Mid-October is harvest time in the Columbia Basin of central Washington, a rich apple- and pear-growing region. Ben Givens, recently widowed, is a retired heart surgeon, once admired for his steadiness of hand, his precision, and his endurance. But now he has been diagnosed with terminal colon cancer. Ben has never been a man to readily accept defeat—but he is determined to avoid suffering, and to avoid being a burden.
Accompanied by his two hunting dogs, he sets out on a trip, which he plans to end with an “accident.” Journeying into deserts, yawning canyons, dusty ranches, and vast orchards, however, he is unprepared for the persuasiveness of memory and the promise he made to his wife, Rachel, the love of his life, during World War II. Along the way Ben will meet some people who force him to think more about his worldview—a young couple, a drifter, a veterinarian, a rancher, a migrant worker—and just when he thinks there is no turning back, nothing to lose that wasn’t lost, his power of intervention is called upon and his very identity tested.
“Wise and compassionate about the human predicament . . . A writer who delves into life’s moral complexities to arrive at existential truths.” —Publishers Weekly
“Ben is deeply drawn and complexly sympathetic.” —Entertainment Weekly
“Guterson draws compelling characters and creates a haunting sense of place and of humankind’s paradoxical relationship with the natural world; a passage describing a desperate encounter with a pack of Irish wolfhounds compares favorably with the best of Hemingway.” —Library Journal
“Guterson possesses a remarkable gift for capturing people and places, etching them into the reader’s mind.” —USA Today
Mid-October is harvest time in the Columbia Basin of central Washington, a rich apple- and pear-growing region. Ben Givens, recently widowed, is a retired heart surgeon, once admired for his steadiness of hand, his precision, and his endurance. But now he has been diagnosed with terminal colon cancer. Ben has never been a man to readily accept defeat—but he is determined to avoid suffering, and to avoid being a burden.
Accompanied by his two hunting dogs, he sets out on a trip, which he plans to end with an “accident.” Journeying into deserts, yawning canyons, dusty ranches, and vast orchards, however, he is unprepared for the persuasiveness of memory and the promise he made to his wife, Rachel, the love of his life, during World War II. Along the way Ben will meet some people who force him to think more about his worldview—a young couple, a drifter, a veterinarian, a rancher, a migrant worker—and just when he thinks there is no turning back, nothing to lose that wasn’t lost, his power of intervention is called upon and his very identity tested.
“Wise and compassionate about the human predicament . . . A writer who delves into life’s moral complexities to arrive at existential truths.” —Publishers Weekly
“Ben is deeply drawn and complexly sympathetic.” —Entertainment Weekly
“Guterson draws compelling characters and creates a haunting sense of place and of humankind’s paradoxical relationship with the natural world; a passage describing a desperate encounter with a pack of Irish wolfhounds compares favorably with the best of Hemingway.” —Library Journal
“Guterson possesses a remarkable gift for capturing people and places, etching them into the reader’s mind.” —USA Today
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Overview
Mid-October is harvest time in the Columbia Basin of central Washington, a rich apple- and pear-growing region. Ben Givens, recently widowed, is a retired heart surgeon, once admired for his steadiness of hand, his precision, and his endurance. But now he has been diagnosed with terminal colon cancer. Ben has never been a man to readily accept defeat—but he is determined to avoid suffering, and to avoid being a burden.
Accompanied by his two hunting dogs, he sets out on a trip, which he plans to end with an “accident.” Journeying into deserts, yawning canyons, dusty ranches, and vast orchards, however, he is unprepared for the persuasiveness of memory and the promise he made to his wife, Rachel, the love of his life, during World War II. Along the way Ben will meet some people who force him to think more about his worldview—a young couple, a drifter, a veterinarian, a rancher, a migrant worker—and just when he thinks there is no turning back, nothing to lose that wasn’t lost, his power of intervention is called upon and his very identity tested.
