This is a transcription of Seattle: City of Superlatives
David: Hello. Welcome to Strong Sense of Place.
Melissa: In each episode, we focus on one destination and discuss what makes it different than any other place on Earth.
David: Then we recommend five books we love that took us there on the page.
Melissa: I’m Melissa Joulwan.
David: I’m David Humphreys.
David: We’re going around the world one great read at a time. Thanks for joining us.
[cheerful music]
David: Welcome to Strong Sense of Place. Today we get curious about Seattle. Welcome to the end of season six! Thanks for coming along with us. It started in France back in May, worked our way around the world, and into space, and are now in the charming, delightful city of Seattle.
David: This is our last episode of Season 6. Thank you so much for listening! If you have a few minutes, we have some questions for you. We want to know your opinion! We’ve got a survey up at strongsenseofplace.com/survey. Or you can just follow the link in the show notes. Please share your thoughts about this season and what we do next. Or just come by and say hello. Mel and I read every response we get, and we love hearing from you! And now on to Seattle.
David: Today in Two Truths and a Lie, we’ll talk about the man-made earthquakes of Seattle. Then we’ll talk about five books we love. It’s going to be more than five books. I’ve got a trio of graphic novels that will transport you to the streets of Seattle. But first, Mel’s going to bring us up to speed with the Seattle 101.
Melissa: Seattle is a mashup of water and mountains, so it’s the best of both worlds. If you want to go hiking, camping, boating, biking, or meander in a beautiful garden, Seattle is a fantastic place to do all of that. It’s an outdoorsy playground.
Melissa: To the east is the freshwater of Lake Washington and the Cascade Mountains. The Cascade Range is known as America’s land of fire and ice — because that’s where you’ll find the snowy peak of Mount Rainier — the tallest mountain in the lower 48 states — and Mount St. Helens, the volcano that blew my 12-year-old mind when it erupted in 1980.
Melissa: On the west, are the briny waters of Puget Sound and dense forests in the Olympic mountains. Some of the Douglas firs and Hemlock trees are 1000 years old! No surprise Washington’s nickname is the Evergreen State.
Melissa: I was going to make a joke about it being a fine place to look for werewolves or witches, but then I learned that there have been more than 700 sightings of Bigfoot in Washington — that’s the highest number of any state in the US. This elusive cryptid is much beloved in Washington. Back in 1970, the then-governor wrote a proclamation to designate ‘the Great Sasquatch’ as the state monster. The document was ‘affixed with a lock of hair from the right front shoulder of Sasquatch. In 2017, a state senator introduced a bill to name Sasquatch the official cryptid of Washington. The hunt is still on. Today, a group of researchers called The Olympic Project collects evidence and works to demystify Bigfoot lore — including the theory that a Bigfoot nest site is located on the Olympic Peninsula.
Melissa: Sasquatch sitings, aside… the Olympic forest is also one of the wettest places in the contiguous US. But despite its damp reputation, Seattle is not as rainy as you probably think. It gets about 38 inches or 96.5 centimeters of rain per year — but major cities around the world like Tokyo, Sydney, New York, Lyon, and Washington, DC, all get more. Tokyo gets about 20 inches more per year than Seattle.
Melissa: However, Seattle is misty. Paradoxically, the residents of Seattle buy more sunglasses per capita than any other US city. The theory is that when the sun does come out, it glints on the wet streets. I think it’s because the home of rock stars like Jimmy Hendrix, Heart, Nirvana, Pearl Jam, and Foo Fighters requires everyone to look a little cooler than the average American.
Melissa: Seattle is also a city of firsts. It had the first floating bridge, the first police on bicycles, and was the first city in the US to play the Beatles on the radio in 1964. It also built the first revolving restaurant. Called the Eye of the Needle, it was perched at the top of the Space Needle. Elvis Presley ate there while filming the movie ‘It Happened at the World’s Fair.’
Melissa: Seattle was the first city to elect a female mayor. Her name was Bertha Knight Landes, and she was mayor from 1926 to 1928. She cracked down on police corruption and went after bootleggers and rule breakers at dance halls and cabarets. She also offered $1 to anybody who would narc on reckless drivers. In her photos, she looks like a kind lady who also would brook no nonsense.
Melissa: One final superlative about Seattle relevant to our interests: Seattle is called the Most Literate City in the country. It has the highest percentage of citizens with a college degree — and 80% of the population has a library card. That’s more than anywhere else in the US. It’s also one of only two UNESCO Cities of Literature in the US. (The other one is Iowa City.)
Melissa: For our 101 today, I’m going to share some ideas for a fantastic bookish day in Seattle. As always, I have ignored the rules of time and space. Our day starts at the Seattle Central Library.
