Let’s sidestep such impulses as we do the noisome ginkgo berries that litter the sidewalks. Let’s poke around in these ruderal lives. What primes someone for this work? What comes of being in such close contact with one’s own consciousness—one’s own taste, limitations, deprivations? Not just a life of the mind but a life in the mind, perpetually observing one’s own responses. Margo Jefferson, in her memoir “Constructing a Nervous System,” calls this observing self Monster, and makes it a character. Monster mocks, Monster annotates, Monster will not be appeased.
At 12.30pm on that December day, just before they were due to break for lunch in Gävle, Beldt’s phone rang. It was one of his colleagues. Furuvik Zoo is only open to the public during the summer, but on that December morning, there were still 35 people on site: administrative staff, zookeepers attending to the animals and contractors renovating the amusement park, known as the Tivoli.
“Don’t come to the park today,” she said.
He thought he couldn’t have heard what she said next correctly. He asked her to repeat herself. “And then,” Beldt told me, “I just remember everything going dark.”
As a kid, I spent all my summer and winter holidays in my parents’ hometown of Methana, a small Greek peninsula with an active volcano, beautiful beaches, and a wild, windswept sort of nature. It’s just a couple hours from Athens, where I lived with my family the rest of the year, accessible either by car or by boat from the bustling Piraeus port. For years we didn’t own a car, so the only option was the sea. Every December, immediately after school closed for the holidays, we would take the early-morning ferry to Methana, where my grandparents on my mother’s side would be waiting for us. Those weeks around Christmas and the New Year were my favorite time of year, and for decades — while my grandparents were still alive, anyway — I never spent the holidays anywhere else.
I would argue that Jonathan Raban and Seattle share that mysterious bond — the magic of a writer finding their ideal place in the world. This is not to diminish Raban’s talent — he would have been a world-class writer no matter where he decided to make his home. His keen observational eye, wry sense of humor, and brilliant ability to prize apart the nonsense and find the tiny seed of truth at the heart of any situation were unique among his peers.
But it’s impossible to read “Driving Home: An American Journey,” Raban’s wide-ranging essay collection published by Seattle’s own Sasquatch Books, and not recognize it as a love story between a gruff Englishman and the verdant beauty of the Pacific Northwest.