“Wise and compassionate about the human predicament . . . A writer who delves into life’s moral complexities to arrive at existential truths.” —Publishers Weekly
“Ben is deeply drawn and complexly sympathetic.” —Entertainment Weekly
“Guterson draws compelling characters and creates a haunting sense of place and of humankind’s paradoxical relationship with the natural world; a passage describing a desperate encounter with a pack of Irish wolfhounds compares favorably with the best of Hemingway.” —Library Journal
“Guterson possesses a remarkable gift for capturing people and places, etching them into the reader’s mind.” —USA Today
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780547539089 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Houghton Mifflin Harcourt |
| Publication date: | 06/01/2018 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 304 |
| Sales rank: | 179,769 |
| File size: | 3 MB |
About the Author
Hometown:
Bainbridge Island in Puget SoundDate of Birth:
May 4, 1956Place of Birth:
Seattle, WashingtonEducation:
M.A., University of WashingtonRead an Excerpt
CHAPTER 1
On the night he had appointed his last among the living, Dr. Ben Givens did not dream, for his sleep was restless and visited by phantoms who guarded the portal to the world of dreams by speaking relentlessly of this world. They spoke of his wife — now dead — and of his daughter, of silent canyons where he had hunted birds, of august peaks he had once ascended, of apples newly plucked from trees, and of vineyards in the foothills of the Apennines. They spoke of rows of campanino apples near Monte Della Torraccia; they spoke of cherry trees on river slopes and of pear blossoms in May sunlight. Now on the roof tiles and against his window a vast Seattle rain fell ceaselessly, as if to remind him that memories are illusions; the din of its beating against the world was in perfect harmony with his insomnia. Dr. Givens shrugged off his past to devote himself to the rains steady cadence, but no dreams, no deliverance, came to him. Instead he only adjusted his legs — his bladder felt distressingly full — and lay tormented by the unassailable fact that he was dying — dying of colon cancer.
Three hours before first light in the east, wide awake and in defeat, he turned on his lamp, put his feet on the floor, and felt the pain bearing down in his side that plagued him through all his waking hours. He felt it where his colon, on the left, made a turn before dropping toward his pelvic cavity; if he pressed his hand into the flesh there, it produced a sensation of irritability seeping through his abdomen. Ben Givens put his fingers against it and began the insistent, delicate caress that had of late become his habit. He plucked his glasses from the side table, fitted their stems behind his ears, and once again probed his side.
To the west the city where he had passed his adult years lay incidental to the force of the rain, and mostly obscured by it. Eastward the rain fell hard against the hills, but higher up on the flanks of mountains it turned to snow dropping silent against glaciers, on slopes of broken talus rock, and on wind-worn buttresses and outcrops. East of the snow-covered crests of the mountains the sky lay almost clear of clouds; save for a few last spectral wisps of vapor floating beneath the chill points of stars, one's view of the heavens was unimpeded. October moonlight illuminated hay fields, vineyards, sagelands, and apple orchards, and the land lay dry and silent. On the sloping, dark verges of the Columbia River, where Ben Givens had entered the world, the apples hung heavily from fragrant trees, and the windfall fruit lay rotting in the night, gathering a pale sheen of frost.
Ben thought of lonely canyons, of how today he would travel eastward to wander in pale, autumnal light with his dogs quartering the ground in front of him and the quail holding when the dogs went on point — and then he rose with the unsteadiness of morning, shuffled to the bathroom still rubbing his side, propped one hand against the wall above his toilet, and waited with bitter, desolate impatience for the muscles of his pelvic region to recollect how to pass night water. He reminded himself that by dusk of that day — if everything went according to his plan — he would no longer be in this world.
Dr. Givens was a heart surgeon, retired, who had specialized in bypass operations. He had been admired by other doctors for his steadiness of hand, his precision, his endurance, his powers of concentration, and his grace. His assistants knew that when the heart was isolated — when everything human was erased from existence except that narrow antiseptic window through which another's heart could be manipulated — few were as adroit as Dr. Givens.
Now he lived in a much-contained fashion: a restrained, particular man. At seventy-three he had a thick chest and broad shoulders, though the muscles in his limbs had gone soft. Since youth he'd climbed mountains and more mountains, and hiked many miles in all seasons. He'd walked in the high country every winter and snowshoed into lonely canyons. These past nineteen months, since his wife died, he'd returned to a haunting, autumn pastime: he'd hunted birds to shoot on the wing for the first time since he was a teenager. This was a pursuit that stole his soul shortly after Rachel's death, after he'd turned from his work as a surgeon and found himself with too much idle time.
