workerbees

June 23, 2021

When The Story Keeps Coming To You

I’ve written about this before, but a certain phenomenon that has happened to me multiple times in the midst of writing projects is happening again and it compels me to consider its possible significance.

I don’t know if this has happened to other writers. I’ve never read about it or had a conversation with a writer on this phenomenon.

The phenomenon is: I begin writing on a subject, and then I immediately begin randomly encountering books, music and people related to the subject and these encounters always work their way into the project. It occurred during writing books about Astoria, rain, dogs, the Portland Trail Blazers and the Yaquina Bay Bridge.

It’s happening now with the writing of a Christmas tale where communism is involved.

Everywhere I look I discover literature related to socialism, labor unions and communism. For example, today in two street libraries, I found an obscure history of the Russian Revolution and a memoir about a priest administering to political prisoners in the Gulag. Two days ago, in another street library, I found an incredible collection of short stories called Love of Worker Bees by Alexandra Kollontai, a contemporary and colleague of Lenin and Trotsky who was cast out via sexism after the revolution and went onto some notoriety as a writer. And then two months, I came across the writing of Rachel Kushner and one of her novels, The Flamethrowers, about the wild antics of the Italian communists in the 1970s. All of these books are working their way into my stories. I half expect to find Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book in a street library the next time I go browsing!

Is it because I am writing about something that I somehow see books differently? I’ve patronized thrift stores, library sales, street libraries for years and never run across such exotic Left wing-tinged literature as I have the past week. Is it a cosmic coincidence?

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The Old Crow

Book Club

$11.99 + $3 Shipping

In December of 2020, author Matt Love moved to Portland to care for his elderly father.

Returning to the Rose City jolted Love after 23 years residing on the Oregon Coast. In the Sellwood neighborhood where he lived, Love met a homeless man named Mark. They formed a friendship over literature and the unforeseen magical discoveries in street libraries. They created The Old Crow Book Club, and yes, sometimes that involved drinking Old Crow on a sidewalk.

The club also included several other Sellwood homeless men and women cut from John Steinbeck's Cannery Row cloth.

In due course, Love learned the members' stories of homelessness and how they survived. He wondered what happened to his beloved state of Oregon and attempted to help Mark get off the streets only to run up against the seemingly futile policies to address the crisis.

Along the way, he had the best conversations about books in his life and wrote The Old Crow Book Club, where he recounts his interactions with the homeless people in his neighborhood and offers some suggestions how to alleviate what he considers the greatest man-made American humanitarian disaster of his adult life.

The Old Crow Book Club is available for purchase here and select independent bookstores in Oregon.

Choice Cuts

of Oregon Fiction

$22.99 + $3 Shipping

Choice Cuts of Oregon Fiction by Matt Love contains 20 stories, all set in Oregon. The cast of characters includes a depressed Santa Claus, Steve Prefontaine, Jack Ramsay's fast break offense, socialist squirrels, a clearcut, a dead deer, a junior high football team, a high school tennis player, a dissipated teacher, a man who evolves into a beaver, a homeless vet, a jilted preacher, a double date to a prom, rural degenerates, a wily caterer, and much more.

The publication of the collection culminates a quarter century of the author's writing about Oregon and rambling around the state.

Choice Cuts is available for purchase here, through Amazon, or select independent bookstores in Oregon.

The Savage

of State Street

Nestucca Spit Press is proud to present The Savage of State Street: The Thieving and Literary Lives of Smoky Epley. He is the greatest unheralded writer in Oregon history and also one of its more mediocre, colorful and persistent thieves.

$19.99 + $3 Shipping

In 1973, Oregon State University Press published Men in Exile: An Anthology of Creative Writing by Inmates of the Oregon State Penitentiary. Twenty-two of Smoky Epley's pieces appeared in the book.

Smoky spent most of his adult life in state and federal prisons for robbery. In 2008, during one of his brief stints of freedom, Smoky became friends with Matt Love, an Oregon author and publisher. They met after Love discovered Men in Exile and wrote a newspaper column about the landmark book. Smoky read the column and reached out.

He returned to prison in 2009 after forging a check. Upon his release in 2011, Love encouraged Smoky to write a memoir. He completed half of Auto before dying in February of 2013.