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In the summer of 1970, out on the central Oregon coast, Paul Newman and company filmed a cinematic adaptation of Ken Kesey's epic 1964 novel, Sometimes a Great Notion. The final installment in Matt Love's Newport trilogy, Sometimes a Great Movie chronicles the film's production with an array of first-person accounts, photographs, and newspaper clippings [...]

This round of Required Reading is dedicated to the place we at Powell's Books call home: the great Pacific Northwest. Whether you're from the area or you simply appreciate the region for its beauty, history, temperament, or legendary bookstore, these titles will give you a more nuanced understanding of this peculiar corner of the U.S. [...]

This round of Required Reading is dedicated to the place we at Powell's Books call home: the great Pacific Northwest. Whether you're from the area or you simply appreciate the region for its beauty, history, temperament, or legendary bookstore, these titles will give you a more nuanced understanding of this peculiar corner of the U.S. [...]

During the winter, I like watching anything undulating in motion with the ocean. That might be seals or surfers. That might be mermaids or drift logs. That might be skinny-dippers or coils of kelp. My favorite day to watch is Sunday. Call it going to church. My favorite place to observe the winter undulations is [...]

Question: What's the most memorably creative use of kelp you've ever witnessed on tan Oregon beach? My candidates: Jump rope Photographic subject for greeting cards Harness for a driftwood sled pulled by huskies Rotunda fort Telescope Whip for practice S&M Teenage fashion statement Dog toy Trampoline Riding crop Percussion instrument Coiled decoration on a pagan [...]

To lay hands on the Rock is to feel inspired and imbued: inspired to believe that a politician with vision can enhance the lives of all his constituents, and imbued to never give up fighting for the great birthright and soul of Oregon — our publicly owned beaches — which undergo constant siege by the [...]

I've had three Deep Throats in my Oregon literary career. Each put me on to something incredible that enriched my recounting of modern Oregon history. For the uninitiated, Deep Throat was the code name of the legendarily secret source who helped Woodward and Bernstein unravel Watergate and overthrow a paranoid criminal in the White House, [...]

I stood in a downpour on my deck and looked across the street. The sun was throwing a narrow spotlight on my neighbor's dry roof. This meant it was raining like the Battle of Stalingrad: moving block by block, house to house. Normally, I would venture to my local beach near Newport and watch the [...]

It had rained nearly four inches in 24 hours as Christmas approached. Portland weathermen had gone deep into their online thesauruses for novel and moronic adjectives (e.g., "wicked") to anthropomorphize a routine coastal storm. Wind had whipped through the neighborhood, toppling trees and lawn gnomes. Everything was puddled and reflecting. Reflections generated from rain are [...]

I'd like to announce the winner of the fourth annual Powell's On Oregon blog "Book of the Year" [see last year's winner]. I'm the sole judge, I live in Oregon, and the book I pick has to be about Oregon in some way, either as a topic or through the setting. It could be a [...]

"There is nothing in machinery, there is nothing in embankments and railways and iron bridges and engineering devices to oblige them to be ugly. Ugliness is the measure of imperfection," wrote H.G. Wells. One gets the feeling that Oregon master bridge builder Conde McCullough read Wells and took his exhortation to heart, because Conde didn't [...]

To begin our day, Sonny the husky and I hit the beach at dawn. We like to honor a sacred passage written by Evelyn Waugh: "In all the diurnal revolution these first fresh hours alone are untainted by man." Completely true. Nothing provides me greater joy than rambling the beach with my old dog in [...]

I eagerly await the hard rains of winter on the Oregon coast. Life always becomes leaner and my writing begins to move in mysterious, fluid directions. I feel a new book coming on. But, for now, fall lingers, pumpkins ripen, high school football teams clash spiritedly in the night, and I habitually visit my beach [...]

"Contemporary Western culture makes the peace of solitude difficult to attain. The telephone is an ever-present threat to privacy...and the invention of the car telephone has ensured that drivers who install it are never out of touch with those who want to talk to them." So wrote Anthony Storr in his book Solitude: A Return [...]

In recent weeks I've started a new habit of going to the beach with Sonny the husky and a spiral notebook. I'll find a comfortable drift log, dune, or slice of riprap, sit down on the sand, stare at the ocean, perhaps snap a photograph with my film fish-eye camera, peruse my notes, and write [...]

My great political and literary mentor died on July 31. His name was Gore Vidal, and I read all but one of his 30-something books. I own 18. I remember exactly when I discovered him: it was 1988 and I inhabited a spacious two-bedroom Portland apartment on SE Belmont.I remember exactly when I discovered him: [...]

What is the official color of the Pacific Northwest Coast? Let a poet define it: [I]t happens when I begin my little ritual of naming the colors. That's grey, I say. That is not grey, I say. But more than grey, a white grey, green grey, blue grey, rose grey — my little ritual — [...]

If a tree falls in an Oregon clearcut, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? If an Oregonian strips naked and dives into the ocean, and no one is around to see, is it a crime? Not too long ago, Sonny the husky, a friend, and I cruised south [...]

Not long ago, I had the unpleasant experience of observing students study — if study is the word — for their U.S. history finalsNot long ago, I had the unpleasant experience of observing students study — if study is the word — for their U.S. history finals at Newport High School, where I teach English, [...]

Monday, June 4. 5:10 a.m. I sit in my truck parked in front of the Fishermen's Memorial in Newport and watch a clammer gearing up to depredate the low tide. My black coffee tastes good. Light is coming. Rain threatens. A few sprinkles reconnoiter for an imminent invasion. A mix tape from the Analog Stone [...]

Some six or seven years ago, I heard a story about an employee of a coastal restaurant who beat a one-legged gull to death with a stick out back of the establishment. Apparently the gull served as the establishment's mascot, and for whatever reason, if sociopathic behavior can be said to have logical reasons, the [...]

She zigs, she zags, darts left, darts right. She backpedals better than a lot of NFL cornerbacks. She virtually never walks straight ahead, and she never looks out to the ocean, only down to the sand. She always carries a plastic bag laden with treasures she finds at the beach. I call her the Manic [...]

Whenever I ramble the beach with the husky and encounter an abundant supply of driftwood, I immediately size up the potential for a good fort and imagine what my friends and I would have constructed in our youth. Forts excited our passion. We built them anywhere and everywhere. I remember the summer days of riding [...]

Dear Powell's Customer and Sometimes a Great Notion fanatic: Four years ago I issued a limited hardback edition of Oregon's sesquicentennial anthology (Citadel of the Spirit) to help finance its publication and further hone my model of producing sustainable Oregon literature, which entails publishing books about Oregon, written by Oregon writers, printed by Oregon printers, [...]

Mist eroded into January dusk as I left my house to walk to the beach and see the day's last light diffusing over the ocean. Sonny, the old husky stayed behind, exhausted from an earlier ramble down the sand. Fifty yards from the house I saw a dark mass moving in the street. I came [...]