His face was weathered and furrowed, his eyes two dark shields. His coarse gray hair looked permanently wind-tousled, and he walked a bit gingerly, with a bowlegged gait, to keep the weight from his instep. He was so tall that, without thinking about it, he ducked his head to pass through doorways. His patients, in past years, had admired his hands: precise, large, and powerful. When he palpated their chests or listened to their hearts, they were infused with his professional confidence. Dr. Givens had believed fervently in medicine and deferred only grudgingly to its limitations. He had not readily accepted defeat and had struggled with the weaknesses of his patients' hearts as if those weaknesses were an affront to him personally. In this way he had removed himself so that when patients died on the operating table he did not have to feel unduly burdened. He did not have to feel haunted. The main questions for him had been tactical; the rest, he'd felt, was all mystery, and so beyond his governance.
None of this meant that Dr. Givens was devoid of tenderness. His heart wavered when the truth of another's lay exposed and irreparable before him. Always at work he had been aware of his divine power of intervention, and of his helplessness, too. He understood the mortality of human beings and the fallibility of their beating hearts, though these things had kept their distance from him, until his own diagnosis. Now he'd been told — it was the dark logic of the world — that he had months to live, no more. Like all physicians, he knew the truth of such a verdict; he knew full well the force of cancer and how inexorably it operated. He grasped that nothing could stop his death, no matter how hopeful he allowed himself to feel, no matter how deluded. Ben saw how his last months would be, the suffering that was inevitable, the meaningless trajectory his life would take into a meaningless grave. Better to end it now, he'd decided; better to avoid pain than engage it. Better to end his life swiftly, cleanly, and to accept that there would be no thwarting the onslaught of this disease.
As had been his practice since the death of his wife, Ben went out to let his dogs in the house immediately after rising. There were roses growing beside their kennel — summer damasks his wife had planted — and their stalks shone in the rain. The dogs were awake when he came their way to lift the latch to their fenced-in run, the wizened Tristan staring at him where he stood at four o'clock in the morning with an umbrella tightly over his head, the two-year-old Rex leaping high against the wire mesh as if to scrabble over with his forepaws. When Ben swung the gate wide, the young dog leaped and clutched him at the waist, then ran unbounded out into the rain, leaped at nothing, and returned.
They were brown-and-white Brittanies — Rex ran more toward a bronze hue — with fawn-colored noses, tapering muzzles, and eyes well set back in their heads. They were both broad and strong in the hindquarters, and had little feathering at the legs. Tristan, in another time, had been boundlessly energetic; he'd had the habit of pursuing birds with earnest, exuberant good intentions. Now, in his later years, he was increasingly deliberate, more reluctant to plunge into thorns, and generally stayed closer to hand. His tendency to range had been quieted.
When the dogs were coaxed in out of the rain, Ben fed them in the kitchen. He poured a tumbler half full with prune juice — constipation was one of his symptoms — then swallowed two capsules of Docusate sodium and set his tea water to boil. He was accustomed to reading a newspaper over breakfast, but at this hour the boy who brought it around was no doubt blithely sleeping. Ben laid out melba toast, orange marmalade, two small bags of lemon tea, and a jar of applesauce. He arranged a small plate, a knife and spoon, a bowl, and a cup and saucer. When the water boiled, he filled his thermos, then draped a tea bag over its lip to steep while he attended to breakfast. Despite his contest with sleeplessness, he felt keen of mind on this morning, as well as a calm, compelling urge to establish domestic order. There was a protocol to the day that would be pleasurable to follow, in spite of everything.
The dogs lay easily at his feet while he ate and were still there when he pushed his bowl away, gently rubbed his tender side, and sipped his lemon tea. Both of them rose at the same moment he did and followed him soberly into the bedroom, where he took his gun case from the corner of the closet and slid his shotgun free. At this the dogs froze and looked at him with uncertain curiosity.
