GOOD WRITING BUT AN INCOMPLETE MAP

A PLACE CALLED MAINE: 24 AUTHORS ON THE MAINE EXPERIENCE
Edited by Wesley McNair
301 pp.
Down East, 2008. $25

Reviewed by Laurie Meunier Graves

Not long ago, I heard Irwin Gratz, from Maine Public Radio, interview the poet Wesley McNair about the new anthology A Place Called Maine: 24 Authors on the Maine Experience, which he had edited. McNair spoke of how the book featured essays from “twenty-four of…Maine’s most articulate citizens” and how the book was a “kind of map of the mind and the heart,” charting not only coastal Maine but also the great interior. McNair reminded listeners that Maine “isn’t just a coastal location” and that it is as “far from Portland to Fort Kent as it is from Portland to New York City.” Yes, it is, and this puts Maine in the somewhat unusual position of being a wild, rural state that is within a relatively easy drive to two major metropolitan areas-Boston as well as New York City. However, if we can get there, it also means that those “from away” can come here, and come here they do, bringing with them both benefits and drawbacks. On the one hand, the newcomers bring fresh viewpoints that are much needed. Without new people, a small, rural state can easily stagnate, creatively as well as economically. Just as it is with families, it is not good for a state to become too insular, too inward. On the other hand-how to phrase this delicately?-those from away can be a little pushy. Domineering, even, drowning out the softer voices of those who have been here longer. Often more affluent than the natives, the newcomers drive up the price of real estate and, of course, property taxes in the process. Along with money comes influence, and this can be felt in other areas, including the arts. Perhaps in response to the aloofness that Mainers are so famous for, the newcomers often band together and, in the process, become rather exclusionary. The tribal impulse is hard to resist, and in Maine, the conflict between those from away and the natives is as perennial as freezing rain in November.

I thought of all this during Irwin Gratz’s interview, especially when McNair, who is from away, spoke of how he valued the “just coming into it” perspective of the newcomers featured in the book. McNair was referring to contemporary writers, but I couldn’t help wondering just how many writers from away-another way of defining newcomers-and how many native Mainers there were in A Place Called Maine. Then Gratz asked if there was “anything else [McNair] would have liked to have had in this book, people [he] would have liked to have heard from or subjects that are yet to be explored.” McNair said, “I’m vain enough to think I got it all in here.”

This seemed like a rather rash statement, forgivable, perhaps, for being given in the crucible of an interview. No matter where they come from or how good they might be, it seemed to me very unlikely that twenty-four writers could get “it all” about Maine. But was there enough variety to give readers at least an impression of Maine, a sense of the wide range of experiences that come from living here? What was the balance of newcomers to natives? And last, but not least for me, was there an essay about the Franco-American experience? Well, there was some variety, but not enough for McNair to think he “got it all.” Twenty of the writers are from away, which gives the book a decided slant, and there was not one essay about being Franco-American, despite the fact that between 30 to 40 percent of Mainers are of Franco-American descent, which makes them the largest ethnic group in Maine.

Readers by now will have guessed that I am both a native and a Franco-American, and in the interest of full disclosure, it seems best to just come right out and admit it. Readers might also guess that I have some “bones of contention” with A Place Called Maine, and they would not be wrong. Yet there is much I liked about this book.

To begin with, most of the writing is solid and, in some cases, very good indeed. Richard Russo and Ann Beattie, two contemporary literary stars, are featured in the book. Beattie’s “Not Winter” is a nearly perfect essay that captures the tension of being from away and only catching glimpses of how native Mainers live, of admiring the beauty of the state while acknowledging the hard work that goes along with being a “vacationland.” Beattie writes “The truth is, Maine is a serious place masquerading as a summer paradise.” Generations of natives, past and present, struggling to earn a living, would certainly agree. To us, Maine is not a vacationland. Beattie understands the contradictions of the state, and she might even come close to fulfilling McNair’s ideal of the “just coming into it” perspective. In “Autumn,” Richard Russo, “a worrier and a lover of autumn,” has written a characteristically moving but humorous piece about what is arguably Maine’s loveliest season. At the same time, autumn is a harbinger for harsher times. In other words, the perfect season for a worrier, especially in today’s economy. As Russo puts it, “One is a fool to worry in summer; by winter it’s too late.” A fall mountain hike with his daughters is exactly the right time to worry about the chores that stretch ahead. This is especially true for the trip back down, when the day has turned “darker, [and] the leaves underfoot not so much beautiful as wet and treacherous.”

