Talking on Paper: An Anthology of Oregon Letters and Diaries
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Edited by Shannon Applegate & Terence O'Donnell
1994. 7 x 10 inches. 352 pages. Bibliography. Index.
ISBN 0-87071-377-9. Hardcover, $39.95.
ISBN 0-87071-378-7. Paperback, $24.95.
Illustrated with art by Oregon artists.
Table of Contents
Introduction
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The Oregon Literature Series is a remarkable of collection of the best Oregon writing. In place of one large volume, the series offers six shorter books which broaden the conventional definition of literature. Each volume contains an introduction by the editor and is illustrated with art by Oregon artists and with portraits of many of the featured authors.
SPECIAL OFFER (for individuals only): Order a complete set of the Oregon Literature Series and receive a 20% discount on the set.
Contributors to this anthology of Oregon letters and diaries include a missionary and a gambler, a prosoner and a judge, a clown and a civil servant, a housewife and a homesteader, a cowboy, a schoolgirl, a nun, and many others. Few would consider themselves writers. Yet all took the time to commit words to paper, providing us today with a unique sense of their lives and times.
Letters and diaries are among the most intimate of literary expressions. Seldom written for an intended audience of more than one (if that), they provide a private forum for feelings, concerns, and interests. Yet letters and diaries also benefit a wider audience. They afford us a special knowledge of the past, for they are commonly filled with the concrete details of everyday life, details which biography and history tend to disregard. A summer holiday, fur trapping, a sea voyage, courtship and war, travel and homesteading, the Depression, the Japanese internment, hope despair, and joy--the writings collected in
Talking on Paper bring an impressive immediacy to these experiences.
In gathering material for this book, the editors traveled thousands of miles and researched thousands of documents. Selections span a period of a century and a half and reflect the wide cultural and ethnic diversity of Oregon. From the lyric-laced diaries of Greek emigrant and itinerant railroad worker Haralambos Kambouris to the poignant letter by 10-year-old Julia Wilson of Mitchell describing the loss of her family in a flash flood, these private expressions of literacy and imagination reveal an intimate aspect of Oregon literature.
About the Editors
Shannon Applegate, a writer, teacher, and historian, equipped her Dodge van with a small copying machine and a miniature office and traveled some 5,000 miles in her search for Oregon letters and diaries. She is the author of,
Skookum, a unique chronicle of her pioneer family's history, and lives on her family's 150-year-old homestead near Roseburg.
Terence O'Donnell, is a Portland-based author and lecturer. His many credits include the inscriptions on the Oregon Vietnam memorial; an account of his experiences in the Middle East,
Garden of the Brave in War; and three books on Oregon history:
Portland: An Informal History and Guide, An Arrow in the Earth: General Joel Palmer and the Indians of Oregon, and
That Balance So Rare: The Story of Oregon.
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