Melissa: The Daily Beast called The Seattle Central Library’ the height of whimsy.’ It’s 11 stories tall and almost looks like a greenhouse. It’s made of glass rectangles stacked on top of each other, so some of the inside reading spaces are infused with light. The hardwood floor of the basement is etched with the first lines of 556 books, and bright colors are used to guide you through the building: red hallways, green escalators, yellow elevators. There are whimsical works of art throughout the library, and it’s also home to 1.5 million books, a music room, and a literary gift shop called the Friendshop. The library offers a self-guided audio tour and free tours for groups of 5-20. New life goal just unlocked.
Melissa: You could use the library as a starting point for a fantastic bookish day in Seattle.
Melissa: After your Central Library, you could head to the Elliott Bay Book Company. When I saw a photo of this bookstore, I gasped out loud. It has hardwood floors, wooden beamed ceilings with skylights, enormous windows, and shelf after shelf of books with those little ‘staff picks’ cards attached. The website includes photos and bios of the booksellers so you can see their favorites and get a sense of what kind of reader they are. The majority of them have been selling books for a decade or more. These are definitely our people.
Melissa: After you’ve picked out your perfect read, you can enjoy a leisurely lunch at the Little Oddfellows Café inside the store or at the main café across the street. They serve brunch all day, and the menu includes options like croque monsieur and biscuits and eggs. They also have steak frites and a baguette plate that specifies it comes with French butter.
Melissa: Alternately, you could chow down on a Seattle-style hot dog. A Seattle Dog is a grilled hot dog, served in a toasted bun, slathered with cream cheese, and topped with sauteed onions.
Melissa: Now that you’re fortified by food, it’s time for comics! at the Fantagraphics Bookstore & Gallery. Fantagraphics is a Seattle-based comics publisher that’s been in business for 40 years. Their retail bookshop sells everything the publisher has in print, plus very cool merch, and indie comics from other publishers. The shop also has two surprises: They share space with Georgetown Records, so you can pick up some music on vinyl — and they have what’s called the Damaged Room. They describe it as their HALLOWED Damaged Room, and it sounds like heaven for comics nerds. That’s where you can browse through damaged and out-of-print comics.
Melissa: Armed with more reading material, you have two choices: a Gothic library reading room or a posh, haunted hotel.
Melissa: First, the Gothic.
Melissa: The Suzzallo Library Reading Room at the University of Washington is a massive hall with vaulted ceilings, arched leaded glass windows, brass chandeliers, and heavy wooden tables. It looks like the inside of a cathedral, and that’s not by accident. The Reading Room is named for Henry Suzzallo, president of the University in the early 1900s, who said that universities should be cathedrals of learning. It’s open to the public for silent reading every day.
Melissa: Or, you could join a Silent Reading Party, the SRP, at the Hotel Sorrento. The SRP is held in the Fireside Room, a wood-paneled lounge with a fireplace. The SRP was started by the former editor of the Seattle indie newspaper The Stranger in 2009. The idea is that people gather to read quietly together, enjoy a cocktail, and maybe a little conversation. The unique spin is that this SRP is accompanied by live piano music, AND you can reserve the kind of chair you want: a barstool, a leather easy chair, a loveseat, or a couch by the fire.
Melissa: After the SRP, you can rest your head on one of the Sorrento’s beds — if you’re not afraid of ghosts. Hotel visitors say that the hotel, built in 1909, is haunted by the ghost of Alice B. Toklas.
Melissa: Toklas was the romantic life partner of the writer Gertrude Stein. They very famously lived together in the artsy scene of Paris in the early 20th century. The Hotel Sorrento was also a very literary and artistic place back then. Jazz artists performed there. Poets and writers would gather. According to legend, where the hotel stands today was previously Toklas’ childhood home — and now her ghostly form haunts the hotel. Some guests have heard her playing the piano on the seventh floor. Others see her walking in the garden in a full-length fur coat and a little hat. But her vibe isn’t scary. A former hotel employee said, ‘There’s a protective feeling… Things are not sinister. Alice isn’t mean or playing tricks.’
Melissa: I want to end my 101 with a poem.
Melissa: Since 2015, Seattle has named a Civic Poet every few years. The current Civic Poet is Shin Yu Pai. For her big project, she invited poets to write short poems about places in Seattle related to sustainability. Five of the poems were posted around town and are available as postcards and posters. They’re all really good; each one has a very strong sense of Seattle. They celebrate the area rivers, the public library, a traditionally Black neighborhood, Seattle’s Little Sái Gòn, and bees. I want to read the one called ‘Urban Bees, Blue Hour.’ It’s by Joe Nasta. At the end, there’s a mention of salmonberries. In case you’re not familiar, salmonberries are native to the Pacific Northwest. They’re shaped like raspberries, but are the color of tangerines, and according to reports, they taste like rhubarb.
Melissa: Here we go: ‘Urban Bees, Blue Hour.’
now. We are ready for the coming chill
& buzz: We dare to hope.
but soon they will be green again.
