In a recent New Yorker cartoon by Alex Fraga, a man wearing a complete beekeeper’s protective suit has just given his wife a gift-wrapped hive of bees. She says, “Really, Paul? Another ‘gift’ that’s just something you wanted?” I wish such self-centered gift-giving ended in childhood, but I have seen full-grown adults do it many …
I’ve been thinking about how shared myths and beliefs unconsciously shape our culture and personal values. Westward expansion and the settlement of Alaska were enabled by the myth that pioneers were heroes entering an empty land, not colonists executing a conquest. When I spent a season whale hunting with the Iñupiat of Arctic Alaska, I …
After two years of planning and fundraising, I am beginning research on a new, comprehensive, up-to-date history of Alaska. I got here in the most unusual way, and I’m utterly surprised and deeply gratified. Rather than receiving grants from cultural institutions, the project will be paid for mostly with private contributions. This is daunting vote …
I was ready to go home at the end of my work day when I got a call about a possible mutiny at sea. November 1990. We were in the middle of perhaps the last great American newspaper war, between my morning Anchorage Daily News and the evening Anchorage Times. Well-funded owners were throwing everything …
Developing control as a writer through disciplined attention to length
Winning permission to enter whaling camp and the promise of honesty
Memoirs sometimes show you things the author didn’t intend. A painfully egotistical book is an obvious example. But in the case of a great talent, that unintended insight can be the very thing—insight that transcends the life. Bob Dylan’s flawed and wonderful book Chronicles, Vol 1, (2004) has that quality. It shows he made great …
Dave Rose had his wry smile even as he told me why we needed to finish up his book faster than we had planned. He was going to Texas for a heart operation, and he didn’t expect to survive. We were sitting across a desk in an office, the setting of many other meetings when …
English prose styles change through time like musical or artistic styles, but within the period of a dominant style people often don’t see it as changeable—they think the current style is simply correct. I believe a period’s favored writing style can reveal something about how people thought. And that’s true for today’s ‘correct’ prose, too. …
If you can’t tell the difference between a novel written by a human being and one written by AI, why do you care? We need a good answer to that question, because we’ll soon be dealing with AIs that are all but human. Unless we’re prepared to surrender to them in many dimensions of life, …