Ben sighted down the barrels once, flicked the safety on and off, and broke the gun so as to hold it to the light and inspect the condition of the bores. It had once been his father's shotgun, a Winchester 21 side-byside, choked for quail and chukars. It dropped an inch and a half at the comb, which was, as it turned out, right for Ben, but the length of pull that had worked for his father had not been entirely comfortable and Ben had added two inches to the stock butt. His father took him when he was eight years old to shoot mourning doves at the edge of the apple orchards. The doves flew up from the Columbia to feed, very swift and flocking wildly in the pale light of morning. Ben's father did not broach the subject of hunting's moral perplexity. He only showed Ben how to establish his lead, how to swing through smoothly and easily. Ben's mother, on the other hand, did not approve of bird hunting, and had made her sentiments known to them. Food for the table was necessary, she maintained, but pleasure in killing small birds on the wing was reprehensible in the eyes of God. Ben killed three mourning doves that day and watched them fall at the report of the .410 his father had placed in his hands. He buried their viscera, wings, and heads in a small hole in the ground. Their breast meat was dark and small in the frying pan, dusted with salted flour. He ate the meat with vague regret while his mother watched in silence from the sink, until after awhile she came near to touch his cheek. Then she went to the sink again and scrubbed the pan for him.
Now, in the bedroom, the Winchester in hand, Ben snapped the action closed. He shouldered the gun and swung it along the picture molding, and with his forefinger lightly against the front trigger he squeezed off a silent shot at the seam where the wall met another wall. Rex pranced, high-stepping.
Then Ben set the gun butt against his bed and wrapped his lips around both barrels, as though to fellate them. In this posture he ascertained that in fact the front trigger was just in reach; he had only to extend the full length of one arm, which pushed the sight bead against his palate. If he seized the shotgun in this way, wholly willing, embracing it, allowing the metal to prod his mouth, he could blow the top of his skull off without logistical difficulties. The knowledge that this was indeed possible, that such an act was not out of reach, suffused Dr. Givens with a glandular fear that washed through him like a wave.
Ben put the gun down and packed for his journey with the same judicious deliberation that had been his foremost professional trait: he weighed everything at immoderate length, but made few errors in judgment. He packed his duffel with his upland vest, a box of twentyfive number 8 shells, his shooting gloves, his shotgun sling, a canvas cap with a canted brim, and a whistle hung from a lanyard. He loaded his rucksack with a headlamp and battery pack, maps of Chelan and Douglas Counties, an altimeter, a compass, an aluminum cup, three paraffin fire starters, a roll of waterproof adhesive tape, a medical kit, a needle and thread, an entrenching tool, a folding camp saw, a rain poncho, a length of Manila cord, a pair of field glasses, a vial of lip balm, a tube of sunscreen, prescription sunglasses in their case, a cigarette lighter, insect repellent, a snap box of water-purifying tablets, and a sandwich bag full of toilet paper.
In the kitchen he filled his two water bottles, closed the thermos of tea securely, and turned all three on their heads briefly to check for leaks around the cap seals. He wiped them dry, wiped the table, and washed the breakfast dishes. He had hoped to move his bowels before leaving — the first hour in the car would stop them up firmly, sealing them closed for the length of the day — but he knew there would be no success to the enterprise should he endeavor to sit and wait on the toilet. That would swell his incipient hemorrhoids and encourage the frustration incited in his stomach when he could not void his bowels. Ben was sorry that at the heart of things this day he would carry the sensation of a poisoning fullness and a heavy reminder that he himself was now a blight on the world.
He had taken much of the previous night to page through photograph albums, to read his files of correspondence, and to hold in his hand the earrings and lockets his wife, Rachel, had worn. He had found, in a box, a jar of her sewing buttons, a bulbous-head lavender wand laced with ribbon, a pair of her shoes, a pack of foxglove seeds, and a sketch pad less than a quarter filled with her pencil drawings of trees. He had unzipped the garment bag in the storage room closet and, yielding to sentimentality, burrowed his face into the dresses there in order to retrieve the faint smell of her. He had done like things all evening long and so had found in the endpages of books his mothers neatly fountain-penned signature, and in a hinged cedar box his father's pocket watch, its face glass missing for fifty years. After midnight he came across photos long forgotten, at the bottom of a box, most of Renee, his daughter.