Melissa: That poem is ‘Urban Bees, Blue Hour,’ and that’s a wrap on the bookish Seattle 101.
David: I’m about to say three statements. Two of them are true. Mel doesn’t know which is the lie. First statement: The Seattle Seahawks fans are so loud that their cheering has been registered as earthquake activity. Second statement: During the 1909 World’s Fair, a woman was raffled off as a bride. Third statement: In the late 1800s, Seattle was saved from financial ruin by a sex worker.
David: One at a time… The Seattle Seahawks fans are so loud that their cheering has been registered as earthquake activity.
Melissa: I know that’s true!
David: It is true. Seahawks fans are known for coming early and being loud. There are eleven men per side on a football field. The Seahawks fans call themselves “the 12th man.” This is so ingrained in the culture that the football team has permanently retired the number 12. No player can wear the number 12. But the fans can. A flag with the number 12 goes up before the game. It’s an honor to raise that flag. There’s some ceremony. Being a Seahawks fan is a thing.
David: So, the earthquake. It’s happened more than once. There was a famous event in January of 2011. Seattle was playing New Orleans in a wildcard playoff game. It was a very exciting game, a lot of back and forth. And, of course, it’s do or die. You win, or you go home; the season’s over. It gets down to the last quarter. Seattle has the ball; they’re protecting a four-point lead – which is not a lot in football. They’re 2 and 10 with less than four minutes left in the game. The clock is ticking. If New Orleans gets the ball, they could score, and it’d be over. But Seattle gives the ball to Marshawn Lynch.
David: Now, you can know nothing about football – see the tape of what Lynch did, and still see that it’s amazing. In about 15 seconds, Lynch gets the ball, breaks 9 tackles – and with one arm, throws one of the other players to the ground – and ends up traveling 67 yards. Touchdown, Seattle. Breaking nine tackles is madness. There are only 11 defenders on the field. It felt like everyone in New Orleans had a shot at Lynch, and some twice. That run is still considered one of the greatest in NFL history. The Seattle fans got loud.
David: The noise was so great after his run that the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network – the people who watch for earthquakes out there – registered a 2.0 quake. In honor of Lynch, known for dropping into Beast Mode, they called that run Beast Quake.
David: Was it the loudest crowd ever? Nope. It wasn’t even the loudest crowd in Seattle.
David: Can you guess? – who’s responsible for the largest man-made earthquake in Seattle history? … I’ll give you a hint. It was a woman. A woman was responsible for the earthquake. And it was last year.
Melissa: Taylor Swift!
David: Yes! She was on The Eras Tour. During ‘Shake It Off,’ the Pacific Northwest Seismic Network measured a 2.3 quake – almost twice as much energy as the Beast Quake.
David: Second statement: During the 1909 World’s Fair, a woman was raffled off as a bride.
Melissa: I hope that’s not true.
David: I put this here to remind us how much life has changed in the last 120 years or so. First – that’s a lie. The 1909 Seattle World’s Fair organizers did not raffle off a bride.
David: But they did raffle off a child. A baby, even. A two-month-old boy named Ernest was put up as a prize in a raffle, according to the Seattle Times of 1909.
David: Whoever won him did not come forward to claim him. And we don’t know what happened to Ernest after that. An article in the Seattle Times in 2009 mentioned that a lawyer was looking into it. But I couldn’t find anything after that.
David: It’s incredible to me that, first, they would raffle a baby, and, second, Ernest lived in a time when someone could have a life and seemingly leave no trace. I hope it turned out okay for him.
David: Last statement: In the late 1800s, Seattle was saved from financial ruin by a sex worker. We know this is true.
David: This story starts in the 1880s. Seattle had been a settlement for just a while – but it’s booming. In 1880, fewer than 4,000 residents. It’s a small town. Three years later, the transcontinental railway pulled in. By 1890, over 40,000 residents. That’s 10x the number of people in just 10 years.
David: It must have felt like the train was dropping cars of people every day. And these are not, you know, librarians and writers coming to town. These are miners, fishermen, and loggers. And with them, some problems. You can probably imagine what having 30,000 miners suddenly using your town as a bar might be like.
David: So, during this same period, there was a reformation. The good people of Seattle organize and get liquor licenses revoked and brothels closed. Gambling is controlled. They throw out the old corrupt politicians and bring in the new guys.
David: And the new guys get in, and they’re like: uhm. We were making a lot of money by taxing liquor, prostitution, and gambling. And now that’s gone. We’ve got a lot of things to build, on account of all the new people showing up. What are we going to do about all that?
David: And that’s when Lou Graham enters our story. Lou Graham is a German woman, relatively new to town. She’s about five-two and, at the time, in her mid-20s. Fancy woman. Liked big hats with plumes on them. She was described as having a regal bearing.
