The Great Pacific Northwest

I really enjoyed this recent piece in the New York Review of Books, a dual review of Kelly Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy and Jon Raymond's collection of short stories Livability:

http://www.nybooks.com/articles/22470

Reichardt's Wendy and Lucy is, of course, the recent indie film shot and based in and around Portland, Oregon and Raymond is an author (and co-screenwriter of the film) whose short story the film was based on.

Growing up in the Pacific Northwest I always felt divorced from culture. And when I say culture I mean great artists, great works of art. When I was younger I was all-too-aware that Oregon could claim no Nietzsche's, no Michelangelo's, no Proust's, no Mark Twain's, no Hemingway's as one of its own. It seemed to me that no one of cultural import ever came from the northwest and I think, for a time, I grew up suffering from a kind of regional/cultural inferiority complex.

Needless to say, I don't feel this way anymore. As Jonathan Raban points out in his NYRB article the pacific northwest is simply new to the cultural scene. Compared to the northeast, the northwest is still a teenager. Compared to Europe, we're barely out of the womb.

Great piece!