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Overview
When he discovers that he has terminal cancer, retired heart surgeon Ben Givens refuses to simply sit back and wait. Instead he takes his two beloved dogs and goes on a last hunt, determined to end his life on his own terms. But as the people he meets and the memories over which he lingers remind him of the mystery of life’s endurance, his trek into the American West becomes much more than a final journey.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781400032655 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group |
| Publication date: | 07/08/2003 |
| Series: | Vintage Contemporaries |
| Edition description: | Reprint |
| Pages: | 304 |
| Sales rank: | 408,625 |
| Product dimensions: | 5.18(w) x 7.99(h) x 0.62(d) |
About the Author
Hometown:
Bainbridge Island in Puget SoundDate of Birth:
May 4, 1956Place of Birth:
Seattle, WashingtonEducation:
M.A., University of WashingtonReading Group Guide
1. What is the importance-literal and symbolic-of Ben's movement eastward? What qualities are associated, through image and direct statement, with the concept of "east"?
2. Most quest novels feature young men or women on journeys of discovery. What effects result from Guterson's presentation of a dying seventy-three-year-old man embarking on a journey of rediscovery? What does Ben Givens (re)discover?
3. Do you think that coincidence and chance occur too often in the novel? What might be Guterson's purpose in countering Ben's lifelong "judicious deliberation" and "attention to all particulars" with the accidents and chance encounters he experiences? What is the significance of the several references to miracles?
4. If "Suicide was at odds with the life he knew, at odds with all he understood, of himself and of the world," why does Ben plan such a carefully thought-out, staged suicide? How would you describe Ben's understanding "of himself and of the world"? Does that understanding change during Ben's three days east of the mountains?
5. "He had been born in the cradle of apple orchards," Guterson writes of Ben, "and it was this world he wanted to return to." How important to Ben is this return to the apple-orchard country of the Columbia Basin at the height of the apple harvest? Given Ben's views on death and dying, why does he want to end his life in this "cradle"? What is significant in the fact that Ben's view of his family's old orchard is from a moving bus while he is busy with the ill migrant picker?
6. Do Ben's memories of family, Rachel, and war serve only to provide us with details of his past life? What bearing on Ben's present does each ofhis memories have? How do those memories help us understand Ben's life and behavior?
7. At the end of chapter two, Ben recalls that he and Rachel, on their honeymoon, "had kissed with the sadness of newlyweds who know...that their good fortune is subject, like all things, to the crush of time, which remorselessly obliterates what is most desired and pervades all that is beautiful."To what extent has time crushed the desired and the beautiful in Ben's life? To what extent do his experiences during his three-day journey counter that disquieting observation?
8. Why does Guterson pay so much attention to details of landscape and natural phenomena? Through what kinds of landscape, both past and present, does Ben travel? How is Guterson's presentation of each landscape important in terms of the corresponding stage in Ben's life and of his view of life at each stage?
9. What role does hunting play in Ben's life? What kinds of hunting does he participate in or observe, and what are the purposes and consequences? In what ways does his attitude toward hunting change?
10. How are the episodes involving the wolfhounds and their consequences significant, particularly in terms of Ben's inability to control or influence events? What details of landscape and time of night give these episodes particular import? Why does Ben, having found William Harden near his journey's end, relinquish the gun to the wolfhound owner with the statement, "That gun is cursed"?
11. As he settles Rex into the cab of Stu Robinson's tractor-trailer, Ben thinks, "There were no good answers to important questions." What are the important questions, from Ben's perspective? What answers does he find? Which of those answers, if any, are "good"?
12. What is the importance of Ben's experience in the field hospital in Italy, and of Ben's memory of that experience? Why is this memory presented in such detail? What influence did the Army surgeon have on Ben?
13. In his Quincy motel room, Ben opens the Gideon Bible to the Book of Job and reads the verses that begin, "Days of affliction have taken hold upon me." And, on the bus to Wenatchee, he refers to Don Quixote as "Knight of the Mournful Countenance." Are the correspondences implied by these references justified? In what ways might Ben be compared to Job and Don Quixote? What other biblical and literary references occur, and what are their relevance?
14. Sitting in the restaurant with Emilio, Ben decides that "the life of the boy-of anyone-was a life, in the end, and no mere story to be told across the table. The essentials could not be culled from the rest without divesting both certain meanings." What bearing might this realization have on our acceptance of the story of Ben's life?
Copyright (c) 2000. Published in the U.S. by Harcourt, Inc.
Questions and author biography written by Hal Hager & Associates, Somerville, New Jersey
Interviews
On Wednesday, April 28th, barnesandnoble.com welcomed David Guterson to discuss EAST OF THE MOUNTAINS.
Moderator: Welcome, David Guterson! Thank you for taking the time to join us online this evening to chat about your new novel, EAST OF THE MOUNTAINS. How are you doing tonight?
David Guterson: Feeling good. I'm in Denver. I'm on a book tour and this is my fifth stop. I have a reading to give tonight at Tattered Cover bookstore.