David: She’s got an idea. She wants to set up a brothel. But a brothel unlike anything anyone near there had ever seen. A nice brothel. A fancy brothel. The women are going to be beautiful, smart, and talented. They’ll be able to talk about politics or opera or economics. And the space will be nice. It’ll be like an upscale hotel. And, perhaps most importantly, quiet. She approaches a banker – Jacob Furth – about this idea. She convinces him to give her a loan, but she also convinces him to help her with the politics. Together, they get buy-in, and she sets up her brothel.
David: Lou Graham brings the Gilded Age to Seattle. She buys a lovely building, close to downtown. – at the corner of Third and Washington. Puts a well-appointed bar downstairs and bedrooms upstairs. A lot of people show up. It becomes the place to be seen. One writer said that, over the time it existed, more business got done at Lou’s than at City Hall. Graham does quite well for herself. She takes her money, and she buys real estate and stock.
David: She’s also a back-door financier. There are stories about deals crossing Furth’s desk – her friend, the banker – that he thought were too risky for the bank. The board would never approve. He’d send the business to Graham. She’d charge a higher rate, but ask fewer questions.
David: In just a few years, she’s one of the wealthiest people in Seattle.
David: I should mention that at least one writer believes that Graham was in a long-term same-sex relationship – and that, further – the brothel might have been liberal in its policies. Open to all.
David: Our story skips a few years to 1893. There’s a panic. If you’ve seen ‘It’s a Wonderful Life,’ you’ve seen the basics of a panic. Everyone is worried about their money. They run to the bank to get it out. The bank doesn’t have enough cash to cover everyone, and the bank collapses. In 1893, over 500 US banks collapsed because people were worried about their cash. 15,000 businesses and countless farms failed. In some areas, unemployment was as high as 40%. It was an enormous financial disaster, with global repercussions. It was a bad time.
David: The banker Jacob Furth – now facing the collapse of his own business – turns to Graham. Can you help? – She makes a sizable deposit in his bank, and does so loudly. Everybody knows that Furth’s bank has the backing of Lou Graham. That bank would go on to be acquired by Key Bank almost a hundred years later – in 1992. Graham would also make short-term loans to many local families, saving some of them from bankruptcy. With her help, Seattle weathered the panic of 1893.
David: Graham did not live very long. She died in 1905 at the age of 48 – from syphilis. By the time she died, Graham had become one of the largest landowners in the Pacific Northwest. She contributed more money to the education of the city’s children than the rest of the city’s citizens combined. She and Furth remained life-long friends. When Graham died, her estate was handled by his bank. Most of her assets went to local schools.
David: If you’re curious about Graham, there’s a well-reviewed novelization of her life. It’s called ‘Madam.’ It’s by Libbie Hawker. We’ll point to it in our show notes. That’s Two Truths and a Lie.
Melissa: My first recommendation is ‘I Wish I Was Like You’ by S.P. Miskowski. This is an unusual ghost story set in 1994 Seattle.
Melissa: Before Microsoft, Amazon, and Starbucks. Before bands like Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden, and Alice in Chains broke big. Seattle was a small northwest city where artists could live and work without being stressed about how they would feed themselves and pay rent. If you’ve seen the 1992 movie ‘Singles,’ you know what I’m talking about. Lots of flannel shirts, Converse kicks, and listening to bands. Seattle Weekly published an essay about living there in the ’90s, and I want to read you a bit because it really sets the scene:
Melissa: How to be in Seattle in the last decade of the 20th century… Have puffy hair. Wear very large clothes… Have a job that pays just enough for rent and beer. Go to shows. Go like it’s your job. Go to the Off Ramp and the Vogue and the OK Hotel… and the Central and the Crocodile. (Don’t go to the Weathered Wall, ever.) Go to so many shows that you get bored with it… Wish that you could write. Feel amazed by the girls around you who are making art and starting bands and opening bars… Start to write. Write about food and art and film and books. Feel a little embarrassed about it, and exposed. You were good at being a rock chick. This is so nerdly. Keep going. Suspect that everything good in life might actually be nerdly.
Melissa: So, that’s the Seattle in which our anti-heroine Greta lives. Or, more accurately, dies. When we meet Greta, she has just returned home on a Friday at the end of a crappy week working at a photocopying center. She’s drenched because after waiting in the rain for a bus that never arrived, she stomped home six blocks and up three flights of stairs to find a dead body in her apartment. HER dead body. She smokes three cigarettes, drinks a glass of Burgundy, has four tokes of weed, and tries to figure out what the devil is going on.
Melissa: You know the movie trope where you see a wacky scene, and a voice-over says, ‘Yep, that’s me. You’re probably wondering. how I ended up in this situation.’ That is this book.