There were photos of him, too. He hadn't been handsome, but he'd been strong and tall, blue-eyed like his mother, lean-jawed like his father. There were photos taken in apple orchards, on the summits of peaks, in uniform, on leave in the mountains of northern Italy.
Now it was morning of the next day. And Ben could not bring himself to extinguish the kitchen light and turn away quite yet. He listened to the hum of the refrigerator and remembered how Rachel had habitually commented on the taste of things they ate together — Jerusalem artichokes dug from the ground, or apples at their sugared prime. He remembered her, too, slicing carrots with a paring knife, the ball of her thumb a stop. Ben shook off his memories, turned out the light, and called the dogs from the living room. It was time to go away from there. It was time to begin his journey.
Dr. Givens kept in his garage a 1969 International Scout, which he used as an adjunct to his sporting life. He had purchased it new twenty-eight years before, and although since then he'd bought and sold other cars, he had not been able to part with the Scout for reasons he could not readily give voice to. He was not a man who fell in love with cars or spoke of them in endearing terms; nevertheless, he felt for this one a certain enduring fondness. The Scout was modestly well-preserved, but idiosyncratic in keeping with its age, with the tics and uncertainties of passing time. It included a four-wheel transfer case and locking hubs one turned by hand after coming to a halt on the road verge. Its heater fan made a hollow din, and through the moldings where the doors met the windshield — the car's top could be removed in good weather — the wind whistled tonelessly. More disconcerting was that the driver's side window regulator had developed with time a modicum of play: the pane chattered at high speeds and irritated Ben deeply. Twice in three years he had taken the door apart and peeled back the plastic vapor shield in an effort to address the problem. To no avail, however. The play in the regulator was fundamentally ambiguous, or perhaps organic to the entire apparatus, which was deteriorating in all its particulars.
(Continues…)
Excerpted from "East of the Mountains"
by .
Copyright © 1999 David Guterson.
Excerpted by permission of Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Reading Group Guide
1. What is the importance-literal and symbolic-of Ben's movement eastward? What qualities are associated, through image and direct statement, with the concept of "east"?
2. Most quest novels feature young men or women on journeys of discovery. What effects result from Guterson's presentation of a dying seventy-three-year-old man embarking on a journey of rediscovery? What does Ben Givens (re)discover?
3. Do you think that coincidence and chance occur too often in the novel? What might be Guterson's purpose in countering Ben's lifelong "judicious deliberation" and "attention to all particulars" with the accidents and chance encounters he experiences? What is the significance of the several references to miracles?
4. If "Suicide was at odds with the life he knew, at odds with all he understood, of himself and of the world," why does Ben plan such a carefully thought-out, staged suicide? How would you describe Ben's understanding "of himself and of the world"? Does that understanding change during Ben's three days east of the mountains?
5. "He had been born in the cradle of apple orchards," Guterson writes of Ben, "and it was this world he wanted to return to." How important to Ben is this return to the apple-orchard country of the Columbia Basin at the height of the apple harvest? Given Ben's views on death and dying, why does he want to end his life in this "cradle"? What is significant in the fact that Ben's view of his family's old orchard is from a moving bus while he is busy with the ill migrant picker?
6. Do Ben's memories of family, Rachel, and war serve only to provide us with details of his past life? What bearing on Ben's present does each ofhis memories have? How do those memories help us understand Ben's life and behavior?
7. At the end of chapter two, Ben recalls that he and Rachel, on their honeymoon, "had kissed with the sadness of newlyweds who know...that their good fortune is subject, like all things, to the crush of time, which remorselessly obliterates what is most desired and pervades all that is beautiful."To what extent has time crushed the desired and the beautiful in Ben's life? To what extent do his experiences during his three-day journey counter that disquieting observation?
8. Why does Guterson pay so much attention to details of landscape and natural phenomena? Through what kinds of landscape, both past and present, does Ben travel? How is Guterson's presentation of each landscape important in terms of the corresponding stage in Ben's life and of his view of life at each stage?