Jonathan from Sag Harbor: Hello. The photo on the front cover of EAST OF THE MOUNTAINS looks exactly how I would imagine the Pacific Northwest to look. What is the landscape of?
David Guterson: That's an interesting observation, because most people would associate the Pacific Northwest with the image of my last book, SNOW FALLING ON CEDARS. The cover of the new book is suggestive of the mythic American West and probably not as familiar to readers as the image they think of when they think of Washington State.
Danielle from Long Island: SNOW FALLING ON CEDARS was an amazing book, and I am looking forward to reading this new novel. Did all of the acclaim for your first novel create any pressure to "perform" with this novel?
David Guterson: Well, I'm sure that for the rest of my writing life I'll be writing in the shadow of SNOW FALLING ON CEDARS. That's unavoidable. You can't have a book as successful as that one without all of your future books being compared to it.
Nancy from Arlington, VA: What did you have in mind first when you were coming up with the story for EAST OF THE MOUNTAINS -- Ben's character, the pact between Ben and his wife, the wolfhounds? Just curious what started this story for you.
David Guterson: It's always the case with me that the story begins with theme. I engaged in an act of self-reflection in an attempt to discover what it is I have to write about. I'm in search of an abstraction -- some aspect of the human condition I must confront. Once I know what that is, I add a sense of place. So, initially I come to grips with theme, add the element of landscape, and only thereafter do I begin to ponder character and plot.
Susan from Oklahoma: Bravo! How wonderful that an author takes time with characters and descriptions! I like to take time to savor a book when I read, and yours are worth savoring. Thank you.
David Guterson: That's a nice compliment. I appreciate your taking the time to communicate with me.
Grace from Davidson, NC: Hello. Great piece on you this Sunday on "CBS News Sunday Morning." How much research did you do to write this book and flesh out Ben's character and dilemma? Did you walk in Ben's shoes, hunting chukars?
David Guterson: I did an enormous amount of research. I spent a considerable amount of time in the orchard country of central Washington, picking fruit, wandering through orchards, hunting small birds over my own Brittany spaniel, spending time in all of the places that are referred to in the book. I went to Italy to visit the battle sites of the 10th Mountain Division and interviewed 10th Mountain veterans. In short, my research was extensive.
Teresa Mertens from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia: Firstly, I would like to thank you for your beautiful writing, Mr. Guterson. As a Spokane, Washington, native transplanted to Saudi Arabia, I absolutely love the way you bring me back home to the luscious forests of our land with your writing. Secondly, did you submit any or all of your works with or without an agent? Do you have any advice for new novelists who love writing, but don't quite know how to get started after the novel is done? Thank you.
David Guterson: My first book was a collection of short stories called THE COUNTRY AHEAD OF US, THE COUNTRY BEHIND. I simply gathered together 10 of the 70 or 80 short stories I had written, put them in an envelope, and sent them rather arbitrarily to a publisher, the Atlantic Monthly Press. The editor said no and sent the ten stories back, at which point I sent them to a second publisher, Harper and Row. Harper and Row accepted the stories for publication in book form and that was that. I don't know any other way to do it, and I doubt that there is any secret. The important thing is to put work in front of an editor that is so beautifully done that they can't turn away from it and feel compelled to publish it.
Niki from Niki_palek@yahoo.com: I found the World War II battle scenes the best passages of this novel. What triggered such stunning scenes? Did you research those scenes?
David Guterson: Well, I interviewed 10th Mountain veterans extensively, I read widely in the literature of the 10th Mountain Division. I visited battle sites in Italy and gathered as much in the way of notes, impressions, and details as I could. Added the element of imagination, tried to put myself there, and did the best I could. It was a very difficult challenge because writing about war is inherently a daunting task.
Critter from Home: How is your book tour going? What passages from EAST OF THE MOUNTAINS are you reading at events, and why have you selected these passages?
David Guterson: The book tour is going well. Large audiences are showing up at the bookstores and I've been able to keep myself at an even keel through it all. To digress momentarily, I've learned after doing a considerable amount of travel the last couple of years how important it is to marshal your energies, to get enough sleep, to maintain silence when you have the opportunity, and to save your strength for when you need it most.
I've been reading from Chapter 4 of EAST OF THE MOUNTAINS, which is a section in which my protagonist recollects his youth. I chose that particular section for a practical reason because it hangs together as narrative, as a story in miniature. It has a beginning, middle, and end, and therefore offers listeners some satisfaction.
Christian from Hamilton, NY: A main character's odyssey has a rich tradition in literature and narrative. What inspired you about the "epic journey"? Are you paying homage to that tradition in EAST OF THE MOUNTAINS?
David Guterson: Absolutely. I was very aware of working in what is probably the oldest literary genre on the planet. I wanted to honor its conventions as well as extend them. In the conventional mythic-journey story, the protagonist is quite young and the landscape is exotic and distant in time and space. In my book, the protagonist is quite old and the landscape is the real world of America at the tail end of the 20th century. It was interesting -- and challenging -- for me to reverse these two major conventions of the mythic-journey genre.