Melissa: We join Greta’s ghost as she shows us her previous life and investigates how she ended up shot dead on the orange carpet in her living room.
Melissa: We see Greta as a student and how she accidentally falls into the desire to be a writer. She has a romance that goes tragically wrong. Her writing career sputters in fits and starts. She betrays a friend. She’s negligent with the feelings of the handful of people who genuinely care about her. And she nurtures her grudges from all of that like they’re her pets.
Melissa: Our girl is prickly and messy. But! I was always rooting for her — while also rolling my eyes at her choices. To be fair, this is how I felt about grunge music in the ’90s, too. ‘I’m attracted to this sound, and also, ‘Oh my god, you are so mopey and self-indulgent. Get it together!’ That’s all a compliment, by the way. I really enjoyed hanging out with Greta, not in spite of, but because of, her messiness.
Melissa: Greta’s voice is darkly funny, self-deprecating, and sarcastic. In the aftermath of finding her corpse, the thing that upsets her most is that the newspapers think she killed herself. She says, ‘Of course I hated my life, but my fate — to become a composite sketch of a 1994 twenty-something with a terrible job living in a grubby apartment in a city best known for suicide, rain, and serial killers — this was too much…. I wasn’t even a huge Nirvana fan,’ she says, ‘So the implication that I would copycat Cobain’s suicide pissed me off more than anything.’
Melissa: I should mention that there’s a lot of discussion of suicide in this book. I know that can be a difficult topic. This is your heads-up so you can decide if this is something you want to read.
Melissa: The author S.P. Miskowski has recreated ’90s Seattle very vividly on the page, and Greta takes us into lots of Seattle landmarks. Her story is populated with people — characters with a capital C — trying to make a go with their art. They’re creative and inspiring — but they also feel like they’re about two seconds from couch-surfing at a friend’s house.
Melissa: This story is a detective novel, and a compelling workplace drama. It’s an inside look at the creative life, and a meditation on what we make of our finite time on earth. It’s suspenseful and grimy, and I never knew what was going to happen next. I loved this weird, dark story. It’s ‘I Wish I Was Like You’ by S.P. Miskowski.
David: My first book is ‘This Boy’s Life’ by Tobias Wolff. This is a nonfiction book about growing up, mainly in Seattle and Washington state, in the 1950s. It’s autobiographical. Wolff writes about his youth from when he was about 10 to 16 or so. A lot of the telling is episodic; we drop in and see a scene; then there’s a paragraph break and we’re onto the next bit.
David: This book has a lot going for it.
David: It’s written in a very plain, understated language – the language of a bright 14-year-old maybe. But it says so much. Both on the page and in my head. Here’s an example. Here are two sentences from early in chapter one:
It was 1955 and we were driving from Florida to Utah, to get away from a man my mother was afraid of and to get rich on uranium. We were going to change our luck.
David: Immediately, we know when and where we are. We know we’re coming from an emotionally abusive situation. It doesn’t sound like there’s a dad in the picture. We know that mom is probably sharing too much information with her young boy – or he’s emotionally sensitive to it, or both. We know the young boy is not old enough to have been involved in whatever the mom was experiencing. We know they’re chasing a dream that they’re not likely to find. We know that their luck is probably not going to change, no matter how much they might want it to.
David: The density of that language never gives up. All the way through this book, it’s simple text that throws a mean cross.
David: Along with that, the characterization is so good. There are maybe a dozen key characters in this book. They’re all drawn well enough that I think one of them could walk into the room, and I’d recognize them.
David: This is a book that I think is rich enough that you could read it at different ages and get different things out of it. I would compare this book to “Catcher in the Rye,” but I think this is a better book.
David: For instance, there are a couple of scenes where the author and his mother go to a fair. Two guys pick them up, and these two guys manipulate them. For the boy – Jack, when he was young Tobias called himself Jack – they ask him what his favorite food is. He tells them it’s a hamburger. They tell him they’re going back to their house to have a hamburger. In the end, Jack gets a bologna sandwich. Later, they promise him they’re going to buy him a bicycle. They coax out of him his favorite style and color. We’re going to get that bicycle. They ply mom with booze and attention.
David: There’s some subtext there that, by far, mom is easier to seduce.
David: Mom and Jack go back to their boarding house. Mom asks if Jack minds being alone that night; she’s got a date with Gil, one of the men. She says no. There’s a lovely bit where he watches her get dressed – with that flavor of a young son watching his mother put on her going-out face. Sweet bit.
David: And she goes. In the text of that scene, Jack is a little worried about his mother – but, as an adult, I was worried about his mother. For me, this is all unfolding like a suspense novel. What are you doing? – Don’t, Mom! Don’t go!
David: Then, when she comes home, she goes to see him. And she’s crying softly. And that works into these four lines:
‘What’s wrong, Mom?’ She looked at me, tried to say something, shook her head. I sat beside her and put my arms around her. She was gasping as if someone had held her underwater.
