She's Written Her Own Last Chapter
Hi there!
I got an email from Seattle writer Lesley Hazleton earlier this month, which was, on its own, not an especially unusual event. I had become Lesley’s friend after I gave her a Genius Award for literature at The Stranger years ago, and she’d occasionally drop me brief emails letting me know about books or articles that she’d found interesting.
But it was pretty apparent from the very opening that this email wasn’t like that. This was a Serious Email. Lesley explained that she had been diagnosed with cancer, and that three months ago she was told she had six months to live. She also explained that, as a lifelong proponent of a person’s right to choose, she had decided to exercise her right to die as established by the state of Washington.
What’s more, Lesley explained that by the time her friends were reading this email, she had already died on her own terms under medical supervision. It was a very Lesley thing to do: Incredibly dramatic (I never dreamed I’d actually get a “by the time you read this email, I’m already dead” message) but also deeply considered. It was hard to be too sad, because she went out exactly as she desired.
My relationship with Lesley Hazleton stretches back a quarter-century, even though it was quite one-sided at the start. When I was a bookseller in Boston, I came across an advance reader’s copy of her collection of automobile industry journalism, Driving to Detroit. Even though I do not care about cars, I was riveted to the book because of her writing—direct, thoughtful, clever. And the loving way that Lesley described her adopted home of Seattle was especially enticing to me—so much so that I credit Driving to Detroit for clinching my decision to move to Seattle over New York or several other options.
Lesley continued to amaze me. She pivoted from cars to religion, writing biographies of religious figures like Mohammed, Jezebel, and Mary. And I think her greatest book, Agnostic, helped me accept the beauty of admitting that sometimes you can never have the answer you’re looking for—that “I don’t know” is often the most powerful, and correct, answer a human being can give. (If you’d like to read more about her, Lesley’s New York Times obituary is excellent.)
There was a celebration of Lesley’s life on the same night that the whole Northern hemisphere was treated to the most vibrant display of auroras that anyone had ever seen. A klezmer band played and people drank grappa until the sun went down.
And while everyone was sad to have lost such a brilliant, caring friend, it was hard to feel too sad for Lesley. She lived and died exactly as she wanted. She didn’t want to hear tearful tributes from the people who loved her.
But I do feel like it’s important to get it in writing, somewhere, that from my very first encounter with Lesley’s writing to the very last, she was my hero. And Lesley is that rare personal writing hero who became even more impressive when I actually met her in real life.
I’ve Been Writing
I have a story in the new Project: Cryptid collection from AHOY Comics. It’s a comics anthology featuring stories about monsters like Bigfoot, Nessie, and—in my case—the Pacific Northwestern exploding bear known as the Gumberoo. The story was illustrated by the great Peter Krause, who is an artist I’ve loved since I was a kid, and it’s about a pioneer couple who move to the Washington territories only to start a new life. Things don’t go well for one of them. There are so many great comics in this book, by comics creators I really admire including Mark Russell, Richard Pace, and Jamal Igle.
For the Seattle Times, I published a preview of the best-looking May paperback releases and an overview of some of the most exciting upcoming summer book releases.
For the Times, I also interviewed local author Frank Abe and Smith College professor Floyd Cheung about their new Penguin Classics anthology of The Literature of Japanese American Incarceration, a remarkable book that collects dozens of voices together to create a narrative of one of the most shameful moments in American history.
I’ve Been Reading
Sierra Greer’s novel Annie Bot is definitely not for everyone. It’s a sci-fi story told from the perspective of a lifelike domestic companion robot sold to a lonely man in the near-future. She’s essentially a high-tech sex slave, and the novel would no doubt be very triggering for people who have been in abusive relationships or survived assault. But this was the book I read this month that I’m still thinking about, almost a month after finishing it—it’s a frustrating but compelling reading experience.
The title of Dana Mattioli’s non-fiction book The Everything War feels like it’s supposed to be a play off Brad Stone’s hagiographic corporate biography of Amazon, The Everything Store. And in every way, this corporate biography is an improvement on Stone’s glowing account, which gets more embarrassing in retrospect with each passing year. Mattioli offers a deeply reported history of all the unethical and downright illegal ways that Amazon has broken laws, rules, and mores to dominate the retail space. If you’re on the fence about canceling your Prime account, I’d urge you to read this book.