Bernice from Philadelphia: What type of feedback/reaction did you receive from the Japanese community regarding SNOW FALLING ON CEDARS?
David Guterson: Uniformly positive. Japanese-American readers seemed happy that this story had been told and that this shameful episode in our nation's history -- the internment of Japanese-American citizens -- had been brought to the attention of contemporary Americans in a forceful way.
Clare from Hoboken: I enjoyed the conversation Ben had in the bus with the college girl Catherine about anthroposophy -- it seemed to be some sort of a turning point in EAST OF THE MOUNTAINS. Do anthroposophy and Steiner mean something personal to you?
David Guterson: No. The answer is no. I didn't know much about anthroposophy before writing the book. But what I did know about it suggested to me that it was perhaps appropriate at this juncture in the novel. I was glad to have the chance to incorporate it into the narrative.
Linda from San Francisco: Which authors, past or present, are your favorites?
David Guterson: That's always changing as I discover new writers or reread writers I've neglected or forgotten about. Recently I've discovered the great Portuguese writer José Saramago. Saramago won the Nobel Prize last year and thoroughly deserved it. He is one of the great writers of our time. Strangely reminiscent of both Kafka and Gabriel García Márquez. I really admire him.
Kelly from San Francisco: I recently read a review of EAST OF THE MOUNTAINS. Do you read the reviews of your novels, and if so, how do they affect you?
David Guterson: Well, I was in San Francisco yesterday myself and read the review in the Chronicle. I do read the reviews of my work, but whether they are negative or positive, I try not to give them too much weight in my emotional life. I generally read reviews once or twice and them put them away and forget about them.
Tobey from Hartford, CT: I really enjoy your writing style. Any nonfiction on the horizon? Also, I haven't read the new one; do you think fans of SNOW FALLING will also be fans of EAST OF THE MOUNTAINS?
David Guterson: Regarding your question about nonfiction, I've written a 10,000-word essay for Harper's, where I am a contributing editor, on the pastoral of Washington's apple country. I suspect it will be published in the fall. I've done a few other pieces recently that have appeared in magazines such as Architectural Digest, Outside, and Newsweek.
Pac87@aol.com from xx: How much input are you having in the movie "Snow Falling on Cedars"? Also, what do you think of Ethan Hawke as Ishmael?
David Guterson: I have a considerable amount of input into the film. I was extensively involved in location scouting and consulted intensively on the screenplay. I made frequent visits to the set and have now seen the film twice. Ethan Hawke is extraordinary in this role. I think this is a film that will vault him to a new level in his career as an actor.
Lonny from Manchester, VT: I loved Ben's care and concern for Tristan and Rex, his Brittanies. Do you have any dogs? Also, will you be coming up to Manchester any time soon?
David Guterson: I myself have a Brittany. I got him as a pup while I was writing the book. I am a great lover of the breed. Brittanies are an incredibly friendly and intelligent dog. The closest I'll get to your home is Boston, I'm sorry to say. I will be there Tuesday, May 11th. I believe it's somewhere on the campus at Harvard.
Chester from Birmingham, AL: Was Nels Gudmundsson's character in SNOW FALLING ON CEDARS modeled after anyone you knew?
David Guterson: Nels is an elderly man experiencing physical decline. In that regard, he's fictional. But in his view of life, in his sensibilities, in his style, he is in certain regards reminiscent of my own father, who still today is a practicing criminal defense attorney in Seattle.
Meredith from North Carolina: I just bought your new novel and am looking forward to reading it! As an aspiring fiction author, I look to immerse myself in as much good literature as possible. What and/or who do you turn to for inspiration?
David Guterson: I don't read for inspiration, but certainly there are a large number of contemporary writers to admire and to learn from. And these would include Gabriel García Márquez, Saramago, and Annie Proulx, among others.
James from New York: I haven't read your new novel yet, but I read SNOW FALLING ON CEDARS and am reading and enjoying THE COUNTRY AHEAD OF US, THE COUNTRY BEHIND. In reading I could not help wondering whether SNOW FALLING began as a short story. Do you use short-story writing to explore character development or to help you identify what might be a good next novel?
David Guterson: SNOW FALLING did not begin as a short story. When I was in my 20s, I wrote as many as 70 or 80 stories in a very conscious way. I was trying to learn as much as I could about the craft of fiction without engaging the commitment that a novel demands. At a certain point, I felt comfortable enough with the craft of fiction to attempt a novel, and it was at this point that I began SNOW FALLING ON CEDARS.
Moderator: Do you have any books you have been saving to read this summer?
David Guterson: No, I have no books that I have been saving to read during the summer. I really don't know what I'm going to read until I pick something up.
Moderator: Thank you, David Guterson, and best of luck with EAST OF THE MOUNTAINS. Before you leave, do you have any parting thoughts for the online audience?
David Guterson: Only this, that as I've traveled, I've been happy to see how interested people are in books generally. The idea that the novel is dead is absurd, because it is so clear to me that so many millions of readers care deeply about books, and that is a wonderful thing for which all authors are grateful.
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