Category Archives: Big Stone Gap

The Monday Book: OUT OF THE WOODS by Chris Offutt

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I like Offutt’s writing. He was “discovered” by doing the Charlaine Harris teleplays for her vampire series going onto TV, but he wrote several “educated backwoods guy/fish out of water” memoirs before that, and some fiction.

Out of the Woods is some of his early work, and while you can see how his use of language has improved since, these stories are still tight, terse, compact and hard. Sorta like that series on TV, “Hell on Wheels” – no mercy, just character driving plot.

Except in Offutt’s stories here, the mountain backwoods communities of Appalachia may be the driving character in many cases. In the title story of the collection, a man travels out to Nebraska to pick up his brother-in-law, and the whole narrative is pretty much read between the lines of what people are saying and doing. I love writing like that, where the story is told as much as by what’s not said as by what is.

My favorite is “Barred Owl,” which smacks of autobiography, and is a character sketch. As we all know I’m a sucker for well-drawn characters. With amazing economy of words, Offutt depicts a guy who’s half in, half out of the world he lives in, so finely-drawn he could be one of the owl feathers that decorates his cabin. Every little point and feathery piece is there.

Offut might not be for everyone. Frankly, not much happens in these stories. They’re slow, lazy, calm, and all the action is underneath the words. Kind of like a mountain brook – you have no idea how fast or deep the water is until you step into it, and by then it might be too late. Offut’s writing sneaks up on you.

 

Never Try to Recreate a Great Party….

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Back in the mid 1990s when I was still working as a college HoD, I managed a number of European Union funded environmental education programs. They were all trans-national in nature, so we worked with a number of partners in other European countries. Each project lasted around four years and there were usually one or two conferences each year hosted by different partners.

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On one occasion The Dublin Institute of Technology was the host and I found myself being taken to all sorts of interesting places including a visit to the ‘Green Building’ in the city center Temple area. The building had just been completed, was pristine and featured lots of cutting edge ideas focusing on energy conservation in particular but also on air quality and the use of re-cycled materials. I was so impressed with the place that I have often spoken about it to people over the years since first seeing it.

 

Finding myself in Dublin this week for the first time since that conference in the 90s, I was keen to go back and see the ‘Green Building’ again and show it to Wendy and our friends David and Susan (the friends we’re vacationing with here.)bldg 2

 

Trying to establish exactly where it was located was hard as there was hardly any reference to it on the internet – puzzling – – –building 3

 

We finally found that it was less than ten minutes walk from our hotel and we set off with high expectations this morning. Alas I was sadly disappointed!

 

The door was locked and the outside of the building was grimy and neglected. As we stood outside the door opened and a man came out who, it turned out, lived in one of the apartments on the upper floors. Once he knew what our interest was he said it would be fine to go in. Oh dear! The once magnificent full height atrium that had housed magnificent gigantic giant leaved rubber plants employed to convert Co2 into Oxygen was also grimy and neglected with just the stumps of the plants to be seen. The more we looked around the more this story was repeated. I expected at least a plaque somewhere obvious telling people the building’s history and all the innovative ideas incorporated within it’s design. The way everything was computer modeled ahead of time, the things that worked exactly as designed and – – maybe the things that didn’t! But there was nothing, nada, zilch, nary a scribbled note.stairs

 

I felt sad and depressed and I wonder what the team of architects, designers, artisans and artists that created such a glorious building must think of the way it’s been treated.

And I suppose I felt a twinge for us all – that every good intention ends, every great plan has a jumping off point, every “wave of the future” returns to shore someday. Sad, that this one ended so badly, when it held such promise. A warning to us all, perhaps, as the New Year brings promises to keep.