Teddy lowered his lashes and gazed at the wienie-fingered, rusty-knuckled paw resting on the richly grained surface of the bar. since everyone sooner or later comes through his saloon: Hank, Henry, Leland Draeger, the smooth-talking union organizer Evenwrite the striker's agent the drunks, the movie-theatre owner (who tries to kill himself) and the local bully, Big Newton:
This epic tale goes on, in the hills, at the ocean, through the forests, on the river, or in the town of Wakonda, at the Wakonda bar under the eyes of watchful Teddy, who may be the Pacific Northwest version of a Greek chorus, playing out his role there in the Snag. It's Lake Woebegone with nuts it's Our Town acted out, with verve and passion (and blue language) on the Oregon Pacific coast in the bizarre house that Henry built on the river, a Sisyphean structure than never seems to get finished when Henry finally dies, Hank takes over the job. and enough hate to take it all through to another generation. Notion is more than a Northwest strike tale: it's an epic, family members locked in classic family battles, with each other or with the gods (or both), like something out of Ovid or the Mahabarata or Æschylus.īrother (or half-brother) sleeping with mother, another brother (step-son) vowing to avenge this, complete with tricks, deceit, attempted murder, suicide. Well, yes, but that's like saying that The Old Man and the Sea is a how-to-do-it guide on fishing in the tropics. The story involves an Oregon family of loggers who cut and procure trees for a local mill in opposition to striking, unionized workers. The obit writers (Kesey died in 2003) said things like Notion is a ravishingly good book, and this disc version does it justice.
I finally went to the library, got out an old 1965 edition of the book, started reading through the parts that I had liked listening to. Stechschulte becomes these characters - and many others - because the writing is good, good enough to let one into the story so the story becomes you.
He's also the crabby old reprobate Henry Stamper, and the eastern college graduate Leland (Stanford) Stamper, and Vivian, too.
He's cool Hank Stamper, a man who lost two fingers in a logging accident (his wife Vivian didn't find out until she takes off his gloves). I went through all twenty-six discs of Sometimes a Great Notion, narrated by Tom Stechschulle.
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