January 2008 Archives
The literary form called the character novel has had an immense impact on my intellectual as well as everyday life, ever since I first discovered at the tender age of 15, Willard Motley's prize winning novel, Knock On Any Door. This was the story of Nick Romano growing up in the Chicago slums. He was an alter boy at 12 and dead in the electric chair at 21.
The story of Nick Romano exposed me to a part of the life struggle that was unknown to me at that time. This composite story of a troubled street youth fired up my imagination and left me wanting to read more of the same. I was fortunate enough to have had a sympathetic English teacher at the time who recognized my passion for stories about people, and further exposed me to what he referred to as "protest literature." He gave me a short list to work from and at the top of that list was the novel, Down These Mean Streets by Pere Thomas. Also on the list was the play, Westside Story. From there I jumped into nonfiction literary treats such as Blood In My Eye by George Jackson.
This literature of troubled youth had such a poignant impact on me that I ended up with the unintentional result of working with these same kind of troubled kids later in life. From 1984 until 1988 I worked as an outreach worker and emergency services coordinator for Outside In's street youth program. At the time Outside In was one of Portland, Oregon's premier socio-medical aid stations which provided free counseling, referrals, emergency services, and a medical clinic for the down and out. It was here at Outside In that I met many Nick Romano's with their own unique and passionate stories. One lad went on to spend five years in prison for first degree arson, another committed suicide, while yet another died so very young of A.I.D.S. The lives and stories of these street kids eventually became too overwhelming and I had to leave that part of my life behind for other things.
My fascination with troubled souls is still alive and well today. I have collected around 25 character novels which I consider keepers, to be read and re-read many times over. The characters in these novels are most often dubbed anti-hero's by the mainstream literary establishment, and often referred to in negative terms as: lonely oddballs, self-absorbed individualists, mental cases, contrarians, non-conformists, deviants, as well as many other names too numerous to list here. The better label for these colorful characters would be heretic. Whether these character's heretical lifestyle and thinking patterns are merely self-made protective barriers against normal society, or a way of accessing the ultimate truth about existence, they have one thing in common: they were born heretics, held hostage by their genetics, social culture, and family upbringing and had no choice but to be who they were.
The best of these character novels that truly represents the heretic in my humble opinion is Against Nature by J. K. Huysmans. The copy I own is a translation (and one of the best methinks) by Robert Baldick. The book hit the literary scene of 1884 like a cosmic big bang. Oscar Wilde found this the "strangest book that he had ever read" and it became a key text for his own writings. Zola called the book "a terrible blow to Naturalism." The general public condemned it as a work of depravity. In colorful and flowery prose the book tells about the strange, exotic and perverse pleasures and practices of one Duc Jean Floressas des Esseintes, a composite character of several "gorgeous dandies of the time."
Some have accused Huysmans of writing about himself in the thinnest of disguises. As Robert Baldick writes in his introduction: "Des Esseintes is more than his creator's alter ego and the quintessential Decadent. He is also, and above all else, the modern man par excellence, tortured by that vague longing for an elusive ideal which we used to call the mal du siecle; torn between desire and satiety, hope and disillusionment; painfully conscious that his pleasures are finite, his needs infinite."
As the charcter Des Esseintes was the epitome of the heretic during his time of the 1880's, so Nick Romano was the epitome of the heretic during his time of the 1950's. Both of these characters in their own uniquely tragic way captured Baldick's "the modern man par excellence." Both Romano and Des Esseintes were very painfully aware that their pleasures were indeed finite and their needs infinite. And I have come to the conclusion that the street youth I worked with and cared so deeply about in the 1980's suffered the same fate. Heretics young or old, from all ages of history and well into the future, will always be who they are and no matter how much we have sympathy for them, or even try to help protect them from themselves, they will continue to follow the path that fate has bestowed upon them.
Things that go bump in the night had not concerned me since my teenage years, when an overactive imagination ruled my small provincial world. But on October 18, 2005 I was forced to confront one of those bumps in the night. Mrs. Douglass and me were part of a Halloween group tour of the Portland Shanghai Tunnels led by Michael Jones, Curator of the Cascade geographic Society.
For those of my readers who are unfamiliar with the 'tunnels' underneath the city of Portland, Oregon, a little bit of background history is a must. In the words of Michael Jones: "Shanghaiing was an illegal maritime practice where able-bodied men--sailors, loggers, cowboys, sheepherders, ranch hands, construction workers, and vagabonds, in addition to other hard workers who were either employed or who frequented the waterfront, were grabbed or kidnapped and sold to sea captains who forced them to work aboard their ships for no pay. Portland was unique because trap doors (known as 'deadfalls') were used to drop the unsuspecting victims into the 'Portland Underground,' where they were forcibly held in cells until the ship was ready to set sail. From 1850 to 1941, the so-called Victorian-refined Portland was known as the 'Unheavenly City' or the 'Forbidden City,' due to this shocking practice. And, during 'Prohibition,' the saloons literally went 'underground' and occupied a portion of this so-called 'Underground City,' creating an even greater opportunity for men to find themselves aboard a ship bound for the Orient."
