David Guterson: “The World in Another Time”

Photographers Unknown, (The World in Another Time)

“The river of his youth had been diverted and poured out broadly across the land to seep through dirt to the roots of crops instead of running in its bed. The river was no longer a river, and the desert was no longer a desert. Nothing was as it had been.

He knew what had happened to the sage-lands. He himself had helped burn them. Then men like his father had seized the river without a trace of evil in their hearts, sure of themselves but ignorant, and children of their time entirely, with no other bearings to rely on. Irrigators and fruit-tree growers, they believed the river to be theirs. His own life spanned that time and this, and so he believed in the old fast river as much as he believed in apple orchards, and yet he saw that the two were at odds, the river defeated that apples might grow as far as Royal Slope. It made no more sense to love the river and at the same time kill it growing apples than it made sense to love small birds on the wing and shoot them over pointing dogs. But he’d come into the world in another time, a time immune to these contradictions and in the end he couldn’t shake old ways any more than he could shake his name.”

—David Guterson, East of the Mountains

David Guterson: “Good Neighbors”

Photographers Unknown, (Good Neighbors)

“No one [Islanders] trod easily upon the emotions of another where the sea licked everywhere against an endless shoreline. And this was excellent and poor at the same time- excellent because it meant most people took care, poor because it meant an inbreeding of the spirit, too much held in, regret and silent brooding, a world whose inhabitants walked in trepidation, in fear of opening up…They could not speak freely because they were cornered: everywhere they turned there was water and more water, a limitless expanse of it in which to drown. They held their breath and walked with care, and this made them who they were inside, constricted and small, good neighbors.”

—-David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars

Born in Seattle, Washington, it n 1956, David Guterson is an American novelist, journalist, poet and essayist. He attended the University of Washington where he earned a Bachelor of Arts in English Literature and his MFA in Creative Writing. Guterson wrote “Snow Falling in Cedars” in the early morning hours over a ten year period, after which he began writing full time.

The story is set on the fictional San Piedro Island in the Puget Sound region of the Washington coast in 1954. The plot revolves around a murder case in which Japanese-American Kabuo Myamoto is accused of killing Carl Heine, a respected fisherman in the close-knit community. Told in mostly flashbacks, the interactions of the characters over the previous decades is explored.

The majority of the novel, including the trial of Myamoto, occurs during a severe snowstorm on the island during a time of deep anti-Japanese sentiments following World War II. The issues of former loves and family feuds are mixed with the bitter effects of the war and one’s sense of conscience.

Published in September of 1994, “Snow Falling on Cedars” became an immediate best-seller and won the 1995 PEN/Faulkner Award for Fiction. I was adapted in 1999 into a film of the same name which was nominated for the Best Cinematography Academy Award. Due to the book’s sexual content, it has been challenged, banned or restricted in several US school systems.

David Guterson: “The World was One World”

Photographer Unknown, (Winter Snow)

“The snowfall obliterated the borders between the fields and made Kabuo Miyamoto’s long-cherished seven acres indistinguishable from the land that surrounded them. All human claims to the landscape were superseded, made null and void by the snow. The world was one world, and the notion that a man might kill another over some small patch of it did not make sense.”

–David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars

David Giterson: “The World was One World”

—David Guterson, Snow Falling on Cedars