T.C. Boyle The Women

Behind every great man, there are often several women.

Books Egotists, narcissists, iconoclasts—they make for good copy. Not only are they compelling in their outsized personalities and their contagious self-made myths, they are often enough also unknowab ...   More

 

Wednesday, February 18, 2009 MATTHEW KORFHAGE

Citadel Of The Spirit Edited By Matt Love

An Oregon conservationist collects stories about state history you missed in school.

Books High-school English teacher and longtime activist for Oregon Coast preservation Matt Love has made a hobby of collecting unusual stories about his beloved home state, stories that say, “It don&r ...   More

 

Wednesday, February 11, 2009 MATT BUCKINGHAM

The Tsar’s Dwarf Peter H. Fogtdal

Just a girl of small proportions, livin’ in a lonely world.

Books Danish novelist and Portland State University instructor Peter Fogtdal has published 12 novels in his homeland, but The Tsar’s Dwarf (Hawthorne Books Literary Arts, 289 pages, $15.95), translat ...   More

 

Wednesday, January 28, 2009 Matt Graham

Michele Ulriksen Reform At Victory

Books Seeing the press photo of Michele Ulriksen, author of Reform at Victory: A Survivor’s Story, you could be forgiven for drawing an immediate connection between her and Emily the Strange. The jet- ...   More

 

Wednesday, January 21, 2009 Samantha Herman

People Of The Book Geraldine Brooks

Books I can imagine Geraldine Brooks’ agent pitching the Pulitzer Prize-winning author’s new novel, People of the Book (Viking, 384 pages, $15), as The Da Vinci Code written by someone who can a ...   More

 

Wednesday, January 14, 2009 Michael Kimber

Counter Culture Ronault L.S. Catalani

The immigrant life, with a side of toast.

Books The bookshelves at Powell’s are packed with tales of outsiders. But rarely does a book convey such a sense of otherness and, at once, familiarity as Portland lawyer and Asian Reporter columnist ...   More

 

Wednesday, December 3, 2008 KELLY CLARKE

Philip Gourevitch The Paris Review

On writers, ghosts and Abu Ghraib.

Books The Paris Review was founded in part as a CIA front for co-founder Peter Matthiessen, and has sometimes been as known for its legendarily freewheeling editor George Plimpton as for its sterling conten ...   More

 

Wednesday, November 26, 2008 MATTHEW KORFHAGE

Is It Just Me Or Is Everything Shit?

Steve Lowe and Alan McArthur with Brendan Hay

Books Here at WW, we loves us some snark. It’s our bread and butter, our Bushmills and OxyContin. Still, we can’t rival the Brits, whose deflated empire only gives them more time to hang about O ...   More

 

Wednesday, November 19, 2008 Ian Gillingham

Jeanine Jablonski

Economy be damned, Fourteen30’s got bold ideas for our art scene.

Books At age 30, gallery impresario Jeanine Jablonski is so poised, disciplined and single-mindedly ambitious, it’s hard to believe she used to be a wild child in Alaska, running around with a shaved ...   More

 

Wednesday, November 12, 2008 RICHARD SPEER

David Mura: Famous Suicides of the Japanese Empire

Love and loss in Chicago—and ancient Japan.

Books Ben Ohara, narrator of David Mura’s debut novel, Famous Suicides of the Japanese Empire (Coffeehouse Books, 469 pages, $12.95), grows up as a boy who, hearth and heart, is stuck halfway between ...   More

 

Wednesday, October 15, 2008 MATTHEW KORFHAGE