9. What role does hunting play in Ben's life? What kinds of hunting does he participate in or observe, and what are the purposes and consequences? In what ways does his attitude toward hunting change?
10. How are the episodes involving the wolfhounds and their consequences significant, particularly in terms of Ben's inability to control or influence events? What details of landscape and time of night give these episodes particular import? Why does Ben, having found William Harden near his journey's end, relinquish the gun to the wolfhound owner with the statement, "That gun is cursed"?
11. As he settles Rex into the cab of Stu Robinson's tractor-trailer, Ben thinks, "There were no good answers to important questions." What are the important questions, from Ben's perspective? What answers does he find? Which of those answers, if any, are "good"?
12. What is the importance of Ben's experience in the field hospital in Italy, and of Ben's memory of that experience? Why is this memory presented in such detail? What influence did the Army surgeon have on Ben?
13. In his Quincy motel room, Ben opens the Gideon Bible to the Book of Job and reads the verses that begin, "Days of affliction have taken hold upon me." And, on the bus to Wenatchee, he refers to Don Quixote as "Knight of the Mournful Countenance." Are the correspondences implied by these references justified? In what ways might Ben be compared to Job and Don Quixote? What other biblical and literary references occur, and what are their relevance?
14. Sitting in the restaurant with Emilio, Ben decides that "the life of the boy-of anyone-was a life, in the end, and no mere story to be told across the table. The essentials could not be culled from the rest without divesting both certain meanings." What bearing might this realization have on our acceptance of the story of Ben's life?
Copyright (c) 2000. Published in the U.S. by Harcourt, Inc.
Questions and author biography written by Hal Hager & Associates, Somerville, New Jersey
Interviews
On Wednesday, April 28th, barnesandnoble.com welcomed David Guterson to discuss EAST OF THE MOUNTAINS.
Moderator: Welcome, David Guterson! Thank you for taking the time to join us online this evening to chat about your new novel, EAST OF THE MOUNTAINS. How are you doing tonight?
David Guterson: Feeling good. I'm in Denver. I'm on a book tour and this is my fifth stop. I have a reading to give tonight at Tattered Cover bookstore.
Jonathan from Sag Harbor: Hello. The photo on the front cover of EAST OF THE MOUNTAINS looks exactly how I would imagine the Pacific Northwest to look. What is the landscape of?
David Guterson: That's an interesting observation, because most people would associate the Pacific Northwest with the image of my last book, SNOW FALLING ON CEDARS. The cover of the new book is suggestive of the mythic American West and probably not as familiar to readers as the image they think of when they think of Washington State.
Danielle from Long Island: SNOW FALLING ON CEDARS was an amazing book, and I am looking forward to reading this new novel. Did all of the acclaim for your first novel create any pressure to "perform" with this novel?
David Guterson: Well, I'm sure that for the rest of my writing life I'll be writing in the shadow of SNOW FALLING ON CEDARS. That's unavoidable. You can't have a book as successful as that one without all of your future books being compared to it.
Nancy from Arlington, VA: What did you have in mind first when you were coming up with the story for EAST OF THE MOUNTAINS -- Ben's character, the pact between Ben and his wife, the wolfhounds? Just curious what started this story for you.
David Guterson: It's always the case with me that the story begins with theme. I engaged in an act of self-reflection in an attempt to discover what it is I have to write about. I'm in search of an abstraction -- some aspect of the human condition I must confront. Once I know what that is, I add a sense of place. So, initially I come to grips with theme, add the element of landscape, and only thereafter do I begin to ponder character and plot.
Susan from Oklahoma: Bravo! How wonderful that an author takes time with characters and descriptions! I like to take time to savor a book when I read, and yours are worth savoring. Thank you.
David Guterson: That's a nice compliment. I appreciate your taking the time to communicate with me.
Grace from Davidson, NC: Hello. Great piece on you this Sunday on "CBS News Sunday Morning." How much research did you do to write this book and flesh out Ben's character and dilemma? Did you walk in Ben's shoes, hunting chukars?
