From Moosehead to Misery Bay or . . . The Moose in the VW Bug

by Lauri Anderson

After writing seven books of short fiction, a novel, and a book of poetry, all with Finnish themes and characters, Lauri Anderson has finally written his memoir. In it, he tells stories of growing up in rural Maine, life in the Peace Corps in Nigeria, Truk Lagoon, and Turkey, and teaching at Finlandia University in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan. With his typical humor and common-sense approach to life, Lauri expertly weaves together the stories that have brought him thus far.

Genres: Memoir

153 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 2013

Reviews

[Charlotte Bird · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my father’s books, so I'm not pretending to be objective here. I haven’t read enough of them and plan to read the rest next year (I wrote this review in 2021). It chronicles many stories from his childhood (mixed in with some fictitious ones, usually used to share a particular piece of information he finds interesting, though I could recognize those immediately). Then, it moves on to stories from his time in Nigeria during the Biafran war, and time in the U.P. after he moved to Hancock. It contains a plethora of stories that I have heard retold, time and time again, by my dad throughout my lifetime. It’s nice to have them all down in print, and of the two books of my father’s I have read (the other being Misery Bay), this was superior. His own life is so interesting, I’ve always wondered why he spends so much time making up fiction for other people to live.

[wally · Rating 4 out of 5]

was out looking for pynchon's new story, Bleeding Edge, that became available within the past few days...was it the 17th? tried one local stop in houghton...not there. heading through hancock i pulled into the finlandia university bookstore parking lot, the lot almost empty but there was an "open" sign in the door, so i went in.

pynchon wasn't there, either, alas...and after the lady at the counter made a note of my need, i headed for the door, but stopped and decided to look at the shelves. there's a "local authors" section in both stores and as i was pulling stories from the shelf i heard a man behind me say, if you buy that one i'll sign it for you. heh!

who could resist a sales pitch like that? i've only read one other title from anderson, Small Winter Wars...looks like there is no photo so i ought to add one later. anyway, i added this one to the few i had in hand and he signed it for me:

to know an author well is to have a friend for life.
--lauri anderson

from moosehead to misery bay, 2013

or: the moose in the vw bug
a memoir
north star press of st. cloud, inc. st. cloud, minnesota
153 story-pages long

there's a quote on a white page: all of this is true, even the lies, but names have been changed to protect the guilty.

the first vignette is titled meditation on joining the peace corps forty-five years ago

and it begins:
in the distant northern woods, two days' drive away, my mother has been bothering people. she is restless. her coffin keeps bobbing to the surface in the birch-lined hillside graveyard where she was interred beside her husband twenty-five years ago. she is rejecting god's earth, with its fecund aroma of decay and loss. i understand why she is upset since she was a highly intelligent, college-educated teacher and good woman--a superb mother and spouse who kept a clean house and baked breads, cookies, cakes, pies, and beans every saturday morning. plus she made marvelous molasses doughnuts. but now she is re-seeking the light and air. maybe she is also seeking some kind of local thanks from church ladies or forgiveness from her children for her only act of poor judgment.

and though i'd like to keep reading...i want to go poke around in the woods, maybe pick up some brass or two, that sort of thing. i doubt i'll bump into any writers out there, but stranger things have happened.

okee dokee then, as the good doctor said (the white elephant, 1980)...onward & upward.

update, finished, 22 sep 13, sunday morning, 10:12 a.m. e.s.t.
an enjoyable read, one that provides for a range of emotion, short vignettes from all around the globe, maine, africa, turkey, other european countries as well as bodies of water large and small, michigan, a handful of other stops here and there. and the visits to foreign lands make for some interesting, eye-opening experience, all that culture-shock happening.

you have jack-lighting deer in maine, sitting in an abode in nigeria where praying mantises take up positions on each shoulder and dash down the length of an arm from time to time to take a moth, its wings left to fall to the floor after lunch is done...you got some students who "congratulated us for being such great liars." you got a salinger story...was there a b. traven story here? or am i remembering my conversation w/anderson at the finlandia? all that pynchon-salinger-traven...fernando pessoa...bartleby i would prefer not to thingies going on.

you got slate mining in maine...you got a moose poem from his sister wendy...yeah, his sister, wendy, is a poet...Wild Things in the Yard...Wendy Anderson...and he includes two poems from that collection. dunno if the moose poem is from the collection or not.

through it all there is a prevailing sense of intolerance or tolerance, those who turn the other way because that man jacklighting deer is feeding a family, or the lady who wants to help a wounded deer only to have another drive his truck over its head, killing it...placing it in the truck and thanking the woman. tolerance or intolerance in nigeria...there is a green one who doesn't like the yellow one for going with the orange one and so on and so forth and scoobie doobie doobie...
and even from anderson at the end, who compares republicans to terrorists. and so one assumes that i am a republican. mom and my old man were lifelong democrats, held local office, but i abandoned the democrats about the time the bodies started piling up behind slick willie and his nefarious wife.

walter williams had a great column in yesterday's gazette about american academia...so i'm not surprised.

i guess that shithead in the white house who belittles folk who "cling to their guns and religion"...a man who raises to pedestal height a jack-thug in florida who waylaid another man who'd already called 9-11 on him...that shithead in the white house who can kill others, americans, w/drones...is immune to the terrorist analogy? and so it goes.

there is nothing new under the sun.

[Ann Fisher · Rating 4 out of 5]

I suppose this is why we want local bookstores to continue to exist. I picked up this book by an English professor at Finlandia College at Snowbound Books in Marquette. Anderson's stories of growing up in a poor Finnish immigrant community in northern Maine are filled with jacklighting deer, crashing into moose, and coping with eccentric elderly relatives. Then he adds stories of his Peace Corps adventures (and marriage) in Nigeria and gripes about the students and administrative goings-on at the college he's now at. There's nothing unique about the latter, but the rest of the book more than compensates.

I gather that he has written other books about some of his international adventures. I will absolutely read them.