David: And because it’s written from the perspective of her son, we never find out exactly why she’s crying. Has she been assaulted or raped? Is she lonely? Is it because men can be horrible, and those two sounded like really awful men? Is she depressed about her life? Just one big stew of all that?
David: But Jack works to get her back to a better humor. They go to bed. The next morning, Jack’s like: wait. Does this mean I’m not getting the bike?
David: One of the great things about this book is my empathy for the author. Jack is a total delinquent. Over and over. He lies, steals, uses people, hangs out with the wrong crowd, passes bad checks, and steals a car. But somehow I was with him, the whole way. Part of that is because of the writing. The author’s emotions are so well conveyed that it’s hard not to empathize. Another part of my empathy is triggered by the existence of the book itself. I know Wolff becomes a successful author later. There’s a redemptive arc that I’m not sure is in the story. But it is in the existence of the work itself.
David: A third thing that really brought up my empathy is that this is a book about adults betraying children. It happens over and over – from little bits like saying you’re going to get a hamburger and swapping in a bologna sandwich, to much more significant things, like Jack’s mother putting her emotional state on Jack when he’s way too young to be in that role.
David: That was very resonate with me. I hope it’s less so for you, but I suspect everyone’s got a little of that. But it did make me understand why Jack might want to steal a car and go joy-riding. I’m not saying it’s right. I’m saying I understand.
David: This book has been out for a while. It was published in 1989. It’s since gone on to be a classic autobiography. Wolff himself has gone on to great praise. Among other things, he was awarded the National Medal of the Arts a few years ago.
David: If you’re curious about growing up in the 1950s in Washington state, or if you can relate to adults disappointing children, or if you just want to enjoy some fantastic writing, you might like this. It’s ‘This Boy’s Life’ by Tobias Wolff.
Melissa: My second recommendation is ‘Deadline Man’ by Jon Talton. This is a murder mystery-thriller set in the worlds of newspaper journalism and high finance in 2010 Seattle.
Melissa: Our hero and narrator is a man we know only as ‘the Columnist.’ He’s the economics columnist for the Seattle Free Press. He was dubbed ‘the deadline man’ by an editor who admired his poise under pressure.
Melissa: One of the other characters describes him so well, that I’m going to steal his little monologue:
‘You were born in Seattle in 1961. You look younger than you are. Your father died in federal prison. Your sister, Jill, killed herself six years ago. You graduated from the University of Washington and served in the military… You were part of a team that won a Pulitzer Prize eight years ago. As a columnist for the Seattle Free Press you make $108,000 a year and your taxes are in order. But your personal finances are a mess, not something I’d want to advertise if I were a business writer. You were married once and divorced. Now you see Rachel Summers, Pamela Moffat, and Melinda Stewart. At the same time. You get around, brother. You have no close friends.’
Melissa: So, yeah. The Columnist is egotistical and ambitious and emotionally stilted. He’s also very good at his job — respected by other journalists and the corporate mucky-mucks he interviews. What he writes can make or break a corporation. So he’s disdainful of bloggers and mourning the slow death of real journalism. One of his defining characteristics is his ability to carefully compartmentalize his life. Until the day this story begins.
Melissa: The book opens with the Columnist having an epically bad day. He’s in the middle of what should be an uneventful interview with a hedge fund manager. He’s just there to ask standard background questions about a dull company called Olympic International. But then the conversation takes a strange turn. The financier cryptically asks what the Columnist knows about eleven-eleven. Our man knows nothing about it, but the vibe is so odd, it niggles at him, like a pebble in his shoe. Eleven-eleven. What could it be? He returns to the office for an all-hands meeting and is informed that the paper will probably close in 60 days. Later, he breaks up with one of his girlfriends in a very ‘it’s me, not you’ kind of way — then gets caught in a downpour and is accosted by a young woman on the street who shouts at him, ‘Eleven-eleven, a-hole’ then warns him, ‘You’ll get yours.’
Melissa: Now the niggle about eleven-eleven had become a roiling feeling in his gut. Soon, there’s a spate of mysterious deaths, the Columnist is interrogated by a mysterious federal agency, and that boring company… Olympic International company… it turns out to be not so boring.
Melissa: And all of that is somehow linked to the still-nebulous phrase eleven-eleven.
Melissa: The Columnist teams up with a young female reporter to get to the bottom of the mystery and, maybe, save the newspaper with one big, splashy story.
Melissa: Like our hero, the author Jon Talton is a veteran journalist. He’s written about finance for more than 25 years and is currently a business and economics columnist for The Seattle Times.
Melissa: Through his character the Columnist, he gives us an insider’s view of the day-to-day at a major newspaper, including some poetic bits about watching the giant printing presses pump out the paper in the dead of night. If you have nostalgia for the pre-internet days of distinguished journalism, this will hit you right in the feels.