I was excited to read Vinson Cunningham’s novel Great Expectations, a very thinly fictionalized account of Cunningham’s own experiences as an early volunteer on Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign. Unfortunately, the book didn’t hold up to my own great expectations—the presidential/candidate stuff didn’t offer any new insights, and the personal story didn’t really resonate with me.
Blake Crouch’s bestselling novel Dark Matter has just been adapted into a TV series by Apple TV Plus, and I wanted to read the book before I started streaming. This multiversal thriller is the definition of a page-turner—though as someone who grew up reading comics with way weirder multiversal concepts, I didn’t find the premise to be especially mind-blowing. But ultimately it’s a solid, compact, down-the-middle sci-fi thriller, and that’s a pretty good deal.
Okay, fine: The Lincoln Highway is a pretty fantastic big-hearted old John Irving-style novel, and Amor Towles actually is probably the closest thing we have to an heir to Irving in his prime. The road trip story of two orphans who go in search of their mother only to be sidetracked by a pair of escaped convicts is funny, wise, and fun—although the race dynamics of this book feel shallow and are begging for a deep exploration.
My Husband is a short novel by Maud Ventura told from the perspective of a woman who is terrified that she loves her husband much more than he loves her. Her entire life revolves around keeping her husband interested in her, even as she feels him slipping away. I really enjoyed this book until I read the epilogue, which I felt kind of undid everything that came before in exchange for a cheap thrill.
I traveled to Washington DC for a business trip this month and based on a recommendation at Kramer Books I picked up Diary of an Oxygen Thief, an anonymously written novel from the early 2000s from the perspective of a misanthrope who loves emotionally hurting women. It definitely feels like one of those books—Catcher in the Rye, Youth in Revolt, Girl—that attracts a small cult of young people who praise it for its unflinching honesty, but that kind of art is not anything that I feel the need to celebrate or appreciate at the advanced age of 48.
I had somehow not read RO Kwon’s super-buzzy novel The Incendiaries until this month. And now that I finally have read it, I must say I don’t really get the hype. It’s a book about a charismatic cult, but none of the characters are especially interesting and the story lacks the propulsive energy that a story like this needs.
I’m Walkin’ Here!
Earlier this month, I traveled to New York for the express purpose of taking part in The Great Saunter, an organized walk around the perimeter of Manhattan that takes place on the first Saturday of May. I first heard about the Saunter over a decade ago and it’s always been something I wanted to do.
Over 3000 people participated in the Saunter this year, and I’m happy to report that my friend Davida and I were among the 1600 people to finish. We started at the southern tip of Manhattan, followed the coast north to Harlem, and then made our way south again for a total of 32 miles. We started around 7 am and came in to the finish line around 6:30 pm.
I have nothing but kind words for the organizers of the Saunter. It’s an incredibly well-organized event, and in exchange for the $30 entry fee participants get a free hat, snacks and drinks, and volunteers to make sure walkers stay on path. It’s a bargain, is what I’m saying.
In my youth I spent a fair amount of time in New York City. But the city is too damn big to really, fully, comprehend. By walking around the whole perimeter I at least have a better understanding of how huge Manhattan is, and how people can spend whole months—even years—of their lives living inside the boundaries of that 32-mile perimeter.
My big regret from The Saunter is that I didn’t stop and eat at Cake Burgers, the restaurant “Where cakes & burgers are our specialty!” It’s a genius business model, and it’s going to haunt me that I didn’t go in when I had the chance.
If you’ve ever wanted to test your walking endurance, I can’t recommend the Saunter enough. It’s arranged in such a way that the hardest part of the walk—the vertical gain on the northern tip of the island—is almost exactly in the middle of your walk, before exhaustion sets in, and the people who work for the organization really seem to care for both the coastline and the people who choose to walk it. This is one of those bucket-list aspirations that actually was even better in reality than I’d ever imagined it could be.
That’s a nice place to leave off this month, I think. I hope your summer is off to a pleasant start.
Paul