David Guterson: I did an enormous amount of research. I spent a considerable amount of time in the orchard country of central Washington, picking fruit, wandering through orchards, hunting small birds over my own Brittany spaniel, spending time in all of the places that are referred to in the book. I went to Italy to visit the battle sites of the 10th Mountain Division and interviewed 10th Mountain veterans. In short, my research was extensive.
Teresa Mertens from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: Firstly, I would like to thank you for your beautiful writing, Mr. Guterson. As a Spokane, Washington, native transplanted to Saudi Arabia, I absolutely love the way you bring me back home to the luscious forests of our land with your writing. Secondly, did you submit any or all of your works with or without an agent? Do you have any advice for new novelists who love writing, but don't quite know how to get started after the novel is done? Thank you.
David Guterson: My first book was a collection of short stories called THE COUNTRY AHEAD OF US, THE COUNTRY BEHIND. I simply gathered together 10 of the 70 or 80 short stories I had written, put them in an envelope, and sent them rather arbitrarily to a publisher, the Atlantic Monthly Press. The editor said no and sent the ten stories back, at which point I sent them to a second publisher, Harper and Row. Harper and Row accepted the stories for publication in book form and that was that. I don't know any other way to do it, and I doubt that there is any secret. The important thing is to put work in front of an editor that is so beautifully done that they can't turn away from it and feel compelled to publish it.
Niki from Niki_palek@yahoo.com: I found the World War II battle scenes the best passages of this novel. What triggered such stunning scenes? Did you research those scenes?
David Guterson: Well, I interviewed 10th Mountain veterans extensively, I read widely in the literature of the 10th Mountain Division. I visited battle sites in Italy and gathered as much in the way of notes, impressions, and details as I could. Added the element of imagination, tried to put myself there, and did the best I could. It was a very difficult challenge because writing about war is inherently a daunting task.
Critter from Home: How is your book tour going? What passages from EAST OF THE MOUNTAINS are you reading at events, and why have you selected these passages?
David Guterson: The book tour is going well. Large audiences are showing up at the bookstores and I've been able to keep myself at an even keel through it all. To digress momentarily, I've learned after doing a considerable amount of travel the last couple of years how important it is to marshal your energies, to get enough sleep, to maintain silence when you have the opportunity, and to save your strength for when you need it most.
I've been reading from Chapter 4 of EAST OF THE MOUNTAINS, which is a section in which my protagonist recollects his youth. I chose that particular section for a practical reason because it hangs together as narrative, as a story in miniature. It has a beginning, middle, and end, and therefore offers listeners some satisfaction.
Christian from Hamilton, NY: A main character's odyssey has a rich tradition in literature and narrative. What inspired you about the "epic journey"? Are you paying homage to that tradition in EAST OF THE MOUNTAINS?
David Guterson: Absolutely. I was very aware of working in what is probably the oldest literary genre on the planet. I wanted to honor its conventions as well as extend them. In the conventional mythic-journey story, the protagonist is quite young and the landscape is exotic and distant in time and space. In my book, the protagonist is quite old and the landscape is the real world of America at the tail end of the 20th century. It was interesting -- and challenging -- for me to reverse these two major conventions of the mythic-journey genre.
Bernice from Philadelphia: What type of feedback/reaction did you receive from the Japanese community regarding SNOW FALLING ON CEDARS?
David Guterson: Uniformly positive. Japanese-American readers seemed happy that this story had been told and that this shameful episode in our nation's history -- the internment of Japanese-American citizens -- had been brought to the attention of contemporary Americans in a forceful way.
Clare from Hoboken: I enjoyed the conversation Ben had in the bus with the college girl Catherine about anthroposophy -- it seemed to be some sort of a turning point in EAST OF THE MOUNTAINS. Do anthroposophy and Steiner mean something personal to you?
David Guterson: No. The answer is no. I didn't know much about anthroposophy before writing the book. But what I did know about it suggested to me that it was perhaps appropriate at this juncture in the novel. I was glad to have the chance to incorporate it into the narrative.
Linda from San Francisco: Which authors, past or present, are your favorites?
