Learning to write from that place called Life

Published 9:00 pm Saturday, July 7, 2001

John Findlay didn’t gush. Given a chance to introduce Ivan Doig, I’d have gushed.

Cleverly, Findlay tempered reverence with ribbing. The University of Washington history professor ushered Doig to the lectern by sharing some of the writer’s own history.

"Since Ivan studied in this department in the 1960s, we’ve kept track of him," Findlay said slyly. There was Doig’s doctoral project, a footnoted thesis on some long-ago Northwest figure. There were obscure academic writings that followed.

"At this point, he veered from the norm," Findlay said of Doig’s 1978 masterpiece, the Montana memoir "This House of Sky," and "Winter Brothers," a mix of memoir, Northwest coast history and a biography of 19th-century pioneer James Swan.

"We in the department liked the books, but there’s too much Ivan in them," Findlay teased, noting a proper historian’s need for scholarly distance.

"Then Ivan took an alarming path — fiction," the professor said with mock horror. "After abandoning footnotes and the Ph.D. after his name, he abandoned the truth."

Even Findlay couldn’t help but gush. Truth, he said, flows from "the wonders of Ivan’s imagination." Then he called Doig forward with a final wisecrack: "If this writing thing doesn’t work out, Ivan, come see us."

The writing thing worked out.

Bearded and bespectacled, short and slight, 61-year-old Ivan Doig is a literary giant.

A reviewer for the San Francisco Chronicle called him "the reigning master of new Western literature," a writer "bigger than the Big Sky." The author of nine books, including the McCaskill family trilogy "English Creek," "Dancing at the Rascal Fair" and "Ride With Me, Mariah Montana," he was a National Book Award finalist for "This House of Sky."

Doig, who lives in Shoreline, spoke Thursday as part of the UW history department’s "A Sense of Where We Are" summer lecture series. I took it as an opportunity to combine work with hero worship.

With manuscript in hand, the author stood before an eager audience and said, "For what it’s worth, this is a world premiere."

In a lively voice, Doig read from a work in progress. The untitled novel continues tales of characters his fans have already met. Like William Faulkner’s Mississippi, Doig’s Montana is a rich stew of family eccentricity and human frailty steeped in breathtaking prose.

Once again, he has crafted sweeping landscapes with fanciful flights of language. Again, he has poured compassion into a plot line. Again, he has plumbed the secrets of the human heart.

Doig read from an opening chapter, set in 1924 and titled "Evening Star."

He read of Susan Duff, a Helena music teacher "in her 40th year under heaven." He read of Wes Williamson, a man "brave and wounded at the same time," a man of "wealth and fortunes, which were two different things." He read of how "night and quiet came again" to Susan’s house on Highland Street, and how, before climbing her stairs to a bedroom that overlooked the state Capitol dome, "she splashed water on her face" and took "one glance in the mirror, never two."

He read of how Wes drove his "butter-yellow Duesenberg" to the street below Susan’s window, and how she heard him "coming up the stairs to her, for the first time in four years."

At the end of their exchange, in which Wes and Susan speak briefly of a music pupil and leave much unsaid, Doig read Susan’s mind as the powerful man descended her stairs: "Let him leave that key in the door this time. Let that be the natural end to it."

Doig’s readers won’t know more until 2003. That’s the expected publication date, Doig’s wife, Carol, told me as the author signed books and chatted with admirers.

Carol Doig, who is retired from teaching mass media and literature of the American West at Shoreline Community College, shares her husband’s habit of writing. He’s often up by 4:30 a.m. and working by 6. Writing follows years of research, trips to Montana or Alaska, and visits to museums to absorb scenery and faces from vintage photographs.

Doig’s legwork shows in his artfully chosen words.

I have lately felt a little cheated that my vacation plans don’t include Montana this summer. My midweek trip to the UW campus brought Montana to me.

Doig, on his Web site, of all places — www.ivandoig.com — has something to say about the notion of being a Western writer. It explains why a region can’t contain him.

"To me, language — the substance on the page, that poetry under the prose — is the ultimate ‘region,’ the true home, for a writer," he said.

Writers, Doig said, "can ground their work in specific land and lingo and yet be writing to that larger country: life."

When I grow up, if I grow up, I want to be a writer like Ivan Doig, from the place called life.

Contact Julie Muhlstein via e-mail at muhlsteinjulie@heraldnet.com, write to her at The Herald, P.O. Box 930, Everett, WA 98206, or call 425-339-3460.