Mrs. Douglass and me arrived a bit early at the designated meeting place: Hobo's Restaurant, located on Northwest Third Avenue, in the heart of Old Town-Chinatown. This area used to be called the 'Old North End' and was one of the most shadiest, violent and crime-ridden neighborhoods of Portland at one time. While awaiting the arrival of Michael Jones, Mrs. Douglass enjoyed some happy hour food while I had a glass of amber ale.
After Mr. Jones arrived we joined the rest of the tour group which numbered around fifteen, outside the back door of Hobo's, in a little walled in outside patio area. After giving his introductory speech on the 'rules of behavior' and making sure everyone was dressed properly, Mr. Jones passed out the flash lights. He took us outside and around the corner to fourth avenue, where a heavy plywood door with a big lock took us down a flight of decrepit stairs where the tour began.
The first leg of the tour brought us immediately into a large room with a mostly dirt floor that can only be described as trashy, dusty, decrepit, musty, dirty, dank, hot, and suffocating with unbearably low ceilings! In fact, these same words can be consistently used to describe everywhere we went on the tour. We didn't traverse any 'tunnels' although we walked long dark corridors with rooms of differing sizes and shapes. The amount of trash was phenomenal, even though Mr. Jones and his 'volunteer crews' had cleaned out much of the trash to make the tour possible. Between the dirt, dust, smells, and low ceilings, and the incredible hot air generated from the ceiling pipes from business' on street level, made the tour a little bit too suffocating in my opinion.
Along the various passages Mr. Jones would stop and relate historical trivia about the 'tunnels' and some juicy tidbits about the city of Portland in its bygone days. Since it was a Halloween tour he threw in the required tales of ghostly visions and sounds. Most of the stories were from volunteer crews who helped clean out the trash to make the corridors easily traversable. Some stories came from individuals from past tour groups. Mr. Jones related one of these stories that was quite striking in its content.
The first large room we were in, Mr. Jones showed us the remnants of an 'oven' where the bodies of kidnapped men were cremated, because they had died in the 'cells' awaiting transfer aboard a ship. Mr. Jones told the group that a man from one of his past tours actually caught on his video recorder a 'disembodied head floating about the room.' I don't remember the reason given by Mr. Jones of why this 'video' is no longer available, but as he related this ghostly tale I noticed Mrs. Douglass with that famous smirk on her face, and I was thinking to myself: "Yeah, right! Just another bullshit story." I had to admit though this story at the beginning of the tour created a sense of overpowering excitement of what might happen tonight. What added to this infectious excitement was Mr. Jones himself. Michael Jones is indeed a first class story teller and his remarkable knowledge of Portland's past gives him an immediate authority. His rotund body, full beard, longish hair and incredibly squinty eyes makes him the perfect tour guide for something like this.
During the rest of the tour Mr. Jones showed us some of the remarkable finds of the volunteer trash removal crews. We saw eating implements, belt buckles, shoes, clothing, plates, a silver cigar box, jewelry, small holding cells, and other intriguing tidbits from the latter half of 19th century Portland. One of the most interesting things we were shown was an actual trapdoor ('deadfall') underneath where the old Erickson's Saloon was located. The various holding cells were miserably cramped, hot and dirty. It's a wonder that anyone survived down there long enough to make it aboard a ship.
The tour ended about an hour and a half later in a room just before we exited to street level in front of Hobo's.During the last ten minutes of the tour something indeed strange happened to me. The incident took place in the last room where the group had assembled in a semi-circle around Mr. Jones to listen to his closing speech. I stayed towards the back of the group because I was feeling rather claustrophobic due to the low ceiling, the warmth and the large group of people. The oppressive atmosphere of the place made me want to get outside onto the street as soon as possible.
As Mr. Jones talked I was just observing the backs of the crowd, including the back of Mrs. Douglass. Then it happened! I felt a very firm, deliberate, slow stroke from the spot between my shoulder blades down my spine just above my butt. It felt just like someone's open palm. And I actually heard the faint sound of something sliding on my jacket material.
I immediately thought someone in the group was trying to play a prank on me. I stood my ground without moving and quickly counted to ten. I slowly and very casually turned around and nobody was directly behind me, just twelve feet of dusty space and the far back wall. To my immediate right was the other wall one foot away. To my left, about ten feet away were two members of the tour looking ahead, seemingly absorbed in what Mr. Jones was saying. No one else was around or close to me.
If one of those two people did play a prank on me they would have had to be extremely fast and deadly quiet. There was enough debris on the dirt floor to make any movement just a little noticeable. My peripheral vision would have had to been completely on the fritz also. They seemed just to far away to have had done anything.
I am not a believer in ghosts! In fact, I consider myself a hard-boiled skeptic. What happened that evening I can't explain rationally. Could it have been the result of the small glass of beer, the anticipation and excitement generated by Mr. Jones, my overactive imagination on the re-bound, or was it a combination of the entire evenings events? I guess it will just be one of those mysterious, unexplained events that I'll never be able to resove one way or the other.
