{"id":7930,"date":"2015-08-20T08:03:59","date_gmt":"2015-08-20T14:03:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lastbestnews.com\/site\/?p=7930"},"modified":"2015-08-21T07:12:05","modified_gmt":"2015-08-21T13:12:05","slug":"ivan-doig-celebrating-the-literary-heart-of-montana","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/2015\/08\/ivan-doig-celebrating-the-literary-heart-of-montana\/","title":{"rendered":"Ivan Doig: Celebrating the literary heart of Montana"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Authors\"<\/a>

Carson Evans, Country Bookshelf<\/p>

The featured speakers for the Ivan Doig tribute Tuesday at Bozeman’s Country Bookshelf were, from left, Billings novelist Craig Lancaster, Missoula novelist Malcolm Brooks, Billings novelist Carrie La Seur, former bookstore owner Mary Jane Di Santi, Bozeman author Paul Wylie, Billings novelist Russell Rowland and Great Falls novelist Jamie Ford.<\/p><\/div>\n

Ariana Paliobagis, owner of the Country Bookshelf in Bozeman, distilled the feelings of a packed house Tuesday night with one emotion-laden sentence: \u201cI can\u2019t talk about Ivan Doig in the past tense, because that would be like letting him go.\u201d<\/p>\n

There\u2019s not much chance of that\u2014not with Doig\u2019s 14 novels (the last of which, Last Bus to Wisdom, was released Tuesday), two memoirs and a book of essays still out in the world, and not with seven guest speakers who offered wide-ranging accounts of how Doig, who died in April at age 75, helped shape their art and their perceptions of Montana.<\/p>\n

Tuesday\u2019s event in Bozeman was one of several Doig tributes held in Montana and nationwide in conjunction with the release of his posthumous novel. Paliobagis\u2019 staff filled the house for a nearly two-hour event that brought laughter and poignant reflection in equal measures.<\/p>\n

Mary Jane Di Santi, who operated the Country Bookshelf for three decades before selling the store to Paliobagis, recalled a long association with Doig that began with the publication of This House of Sky, the 1979 memoir that put him on the literary map and was a recurrent touchstone throughout the evening.<\/p>\n

By the end of her bookselling career, Di Santi said, she had built an abiding friendship with Doig and his wife, Carol, and the writer would punctuate every visit to the store by telling Di Santi the title of his next work and asking her to keep it to herself, which she always did. The pattern held true with Last Bus to Wisdom, she said, and then she pointed at her stack of Doig originals on the lectern. \u201cMaybe I\u2019d like to read them all again before I read the last one.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"CapreAir_Variable\"<\/a><\/div><\/div>Billings novelist Russell Rowland told about approaching Doig for an endorsement of his first novel, In Open Spaces, and the author\u2019s uncommon grace in agreeing to provide one. The blurb for the novel\u2014which Doig greatly admired\u2014never found its way onto the book, but Rowland said the best possible tribute came at a later meeting, when Doig looked at Rowland\u2019s mother and said, \u201cYour son is a fine writer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Such stories of generosity flourished Tuesday night. Great Falls novelist Jamie Ford told of Doig seeking him out as a fellow Montanan at a literary event in Portland just as Ford\u2019s debut, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, was coming out. Later, Doig asked Ford for an endorsement of his own novel, Work Song, and Ford wrote back to Doig\u2019s editor with this suggestion: \u201cI\u2019m not worthy\u2014Jamie Ford.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ford spoke humorously of a bond he shared with the great writer. \u201cHere he was, writing about Montana and living in Seattle, and I was living in Montana and writing about Seattle. I was afraid if we shook hands, there would be this \u2018Freaky Friday\u2019 thing and we\u2019d swap lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Doig\"<\/a>

Carol Doig<\/p>

Ivan Doig<\/p><\/div>\n

Paul Wylie, a nonfiction author based in Bozeman, had a distinction no one else in the audience could claim: He used to walk to school with Doig when they were boys in White Sulphur Springs. Even then, Wylie said, Doig was honing the keen observation and memory that informed so much of his fiction. He recalled a time when Doig sat waiting in a pickup for his father, Charlie, and kindly deflected other kids\u2019 entreaties to come play.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe could entertain himself with his own mind,\u201d Wylie said. \u201cYou knew he was looking at houses and memorizing details, the shades of sunset.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the evening wore on and the stories piled up, you got the impression that Doig was the perfect vessel to carry tales about Montana, blessed as he was with an unerring ability to bring characters to three-dimensional life, to invoke disparate eras of the state and territory, and to form deep connections with the landscape.<\/p>\n

