Barry Lopez to speak on social responsibility | DailyTidings.com

Says he 'matured as a writer' in Oregon

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By John Darling

?Posted:?2:00 AM?April 10, 2012

Noted Oregon author Barry Lopez doesn't like being called a "nature writer," although nature, animals and remote places figure in many of his books and articles.

"I'm a writer," says Lopez, who will speak in Ashland next week. "My sense of identity as a writer began to grow from reading Melville, Steinbeck, Willa Cather. They all had a deep sense of place ? New Mexico, Nebraska, California ? and a strong theme in their writing is of a moral drama in a very particular place.

"Because of the commercial world we live in, someone invented the term 'nature writer,' and that's a mistake. There's another group called 'writers,' and that's what I am."

When: 7:30 p.m. Friday, April 20

Where: Mountain Avenue Theatre, Ashland High School, 201 S. Mountain Ave.

Tickets: $25 reserved, $20 general, $12 for students. Available online at www.chautauquawriters.org or at Bloomsbury Books or Bookwagon in Ashland

Lopez, winner of the National Book Award for "Arctic Dreams" in 1986, grew up mostly in Southern California, close to nature, moved to New York City to finish his education, then came to Oregon 44 years ago and has lived for decades on the upper McKenzie River east of Eugene.

"Oregon is the place I matured as a writer. I spent my first two years here immersing myself in the history of its politics, which has a largely unexplored dark side, and traveling the state all the time ? the deserts, coast, mountains. The varieties of landscape here are imprinted on me; I'm centered in it."

Lopez will speak at five events in Ashland April 20 and on Earth Day, April 21. The only public event will be his talk at 7:30 p.m. Friday, April 20, at Mountain Avenue Theatre at Ashland High School. Tickets are $25 reserved, $20 general, $12 for students, and can be purchased online at www.chautauquawriters.org or at Bloombury Books and Bookwagon in Ashland.

In his event in Ashland, Lopez says, he'll talk about writing and the "social responsibility" writers have to their readers, in contrast to the desire for self-expression.

"The history of storytelling goes back at least 15,000 years ? and it functions to organize human experience into patterns, so people can better navigate in their own lives."

A sense of "place" figures into this largely because of a biocultural diversity across the planet and the fact that "cultures evolve in tune with the place where they've evolved." Lopez says he likes to focus on "how people move through and interact with it."

As a result, his books are not so much about nature, he says, but about "the meaning of life (as) what it means to be human."

It's a focus, he adds, that has kept him writing about two or three basic issues all his writing life and wanting to observe and hear from "elders and traditional people" in all cultures.

"Many people would write off traditional societies as not having much to offer," says Lopez. "Their lives aren't organized by government interference and the consumer society. I'm looking for the elders who can articulate what ensured the survival of their cultures."

When Lopez in 1978 wrote "Of Wolves and Men," he did his academic diligence and made sure all the biology was accurate, he says in a phone interview.

"But I'm not a scientist; I'm a writer and the book is an inquiry, not just into wolves but into the nature of prejudice ... so it deals more with folklore, Native American philosophical positions ? and I take that as seriously as the biology. It was the first large-scale attempt to examine these ideas of reverence, justice and compassion that I'm still looking at 35 years later.

"I'm drawn to things that got written off as inconsequential. I like to go deeper into what's accessible in different cultures that we put outside Western civilization ? so we can live lives that are not divorced from what we evolved with as a species."

Lopez has spent a lot of time in "intense involvements" outside the state, giving him a "pan-cultural impulse" that helps birth his main themes, such as a theme he explored in the long essay "Flight," riding aboard 747 cargo planes for a month to find out "what is that thing that so profoundly drives people to want something within 24 hours and these things are coming from all over the world in air freighters?"

"I thought I'd learn a lot. I flew 125,000 miles. I wanted to go deep into the phenomenon ... . I called it 'Flight' because it brought out so much evidence of how we are fleeing from reality ? consumerism masquerading as reality, but you take one step back and you see it's reached the level of a pathology in the U.S."

The idea of a "just relationship" is critical to Lopez, who defines it as "one of reciprocity, mutual respect and profound courtesy."

"Its opposite is warfare. It's not like I'm not implicated in this system of injustice and nearly neurotic consumerism. It's important for readers to understand that the writer is involved or implicated, then it's much easier for them to approach what the writer has to say. The approach of the writer is as a companion more than as an authority."

Lopez's talk is sponsored by Ashland Chautauqua Poets & Writers and Oregon Humanities, Jackson Cultural Coalition, the Oregon Writing Project at Southern Oregon University and Friends of the Ashland Public Library.

John Darling is a freelance writer living in Ashland. E-mail him at jdarling@jeffnet.org.

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