David Guterson: That's always changing as I discover new writers or reread writers I've neglected or forgotten about. Recently I've discovered the great Portuguese writer José Saramago. Saramago won the Nobel Prize last year and thoroughly deserved it. He is one of the great writers of our time. Strangely reminiscent of both Kafka and Gabriel García Márquez. I really admire him.
Kelly from San Francisco: I recently read a review of EAST OF THE MOUNTAINS. Do you read the reviews of your novels, and if so, how do they affect you?
David Guterson: Well, I was in San Francisco yesterday myself and read the review in the Chronicle. I do read the reviews of my work, but whether they are negative or positive, I try not to give them too much weight in my emotional life. I generally read reviews once or twice and them put them away and forget about them.
Tobey from Hartford, CT: I really enjoy your writing style. Any nonfiction on the horizon? Also, I haven't read the new one; do you think fans of SNOW FALLING will also be fans of EAST OF THE MOUNTAINS?
David Guterson: Regarding your question about nonfiction, I've written a 10,000-word essay for Harper's, where I am a contributing editor, on the pastoral of Washington's apple country. I suspect it will be published in the fall. I've done a few other pieces recently that have appeared in magazines such as Architectural Digest, Outside, and Newsweek.
Pac87@aol.com from xx: How much input are you having in the movie "Snow Falling on Cedars"? Also, what do you think of Ethan Hawke as Ishmael?
David Guterson: I have a considerable amount of input into the film. I was extensively involved in location scouting and consulted intensively on the screenplay. I made frequent visits to the set and have now seen the film twice. Ethan Hawke is extraordinary in this role. I think this is a film that will vault him to a new level in his career as an actor.
Lonny from Manchester, VT: I loved Ben's care and concern for Tristan and Rex, his Brittanies. Do you have any dogs? Also, will you be coming up to Manchester any time soon?
David Guterson: I myself have a Brittany. I got him as a pup while I was writing the book. I am a great lover of the breed. Brittanies are an incredibly friendly and intelligent dog. The closest I'll get to your home is Boston, I'm sorry to say. I will be there Tuesday, May 11th. I believe it's somewhere on the campus at Harvard.
Chester from Birmingham, AL: Was Nels Gudmundsson's character in SNOW FALLING ON CEDARS modeled after anyone you knew?
David Guterson: Nels is an elderly man experiencing physical decline. In that regard, he's fictional. But in his view of life, in his sensibilities, in his style, he is in certain regards reminiscent of my own father, who still today is a practicing criminal defense attorney in Seattle.
Meredith from North Carolina: I just bought your new novel and am looking forward to reading it! As an aspiring fiction author, I look to immerse myself in as much good literature as possible. What and/or who do you turn to for inspiration?
David Guterson: I don't read for inspiration, but certainly there are a large number of contemporary writers to admire and to learn from. And these would include Gabriel García Márquez, Saramago, and Annie Proulx, among others.
James from New York: I haven't read your new novel yet, but I read SNOW FALLING ON CEDARS and am reading and enjoying THE COUNTRY AHEAD OF US, THE COUNTRY BEHIND. In reading I could not help wondering whether SNOW FALLING began as a short story. Do you use short-story writing to explore character development or to help you identify what might be a good next novel?
David Guterson: SNOW FALLING did not begin as a short story. When I was in my 20s, I wrote as many as 70 or 80 stories in a very conscious way. I was trying to learn as much as I could about the craft of fiction without engaging the commitment that a novel demands. At a certain point, I felt comfortable enough with the craft of fiction to attempt a novel, and it was at this point that I began SNOW FALLING ON CEDARS.
Moderator: Do you have any books you have been saving to read this summer?
David Guterson: No, I have no books that I have been saving to read during the summer. I really don't know what I'm going to read until I pick something up.
Moderator: Thank you, David Guterson, and best of luck with EAST OF THE MOUNTAINS. Before you leave, do you have any parting thoughts for the online audience?
David Guterson: Only this, that as I've traveled, I've been happy to see how interested people are in books generally. The idea that the novel is dead is absurd, because it is so clear to me that so many millions of readers care deeply about books, and that is a wonderful thing for which all authors are grateful.
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