Missoula novelist Malcolm Brooks, author of the acclaimed Painted Horses, told of a transformative trip into the Bob Marshall Wilderness with his 16-year-old son and their encounter with a ranger the likes of whom would have shown up in a Doig novel. \u201cMy son looked at me and said, \u2018When I grow up, I want to be a cowboy,\u2019\u201d Brooks said, his eyes welling. \u201cI said, \u2018Kid, me, too.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

When it was my turn to speak, I replayed a trip to Montana in 1989, when I was 19, and how that, along with my first dose of Doig, ignited my desire to come here and write stories. That chance that came my way in 2006, long after I figured it was one of those dreams that would go unrealized. If I could say anything to Doig now, I said, it would be this: \u201cMontana has fulfilled every promise he ever made on its behalf.\u201d<\/p>\n

But it was Billings author Carrie La Seur (The Home Place) who offered perhaps the most striking observation about why Doig\u2019s work resonates so deeply inside and outside his home state. She detailed her own family\u2019s struggles to gain a foothold here, saying, \u201cNobody got rich. We got poor and poorer. \u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cIvan Doig tells those stories. The question is why in the world we want to hear them, and why we hold them up as what\u2019s most precious about Montana. For me, out of my own heritage, the stories are a source of strength, both knowing what my ancestors endured and believing that they did it so the kids could have a better life. \u2026<\/p>\n

\u201cBut there are others who come to Doig\u2019s work fresh, without the wagonload of fragrant emotional baggage some of us have where Montana is concerned. In a way, I envy anyone who can come to Doig with a fresh heart and none of the rough-healed scars of history. You\u2019ll notice a great many ex-pats among writers with Montana roots, including Doig, and I think it\u2019s because his true topic is, as he put it, \u2018that larger country: life.\u2019 Montana just happens to give an exceptionally good grounding, for better or worse, in reality.\u201d<\/p>\n

Craig Lancaster is a novelist who lives in Billings. His most recent book, <\/em>This Is What I Want, was released in late July.<\/em><\/p>\n

Ivan\u00a0Doig\u2019s works<\/h5>\n

Fiction<\/strong>:<\/p>\n

\u2666 The Sea Runners (1982)<\/p>\n

\u2666 English Creek (1984)<\/p>\n

\u2666 Dancing at the Rascal Fair (1987)<\/p>\n

\u2666 Ride with Me, Mariah Montana (1990)<\/p>\n

\u2666 Bucking the Sun (1996)<\/p>\n

\u2666 Mountain Time (1999)<\/p>\n

\u2666 Prairie Nocturne (2003)<\/p>\n

\u2666 The Whistling Season (2006)<\/p>\n

\u2666 The Eleventh Man (2008)<\/p>\n

\u2666 Work Song (2010)<\/p>\n

\u2666 The Bartender\u2019s Tale (2012)<\/p>\n

\u2666 Sweet Thunder (2013)<\/p>\n

\u2666 Last Bus to Wisdom (2015)<\/p>\n

Nonfiction:<\/strong><\/p>\n

\u2666 This House of Sky: Landscapes of a Western Mind (1979)<\/p>\n

\u2666 Winter Brothers: A Season at the Edge of America (1980, co-written with James G. Swan)<\/p>\n

\u2666 Heart Earth (1993)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ariana Paliobagis, owner of the Country Bookshelf in Bozeman, distilled the feelings of a packed house Tuesday night with one emotion-laden sentence: \u201cI can\u2019t talk about Ivan Doig in the past tense, because that would be like letting him go.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":7931,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2958,837,2957,93,2503,2961,2959,2960,2962,608],"class_list":["post-7930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-this-house-of-sky","tag-carrie-la-seur","tag-country-bookshelf","tag-craig-lancaster","tag-ivan-doig","tag-jamie-ford","tag-malcolm-brooks","tag-mary-jane-di-santi","tag-paul-wylie","tag-russell-rowland","prominence-top-story"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7930"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7930\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7931"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/montana-mint.com\/lastbestnews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}