Sometimes a Great Notion

 Sometimes a Great Notion by Ken Kesey is the Great Oregon Novel. It's a triumph of craft and form; it accurately captures the coastal Oregon landscape; its drama is big and mythic and deeply felt. I'd read Sometimes a Great Notion about 15 years ago, and I was driven back to it by the nagging lack of logger voices in Richard Powers's The Overstory*. Boy, it holds up. It's hard to read any scene with the character Hank Stamper without clenching your fists in defiant, vitriolic cussedness. I've never read a novel that plays with point-of-view as much: in the same paragraph the perspective might change seven times over four different narrative voices. And the plot builds and builds and builds and ends, well, exactly where it should end. A terrific book.

There's too much to go over in a space this small. The history, the meditations on politics/spirituality/gender/family/vengeance/free will/race/et al., the brawling conflict, the characterization . . . each could be a dissertation. I'll just focus on the setting. Kesey absolutely nails the depiction of the Coast Range. His account is that of a native son. Not only is it expertly described in its physical detail, but the amorphous spiritual effects of climate on the characters is perfect. The town and river in the novel are fictional, but they could be anywhere from Tillamook down to about Bandon. Read in 2022, the attitude is shocking. Kesey, in his accurate endemic telling, avoids the hippie sentimentalizing that most later Oregon writers (and imitators) attach to the land. His Oregon isn't a nurturing mother, it's a combative alien. You aren't welcome here. Hank Stamper understood this early--in a heartbreaking flashback--and he raised his fist against the coastal river throughout. It wasn't enough. As the loggers raged against the forest, the river rose and rose and swallowed the characters, the house, the family conflict, the whole narrative. 

*Mentioned on this very blog . . .