julia, Jan, Marjorie, Marie M., Marie R., Kim, Jeanne, Suzanne, Robin, and Bruce in the second – you guys rock. Write on, and write well. You’ve got what it takes.

Writing is such a lonely occupation, most of the time. We sit at our desks or draped in our armchairs, the pen poised or computer humming… and we rarely get the chance to exchange ideas with other writers, to talk shop or compose together, to offer our work or listen attentively to others. For one week in July, the Taos Summer Writers’ Conference changes all that. I’m so glad I got to be a part of it.

Living as I do in the wilds of Taos County, I catch most of my movies long after they’ve left the box office.  FROZEN RIVER is no exception.  Debuting at Sundance Film Festival in January ’08 and entering theaters across the country in a limited release six months after that, I’m nearly a year – and a couple of Oscar nominations – behind.

No matter.  FROZEN RIVER stands up to time.  It is a splendid film, with rock-solid acting and an unsentimental story line, and I found it both edge-of-my-seat compelling to watch and deeply moving to reflect on.  How many films that pivot on a piece of ice can claim that combination?

It’s no ordinary piece of ice, though.  The frozen river of the title is the stretch of St. Lawrence that bisects the Mohawk reservation.  Treacherous and unpredictable, the river forms the border between the U.S. and Canada.  “No border,” insists Lila (Misty Upham), a young Mohawk woman who forms an uneasy alliance with Ray (Melissa Leo), a white woman down to her last dime.  “It’s all Mohawk land.”

Ray is sinking, trying to raise her two kids on a part-time salary cashiering at a dollar store, and the distinction is lost on her – until its ramifications come clear.  Border Patrol lacks jurisdiction on the reservation.  The river, frozen enough to drive over in the winter months, is a conduit for undocumented immigrants willing to pay to be smuggled into the States.  Lila has the connections and Ray has the car, and both women – single mothers teetering on the razor edge of poverty – are in desperate need of the cash that’s passed through the car window in crumpled paper bags.

The landscape is austere and unforgiving; both the tin-can trailers the women inhabit and the snow-covered roadsides they travel leave little room to negotiate.  These are women who know how to tow a car, fire a pistol, start a recalcitrant engine.  Necessity has taught them those skills - just as it has taught them never to trust another human.   Not your boss.  Not your husband.  And definitely not the woman of a different race who is quick to take advantage of the slightest weakness on your part. 

FROZEN RIVER is about trust, though.  This film about a physical border is also, deeply, about the borders between people – and, just as the melting river ice introduces a new element of danger to the treks Lila and Ray make back and forth across it, so does the thaw between them put them each at risk.

This is an honest and unflinching movie, but it is not brutal.  There are no villains.  There is only a profound empathy for the choices we make when we’re pushed to the wall.