Gary Paulsen, author.
I was a little old for Hatchet (affiliate link) when it came out, and haven’t gotten around to reading it. But whenever I see discussions of young adult books people liked, or liked when they were that age, Hatchet always comes up. It seems to have had a strong influence on many young people.
And he was the kind of guy who could write that book.
When Gary was 4, his mother, Eunice (Moen) Paulsen, moved with him to Chicago, where she got a job in an ammunition factory. An alcoholic, she would dress Gary in a child-size soldier’s outfit and take him to bars, where she made him sing on tables as a way to get men to pay attention to her.
She could also be fiercely protective. Once he sneaked outside their apartment when she was sleeping. A man dragged him into an alley and began to molest him. Suddenly his mother appeared, beating and kicking the assailant into unconsciousness.
Eventually, her own mother forced her to send Gary to live with an aunt and uncle in northern Minnesota, where he learned to hunt, fish and live outdoors for long stretches.
…
In “Gone to the Woods,” a memoir published this year, Mr. Paulsen recalled how at one point the passengers watched in horror as a plane crash-landed nearby. As the plane’s passengers struggled in the water, a pack of sharks descended on them, pulling men and women and children below the water.
His family later returned to Minnesota, where his parents drank and fought constantly. To get away from them, Gary would take to the woods, exploring, hunting and trapping, or wander around their small town, Thief River Falls, near the Canadian border. He worked odd jobs, like setting pins at a bowling alley and delivering newspapers, and used the money to buy his own school supplies, as well as a .22-caliber rifle.
One day he ducked into a library to get warm. A librarian asked if he had a library card. When he said no, she gave him one, along with a Scripto notebook and a No. 2 pencil, with instructions to read everything he could and write down everything he thought.
…
When he was 14 he ran away and joined a carnival. He returned home just long enough to forge his father’s signature and join the Army.
The Army trained him in engineering, and he later tracked satellites for a government contractor at a facility in California. He also spent time in Los Angeles, writing dialogue for television shows like “Mission: Impossible.”
All along, he had been reading and writing, and one day in 1965 he decided to try his hand at a novel. He moved back to Minnesota, where he rented a cabin and went to work.
For several years he wrote westerns for adults under a pseudonym. He made just enough money to sustain a simple rural life, living off what he could grow and hunt.
…
He also fell in love with dog-sledding. He took part in the Iditarod, the grueling 1,000-mile race across Alaska, three times before giving up the sport in 1990, citing heart problems.
“When you run a thousand miles with a dog team, you enter a state of primitive exaltation,” he said in an interview with the American Writers Museum in January. “You go back 30,000 years, you and the dogs, and you’re never the same again.”
…
For the historical record: Sir David Amess, Conservative MP. Everybody’s covered this by now, and I don’t have anything to add.
Well, okay, perhaps one thing: I don’t mean to make fun of our friends in the UKOGBNI, nor do I mean to seem provincial. But “constituency surgery” is such an interesting term…
Gary Paulsen sounds like the type of man that I always imagined Jack London to be, in real life. Although it sounds as if he lived a life of difficulty, in fact, he lived the life that during our youthful days, what young man would not have professed a dream of living a life such as his?
As for his dislike for the internet, I find that provided one uses it properly, it can be of tremendous value. Just like when I first learned to truly read, the huge collection of books that my parents had, everything from Norman Mailer to Hemmingway, to the dictionary to a complete encyclopedia, I was seldom without a book, even learning to love the Readers Digest condensed books that they seemed to have boxes of.
And with the internet, provided one understands the difference between opinion and true facts, and is willing to do the digging for both, the internet is a veritable playground for the mind. Sadly, it is also a cesspool, for those so inclined. But such is life, full of both great wonders, and also great horrors. The trick is to not be seduced by the horrors, and to not fall into such love with it’s wonders that you forget to appreciate the people who are the most important part of life, anyway.
Be well, and have a great week.