Forget Me Not: A Memoir by Jennifer Lowe-Anker

Of all the memoirs published during 2008, Forget Me Not stands out for (at least) several reasons. First, the cover art, created by the author with "fat, brightly-colored paint sticks... generally used by ranchers to mark the hides of sheep and cattle," will call you away from the text at times -- for a second, third, or tenth look. An attention-grabbing foreword written by Jon Krakauer states that "Many of the things Alex [Lowe] did on steep rock and ice were so staggering and so far ahead of their time that they were terrifying to contemplate." But perhaps the most compelling reason Forget Me Not should move to the top of your book pile is Jennifer's skilled use of personal correspondence from her husband to entwine his international climbing career with her domestic pursuits of parenting and painting.

Although she shared international adventures with Alex for years, once their first child once born she "lost interest in activities such as ice climbing and skiing for the first time ever." After that, this story transitions into their struggles with leaving and staying and trying, with moderate success, to find ballast within the storms of conflicting passions. From the dusty cliffs of Pakistan to the blue ice of Antarctica, Alex writes love letters to his family describing his exotic escapades.

Those world-wide, public dramas, however, are punctuated by scores of contrasting passages that deliver Jennifer’s domestic adventures: “At home, Max beat on our pots and pans and we danced together in the living room. I took Max to ride the bus, and we went to ‘monitor’ swim classes, library hour, and the park. We hiked among spring wildflowers that sprouted in the greening hills of the Wasatch. We baked cookies, read stories, and were together always.” Although Jennifer accepted her husband’s drive (and job) to climb mountains, she was often afraid and overwhelmed by her family responsibilities. And then on October 5, 1999, the worst happened.

Even if you have no interest in the exploits of mountain climbers, this poignant story of Jennifer Lowe-Anker, her famous husband, and their children will draw you in and keep you emotionally connected with them far beyond the final page.

Read about Forget Me Not: A Memoir by Jennifer Lowe-Anker on Amazon.com

And don't forget to listen to The Write Question on Montana Public Radio Sunday mornings at (approximately) 11:10. This week's guest is Susanna Sonnenberg, author of a memoir titled, Her Last Death.

Chérie Newman

Chérie's Fall Reading List

'Tis the season (no, not that one) for books. As the light and fair weather have faded off into the 6 P.M. sunset, I've barely noticed. It's hard to see over my stacks of books.

In mid-September, I started off with politics, just to get it over with, but actually enjoyed (and learned a lot from) Blue Man in a Red State, Greg Lemon's biography of Montana Governor Brian Schweitzer.

Then I prepared for reading nirvana. I made a huge pot of veggie soup, a pan of blueberry muffins, and a gynormous container of green salad so I could graze for several days while I devoured:

Horses That Buck (Margot Kahn)
Freeman Walker (David Allan Cates)
A Country Called Home (Kim Barnes)
Hundred in the Hands (Joseph M. Marshall III)
Her Last Death (Susanna Sonnenberg)
Jackalope Dreams (Mary Clearman Blew)

Next, two marvelous books of poetry launched my mind into a serious contemplation of my mind's contemplations:
the true keeps calm biding its story (Rusty Morrison)
Thistle (Melissa Kwasny)

I've had to pause for grocery runs and to spend some time at the radio station, but the stacks of fascinating books on my kitchen table (and bedroom table and living room table) flirt with me every time I walk through the room. So to hell with dog hair and spotty windows...

Next on the list:
Another Man's Moccasins (Craig Johnson)
Forget Me Not (Jennifer Lowe-Anker)
Trash Fish (Greg Keeler)
The Enders Hotel (Brandon R. Schrand)

There's nothing like reading to re-arrange reality. If you're dreading cold wind and snow, I recommend a bookstore or book festival outing. Stack up some books and read your way into oblivion.

And don't forget to listen to The Write Question on Montana Public Radio, or from our Web site, every Sunday at (approximately) 11:10. David Allan Cates is my guest this week.

- Chérie Newman

Montana Book Festivals

October is THE month for book festivals in Montana:

Helena Festival of the Book: October 9 - 11

High Plains Book Festival in Billings: October 16 - 19

Montana Festival of the Book in Missoula: October 23 - 25

Addendum to McMurty Thoughts

Just finished up Streets of Laredo. A reader should probably not mistake black humor – despite its strength and prominence here – for the sole, prevailing sentiment. The humor is tied inextricably to fragility and the fleeting nature of things.

We’ve all heard the writing metaphor, “punctuations of violence.” But too often, violence in books and movies is like an exclamation point: abrupt and loud. McMurtry, on the other hand, cuts deep grooves into the text. He cuts them and then, after only the most cursory pause, he moves on. He is the master of violence as a comma.

