I arrived in Portland Oregon 50 years ago and, since then, I’ve seen some remarkable changes in this city. I was here when Powell’s Bookstore first opened. Now it is said to be the world’s largest.
I was here during the energy crises of the 70s when Governor Tom McCall introduced widely adopted energy conservation programs and when Mayor Neil Goldschmidt began planning a metropolitan area that is the envy of city planners throughout this country and abroad.
And I was here when Literary Arts, a nonprofit literary organization was founded 32 years ago. It began with the Portland Arts and Lectures which is now one of the country’s largest literary series.
I vividly recall some of those earlier lectures when the likes of Philip Roth, William Stryon and Robert Coles presented memorable lectures. They were not interviewed, nor did they speak off the cuff about one thing or another. Rather, they delivered a genuine lecture about one of their book(s) or an idea central to their writing life. This year’s speakers include George Saunders, Claudia Rankine, Jesmyn Ward, Dr. Reza Asian and Viet Thanh Nguyen.
Since then Literary Arts has expanded with a variety of new programs. They include:
Oregon Book Awards & Fellowships, which celebrates Oregon’s writers and independent publishers.
Youth Programs that motivates students to write, publish, and perform their own creative writing.
Wordstock: Portland’s Book Festival, that brings writers throughout the country for lectures, workshops, and discussions.
Literary Arts also hosts guided discussion groups around great works of literature through a program called Delve. A few of the current, 6 week offerings include:
• The works and correspondence of Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop
• Shakespeare’s Complicated Romances
• The writings of Robert Bolano
• Discussion of Against the Day by Thomas Pynchon
Portland is a great town for readers. There’s nothing like reading a good book during the long and dreary winters we have around here.
Happy Holidays to everyone. Marks in the Margin will take a Holiday break and will be back early in the New Year.
2 comments:
Impressive! I should have retired to Portland instead of Southwest Florida. Nothing like that here, at least that I've been able to find, and I have done some searching. I was reading an article on ageing somewhere, the Times maybe, and the author decried "planned retirement communities like The Villages in Central Florida. These are places where the residents live in burped-shut and kid-free bubbles of golf, happy talk and sunshine." Our community is not retirement only, but it is a golf community (no, I do not play) and it does have that feel, golf carts everywhere, line dancing classes, etc. It is too early to judge, but the book club fostered by the local library branch has been a disappointment. Perhaps it is just me - it is the first time in my life that I have participated in a book club - and I don't think it is my thing.
A visit to Powell's is now on my "bucket list."
Enjoy your break, happy holidays to you. Looking forward to more MITM posts in 2018.
Linda:
I don't think you would like Portland where the winter lasts almost nine months of the year, where the rain and the cold and the cloudy dreary days would send you right back to Florida.
Once tried to start a book club and, like you, I realized very early that it was not my thing. Reading is pretty private for me. So is writing.
You can visit Powell's online, of course. Have a look: http://www.powells.com/
Happy holidays to you too.
Richard
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