Red Room Where the Writers Are

Article

April 1, 2005

Excerpt:

Rain in Portland, Oregon is not rain in Emporia, Kansas. People run in Emporia. They shut windows and wait. Rain in Portland is ambience, the forgotten soundtrack that “natives didn’t even notice, they seemed born with gills” (The Bewildered, 14). I notice this first. Then I notice Mount Hood behind everything, huge and foreboding, the Willamette river resting comfortably downtown, dividing west and east—Old Chinatown from the Rose Quarter, the underground Shanghai tunnels from the world famous Burnside skatepark, Portland State University on one side, Reed College on the other, my modest hotel room just outside downtown’s cultural district to the west and author Peter Rock’s Reed College office to the east. Rock, author of numerous short stories and novels, most recently, The Bewildered (MacAdam/Cage, 2005), might argue that my position is enviable. Many of his protagonists carry their stories while faced with similar situations—surrounded by unfamiliar landscape, ready to be excited about anything. They are both bound and enlightened by their place, often simultaneously.