We could extrapolate this into, perhaps, a meditation on his philosophy of life, but why bother? It speaks for itself: threads of good will, interwoven with and usually overwhelmed by thick, ragged and inky black threads of ill will. The end result – a sense of reality, a distinctly unrosy feeling – is something we know well, but set in a context that fosters simplicity and still, somehow, seems preferable.

- Nathaniel Miller

Nathaniel Miller Wallows In Larry McMurtry's Writing

Texas was once the west, and Texan Larry McMurtry writes a great deal about the “old west,” so I think it’s safe to call him a Western writer.

The best parts of my recent days have consisted of wallowing in the crude genius of McMurtry's dialogue.

“Streets of Laredo” (1993), which I’m reading now for the first time, is the sequel to “Lonesome Dove” and was written before the two prequels, “Dead Man’s Walk” and “Comanche Moon.” “Lonesome Dove” (1985) is a book I get worked up about. Sure, untold numbers adore it, and it won that little thing they call the Pulitzer, but people of high erudition tend to disparage it (without having read it, of course). Sometimes I am forced to have words with these people.

“Lonesome Dove” deals with so many things, but above all it’s about the taming of the West; “Streets” seems to exist primarily to satisfy McMurtry's fascination with "killers" in the time before effective, pervasive law. Sometimes I think it's gratuitous, sometimes I think it's very real – if reality were honed to an edge so sharp that it was ragged and would break if pressed against any hard surface.

McMurtry has always demonstrated a fondness for killing off his characters – he kills them swiftly – often with pain, gore, and zeal, but almost never with telegraphing or fanfare. That’s one of his strengths: he can make a story (or a life) seem real just by its sheer, unscrupulous unpredictability. He stomps on western romanticism with flair and black humor.

It’s true, sometimes he lets a plotline get the better of him, spinning in too many directions until all you’re left with is loose thread (see “Comanche Moon”), but the ride is usually worthwhile.

He’s also showing off, in “Streets,” his clear love for tossing historical characters in with his fictional ones, and putting strange, compelling, off-beat words in their mouths. In this case, it’s the famous cattleman Charles Goodnight, who has minor roles in all of the “Lonesome Dove” books but figures prominently here in all his terse glory, and John Wesley Hardin, the infamous killer.

I’m halfway through, steeped in blood, completely uncertain as to where the story is going or who it’s really about, and pleased to be in good hands.

>> Here’s a link to the Wikipedia page that lists Larry McMurtry's books.

~ Nathaniel Miller writes about the dark side of nature, and other things. He enjoys pig-meat, old Russian folk music and books about Ned Kelly. He is not from the same place as you. When he passes by, all the people say, “Just another guy on the lost highway.”

Book Festivals

Links to book festivals scheduled in Montana, Wyoming, Utah, and Nevada:

Missoula, Montana
Salt Lake City, Utah
Las Vegas, Nevada
Cheyenne, Wyoming

Book festivals offer opportunities to meet authors and publishers, plump up your reading list, and enjoy a weekend of total literary immersion. They usually have great book bags, too!

Discovering Kim Barnes

Even when your professional life is all tangled up with the pack of prolific writers populating the western U.S., and you're an avid recreational reader, it's hard to keep up. That's my excuse for reading Finding Caruso five years after it was published. Barnes' compelling story and poignant writing carried me from late evening into near-dawn before physical fatigue forced me to lay the book, and my head, down.

Although I wanted more character development and started to feel a little dizzy when the plot began to circle like a dog settling in for a nap, Finding Caruso pulled me into raw emotional territory. The first scene in the book will stay with me forever, in the same way parts of Faulkner's book Sanctuary still sprint through my mind now and then.

According to RandomHouse.com, "Kim Barnes is the author of the novel Finding Caruso and two memoirs, In the Wilderness: Coming of Age in Unknown Country—a finalist for the 1997 Pulitzer Prize—and Hungry for the World. She is coeditor with Mary Clearman Blew of Circle of Women: An Anthology of Contemporary Western Women Writers, and with Claire Davis of Kiss Tomorrow Hello: Notes from the Midlife Underground by Twenty-Five Women Over Forty. Her essays, stories, and poems have appeared in a number of journals and anthologies, including The Georgia Review, Shenandoah, MORE magazine, and the Pushcart Prize Anthology. She teaches writing at the University of Idaho and lives with her husband, the poet Robert Wrigley, on Moscow Mountain."

Barnes' new novel, A Country Called Home, will be out in September.