“Big Jim” by Robert Kimber is also very good. Kimber writes about Big Jim Pond Camps, a hunting and fishing camp in Maine that his parents bought in 1955, a camp that might have looked “substantial” but in fact “was as tender and vulnerable as a new-born baby, in need of constant coddling and attention…” To help with this “coddling and attention” was Don Yeaton, “Big Jim’s year-round caretaker,” the type of Maine native whose qualities have come to seem epic in the eyes of newcomers. (Kimber’s father worked in New York City before buying the camp.) “Don had gone to work washing dishes in a lumber camp when he was twelve. He’d been just about everything a man could be, both in the woods and out: lumberjack, river hog, teamster, guide, game warden…” The list goes on, but we get the point. Native Mainers who have been here for a few generations will certainly recognize Don. He was their uncle, their grandfather, perhaps even their father. (Or at least a more settled version of Don, who was married and divorced twice and went on occasional “benders.”) As Kimber works with Don over a span of summers, Don becomes his mentor, initiating him into a handyman lifestyle, again something most Mainers, male or female, know very well. The piece is frankly nostalgic for those bygone days when the only way to get to the camp was by boat, when “real men didn’t talk about their dreams, but…had them anyway.” Yet in the end, “Big Jim” is more than just a nostalgic essay about the good old days. It is a chronicle, a history, of sorts, of inland Maine, a reminder that nothing goes on forever, not the camps, not Don, and that, to paraphrase the artist Robert Rauschenberg, change is the only thing a person can count on. Not a small accomplishment for an essay of nineteen pages.

I suppose it should come as no surprise that my favorite essay is “My Mexico” by Monica Wood, a native Mainer. Wood grew up in Mexico, Maine, in the mill town of mill towns, built in a valley where the air quality is, at times, literally nauseating and eye stinging. (My own father grew up there and had his own share of “Mexico” stories.) Wood weaves the character of the town with descriptions of the tourists who are always on their way to someplace else and combines them with the story of her girlhood and a traumatic event that brings loss but also helps form Wood as a writer. It is one of the best essays I have ever read about growing up in a Maine mill town. Wood’s vivid writing combines place and the personal in such a seamless way that it is impossible to separate the two. It is my hope that over time “My Mexico” will become one of the classics of Maine writing.

To give readers a sense of classic Maine writing, the book also contains pieces by writers such as Louise Dickinson Rich, E. B. White, Henry Beston, and Rachel Carson. These pieces are the champagne of the anthology, so good that no sensible Mainer will care where these writers were born and will only be grateful that they decided to settle in Maine. White’s elegiac “Once More to the Lake” has been included in many anthologies, and why not? White was a master of the essay, and “Once More to the Lake” was written when he was at his peak. Rich’s “Why Don’t You Write a Book?” is a humorous, snappy account of settling in the Maine woods, and fifty years later, her writing is still fresh and lively. In “Winter,” Henry Beston’s lovely description of the shadows of winter almost take the sting out of this hard season. Almost. Then there is an excerpt from Rachel Carson’s The Sense of Wonder. Carson’s own “sense of wonder” was so strong and her writing so beautiful that readers can only marvel at the perfect balance Carson somehow managed to achieve between being a writer and a scientist.

A Place Called Maine is worth reading and owning, even though it falls far short of achieving McNair’s grandiose vision. There is too much of an imbalance between native writers and nonnative writers. While the numbers don’t have to be exactly the same, they should be more evenly matched than they are in this book. Finally, an anthology with this title should have an essay about the Franco-American experience, which is such a large part of the Maine experience. As I noted above, Franco-Americans are the largest ethnic group in Maine-period-and this exclusion is inexcusable, especially when you consider Franco-Americans’ long, long history in this state. An essay of Cathie Pelletier’s is included in the anthology, but despite her French name, she did not write about the Franco-American experience. That is certainly her business. As E. B. White once famously wrote, “In a free country, it is the duty of a writer to pay no attention to duty.” I am not suggesting Pelletier’s essay should have been culled. Surely, there would have been room for both Pelletier’s piece and an essay about being Franco-American, and doing so would have evened the odds between native and nonnative writers, at least a little. And if Wesley McNair ever considers editing A Place Called Maine: Volume II, then I would be happy to supply him with a list of fine Maine Franco-American writers. All he has to do is ask.