Thursday, October 05, 2006

On reading Ivan Doig

October 5, 2006

An old friend of mine, Wallace Stegner, has a list of new Western writers in his book Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs, copyright 1992. Of course, I didn’t know the late Mr. Stegner personally, but when you read an author and find you are on similar ground, he or she feels like a friend. I was delighted to find this list. I love book lists. Not only do you have a new list of delights for your own mind, you get a peek into someone else’s mind. I have been sampling his list. One of the first writers on that list is Ivan Doig and it was a name I had heard before. So last time I went to the library I took part of Stegner’s list with me and picked up English Creek by Ivan Doig.

A friend loaned me a copy of one of Mr. Doig’s books several years ago and told me he was a good writer. I just couldn’t get into it. Maybe it was the book (which one I don‘t recall) more likely it was me. I went through a long painful time when I had a very difficult time reading. Even when I enjoyed a book immensely, I was likely to put it somewhere with a bookmark in it half way through and forget about it for weeks. Then I would pick it up, look at it, take the bookmark out and put it on the shelf. So I was willing to give Ivan Doig another look.

I just finished English Creek. Oh my. If you grew up in the Mountain West, you know these people. Strong people, sometimes individual to the point of eccentricity. Real people with virtues and vices and vices they called virtues. Good to the bone, though, most of them. Mr. Doig’s writing is beautiful, poetic in places, words to linger over and savor. Some of his characters use “ahem” colorful language, but he doesn’t use four letter words just to be using them and there is line he does not cross. This was an interesting read about strained relationships in a family and among friends. Worth you time.

And I have a new friend. Can’t wait to read another of his books…the only question is which one.

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