Melissa: There’s also a very strong sense of the city as the Columnist’s investigation takes him all over the Seattle area, including vivid descriptions of different neighborhoods, the people, the nearby mountains, and the floating bridge over Lake Washington.
Melissa: This book story weaves together spy craft, car chases, thugs in fine suits, shoot-outs, adult sexy times, and neat bits about the craft of writing. It’s like a collision of a Gabriel Allon espionage novel and the movie Spotlight — action-adventure and entertainment hung on an intelligent scaffolding. It’s ‘Deadline Man’ by Jon Talton.
David: I’m going to cheat a bit. I’m going to talk about three graphic novels. But the first two are related, and the third will be very short.
David: The first one starts in 2017. Susanna Ryan was an employee at the Seattle Public Library. She describes herself as a ‘lifelong indoor enthusiast.’ All that changed one day. One morning in 2017, she decided to go for a directionless walk. She says she immediately started noticing things. She saw little bits that seemed like tiny stories to her. She noticed she could walk down the same street twice and have entirely different experiences. Streets she thought she knew well turned into opportunities for delightful new discoveries. She also felt like it was immediately rewarding: go for a walk, open yourself up to new things, and see new things. She writes, ‘here was an entire world hiding in plain sight in my own hometown.’
David: She said that walking was all she wanted to do after that. Just walk Seattle. So she did a ton of it. She has since walked over 10,000 miles in Seattle.
David: But! – Walking is not her only love. She also likes drawing. And, at some point on one of her walks, it occurred to her that she should put these two things together. She could walk and she could draw. She could document her walks with little comics. So she did that.
David: They’re called ‘Seattle Walk Report.’ It started as a series of Instagram posts. Then it was collected into a book. The book is ‘Seattle Walk Report: An Illustrated Walking Tour Through 23 Seattle Neighborhoods.’
David: The comics are very cute. The images are black and white, pen and ink. They’re one-page summaries of a walk – or notes about Seattle.
David: So, you might have a page with the headline, “A Short Walk down Walker Street.” And then little illustrations of the things she found there: a squirrel, a paper clip, a kid practicing recorder, a husky, a very smooth rock.
David: Or you might have something more involved. Like the one-page comic, “Hidden Gems,” where Ryan points out some things she enjoys about Seattle. – The Republican Street Stairs, a garden she likes, a lookout on 15th Avenue.
David: The randomness makes it really delightful. As you flip through, you’ll find things like ‘A Timeline of Seattle’s Tallest Buildings’ or a comic called ‘Bridges Worth Walking.’ Every page turn is a new way of looking at Seattle.
David: There’s one comic where she finds a Safeway grocery basked with a single clog inside – and then, seven blocks away – finds the matching clog. What! Unresolved mysteries in Seattle.
David: For her second book, she got a little more deliberate. The second book is ‘Secret Seattle: An Illustrated Guide to the City’s Offbeat and Overlooked History.’
David: This book still has her lovely illustrations. But she’s telling longer stories. It feels like we’re still mostly outside. So, we get the history of buildings and statues in Seattle. There’s a chronology of the park at Green Lake – stories about the theater and the water activities there. She takes a deep dive into coal chutes and pedestrian-friendly bridges. She tells you where to go hunting for sea glass. My favorite couple of pages are about small parks with great views.
David: Of the two, I slightly prefer the first. I think it’s because of the random vibe. It feels like you’re just walking around the city looking at stuff. But. If you’re headed to Seattle, or if you’re curious, they’re both definitely worth your time. You will find things that you’ll want to hunt down.
David: While I’m going on about graphic novels that will inspire you to walk Seattle, I want to mention a recent release. It’s called ‘Street Trees of Seattle.’ It’s by Taha Ebrahimi. Ebrahimi is a data visualizer. That’s her day job. During the 2020 quarantine, she was home, and she got interested in the trees of Seattle. There are many of them: Seattle has three times the tree diversity of most cities. She got ahold of a data set published in 2020 by the Seattle Department of Transportation’s Urban Forestry team. – Who knew there was such a thing. – That data includes seven decades of information about more than 170,000 trees considered to be in the public “right-of-way.” And Ebrahimi figured out how to make that data approachable. She visited the trees, and drew them. She made maps. She wrote their stories.
David: This book will point you to the redwoods of Seattle, the monkey puzzle trees, the Chinese windmill palms, and the prankster of the tree world, the false cypress. Some trees even have their own stories here – like the giant sequoia in front of the Macy’s downtown or the huge beech trees in Volunteer Park.
David: I’m not sure that Ebrahimi would classify this work as a graphic novel – but I definitely would. The text and the graphics both support each other and work to tell a story together.
David: If you’re curious about exploring Seattle, whether you’re going to go there or not, these books are all great places to start.
David: The first was ‘Seattle Walk Report: An Illustrated Walking Tour Through 23 Seattle Neighborhoods’ by Susanna Ryan. The same author wrote ‘Secret Seattle: An Illustrated Guide to the City’s Offbeat and Overlooked History.’ And then there’s ‘Street Trees of Seattle’ by Taha Ebrahimi.
Melissa: My final recommendation is ‘Bear’ by Julia Phillips. This book is a literary fairy tale about two sisters who live in the San Juan Islands off the coast of Seattle.
Melissa: It’s a very loose retelling of the German fairy tale, ‘Snow-White and Rose-Red.’ In that story from the Brothers Grimm, the two little girls of the title live with their mother — a poor widow — in a cottage in the woods and befriend a bear. The bear is a cursed prince, and when the spell is broken, Snow-White marries the bear-turned-prince, Rose-Red marries his brother, and they all live happily ever after.
Melissa: In this story, Sam works at the concession stand on a ferry that shuttles among the islands of Puget Sound. Her sister Elena is a waitress at the country club. And their beautiful, formerly vibrant mother slowly fades away in the back bedroom of their house in the woods, dying from an illness caused by solvents at the nail salon where she worked.
Melissa: It wasn’t always like that. When the sisters were young, they loved living on San Juan island. I want to read a little bit that sets up the fairy tale of Sam and Elena’s childhood:
‘Summers, the girls would go over to Lime Kiln and pass entire days posted up on the rocky bluffs watching for whales. Spotting them was like catching shooting stars. You couldn’t focus on any one spot — you had to let your gaze go wide. Elena was especially good at it. She would jostle Sam’s elbow and say, ‘Humpback.’… Humpbacks, gray whales, minkes, porpoises rolling and leaping in the surf. Gorgeous orcas, with their dorsal fins sharp as blades. The girls hiked along the coastal cliffs as otters floated below. They went north… and played pretend among the thick damp ferns…. [they] chased each other down the park’s trails. They hooted and squealed. Their world seemed enchanted, a paradise.’
Melissa: But now, they live in nearly permanent shadow. The book’s first few chapters set up Sam and Elena’s lives. The boredom and repetition of serving privileged people at their day jobs. The stress and heartbreak of caring for their ailing mother. The crushing weight of bills they can’t pay with no end in sight for the relentlessness of their days.
Melissa: Sam clings to a promise Elena made to her years ago: When the sad day of their mother’s death arrives, they’ll sell the house, move off the island, and find a way to, quote, ‘Slog less, live more. Become the people they had never before had the freedom to be.’
Melissa: When we get to the fourth chapter, it’s a single sentence, filled with portent and possibility: ‘They woke the next day to a bear at the door.’
Melissa: Just like that, the story swings toward fable and fantasy while also remaining tethered to the real world.
Melissa: Sam is initially excited about the bear sighting. It’s something different and borderline magical. But she soon becomes frightened of the enormous creature. The earthy smell that lingers in its wake. It’s sheer size. The big gnashing claws and teeth. Its unknowability.
Melissa: But her sister Elena is enthralled. She walks the long way home, past the forest to talk to the bear and feed him with leftover food. She believes the bear is a sign of their shifting fortunes, a bit of magic that will change their luck.
Melissa: But wild animals being what they are, the bear is unpredictable. And the two sisters — seemingly devoted to each other before the bear showed up — begin to see the tiny fissures in their relationship. Secrets are revealed, and a variety of heartbreaks ensue. The sisters realize that although they’ve been nearly inseparable, their expectations and shared memories are not the same.
Melissa: The author Julia Phillips was a guest on Late Night with Seth Meyers. In that conversation, she explains how she wrote this book during the pandemic lockdown and talks about her deep relationship with her older brother. She’s charming and vulnerable, and hearing her talk about the book made me love it even more. I’ll put the link to the video in show notes.
Melissa: This story is decidedly melancholy, but there are glimmers of hope and the emotional ride is immensely cathartic. It’s an affecting story about family and the secrets we keep, even from the people we love the most. It examines class and entitlement and the burdens borne by the working poor. And it’s a love letter to the beauty and brutality of nature. It’s one of those books that made me go ‘phew’ a lot — which, as we know by now, is my highest form of praise. That’s ‘Bear’ by Julia Phillips.
David: Those are five books we love, set in Seattle. Visit our show notes at strongsenseofplace.com for links and details. We’ll show you the Beast Quake. We’ll play some Taylor Swift. We’ll walk you through the streets of Seattle.
David: That’s it! That’s season six. We will be back with season seven. Probably in the spring. In the mean time, you’ll be hearing from us on the Library of Lost Time. Thanks for listening, and we’ll talk to you soon.
[cheerful music]
Top image courtesy of Thom Milkovic/Unsplash.
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