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EDITED BY ROBIN TOVEY ’97 Email reed.magazine@reed.edu

It’s been 34 years since the last novel by Katherine Dunn ’69 was published—the blockbuster success Geek Love—and in the meantime her fans have had to content themselves with a string of fascinating nonfiction on subjects from profanity to the mechanics of boxing. Sparkling as these were, the medium of fiction is where Dunn’s work transcends skill into magic.

Nominated for a National Book Award, Geek Love threw a firecracker into the minds of a new generation of brainy outcasts. It described the indescribable and imagined the unimaginable. Its black comedy, endless heartbreak, unforgettable characters, and emotional violence presented both dispassionately and lyrically won devotees around the word, including Hollywood. But what a lot of the world wanted most was another novel from that extraordinary voice and lovingly twisted mind.

Dunn passed away in 2016 without finishing her long-promised boxing ode The Cut Man, but her collected papers, currently housed in Special Collections at Lewis & Clark College, revealed a novel, Toad, that she’d written in the early ’70s when she was newly returned to Portland after an international romantic jaunt. She was broke and a single mother. She had not yet written Geek Love, but had already published two novels to zero acclaim and nonexistent sales. When she presented this new manuscript, it was rejected by several different publishers, undoubtedly taken aback by its intensely grim humor and vicious introspection. Smarting from the rejection, she put the manuscript away.

Dunn’s connection to Reed undoubtedly colors her work, but not in a direct way; rather, the impulses that brought her to Reed as a student in the first place illuminate her entire creative output. Dunn’s father abandoned the family when she was two; her mother and stepfather eventually settled in the Portland area, and as soon as Dunn knew of the existence of Reed and its individualist spirit, she did all she could to spend time on campus, scrounging in the commons, and eventually winning a full scholarship. It was not as compelling as falling in love and traveling, however, and she dropped out in 1967.

In so many ways, though, Dunn embodied a particular Reed ethos that was only refined, not indoctrinated, by her experience as a student. She created Toad’s incisive and multilayered characters by observation and the curiosity that drives it.

It’s the story of an eccentric group of students in Portland, Oregon, in the ’60s (at an unnamed local college), as told by Sally, who is now middleaged. With regret and self-loathing, she relates the events that bind the friends in tragedy.

The members of this group are unforgettable: Sally and friend Sam; her frenemy (and Sam’s girlfriend) Carlotta; everyone’s frenemy Rennel; and Sally’s practical, capable brother and sister-inlaw—all sketched in magnificent detail. People, settings, foods, even animals are described with a feverish exactitude and vivid wit. Also notable is Sally’s specificity in describing herself, her thoughts, her body, and her mistakes. She proffers no moral judgments on the actions and decisions of her friend gang, even when they become antisocial and self-destructive; she does not consider herself one to judge.

Like Geek Love , Toad is ugly and beautiful, sad and rapturous, icky and sensual at the same time. Dunn’s ability to present dualities as simultaneous states of being is one of her great strengths as a writer and philosopher; laughter and disgust are mirror images of one another, as are love and narcissistic indifference, belonging and solitude, a desire to be above it all while turning to the gutter and giving it a big kiss.

—JEMIAH JEFFERSON ’94

David Ritchie ’65 published his fifth book, an account of communication as a social, biological, and neurological force. A professor of communications at Portland State University, he also maintains a blog about language, meaning, and culture, especially metaphor and other forms of figurative language, informed by readings in cognitive and social sciences, at https://davidritchie-metaphors.blogspot.com. (Cambridge University Press, 2022)

In the latest book release from Deborah J. Ross ’68, a power-mad tyrant turns to mind-control technology to silence the opposition, and a diplomat’s daughter appeals to psychics to save both of their worlds. Ross is the author of the acclaimed Darkover novels, collaborating and following in the footsteps of Bradley. She is also the author of The Seven-Petaled Shield series. (Marion Zimmer Bradley Literary Works Trust, 2022)

Lorna Martens ’69 offers the first systematic study of women’s autobiographical writing about childhood in this literary history. Through more than 175 works, she explores the genre’s roots and development and recovers many works that have been neglected or forgotten. Martens is a professor of German and comparative literature at the University of Virginia and author of several books, including The Promise of Memory: Childhood Recollection and Its Objects in Literary Modernism . (University of Wisconsin Press, 2022)

Renowned craftsman Gary Rogowski ’72 has launched a podcast that is available on Apple, Spotify, Google, and from Uncle Vinny out the back of his Cadillac in the alley. Read about how Rogowski’s degree in literature led him to become a legend in the woodworking community in the Reed Magazine feature titled “The Philosopher of Sawdust” or watch him wax poetic about the five-minute dovetail on YouTube.

The Museum of Contemporary Art Los Angeles 1979-2000

With a narrative history by Louise Steinman ’73, this book was published by the Sam Francis Foundation. It was conceived as a cultural and educational initiative, a resource to share with cultural, civic, and educational institutions, artists, students, scholars, art professionals, and trustees and philanthropists. As such, volumes will be distributed to libraries, art schools, and museums worldwide. (Sam Francis Foundation, 2022)

Affordable Care Act as a National Experiment:

Harry Selker ’74 has had two book projects recently, all while leading two Institutes at Tufts University. The Affordable Care Act as a National Experiment: Health Policy Innovations and Lessons examines the landmark 2010 Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act (ACA) from the perspective of health policy research as translational science. Edited by him, it also includes an introduction, “The Affordable Care Act as a National Experiment,” which he wrote. (Springer 2021) The Jews of Attendorn by Hartmut Hosenfeld and translated by Selker, along with Melanie Adley and Charlotte Pattenden, surveys the history of the Jewish community of Attendorn from the medieval period until World War II. (Landrat des Kreises Olpe, 2020)

Richard Wolin ’74, Distinguished Professor of European Intellectual History at the CUNY Graduate Center, published his twelfth book earlier this year,. For years, Heidegger’s defenders have tried to separate his political beliefs from his philosophical doctrines, arguing that he was good at philosophy but bad at politics. Wolin explores what the 2014 publication of Heidegger’s “Black Notebooks” means for our understanding of the philosopher’s ideas and why his legacy remains radically compromised. He was recently featured on the New Books Network podcast talking about this reassessment of Heidegger’s philosophy. Wolin taught at Reed from 1982 to 1984 as an assistant professor in the departments of history, humanities, and political science. (Yale University Press, 2023)

The musical biography Tallis by Kerry McCarthy ’97 tells the story of a composer who thrived in changing times. Thomas Tallis (c. 1505–1585) was born into what was essentially still medieval England; by the end of his career, he was living in a society transformed by cheap print, colonial ambitions, and the Reformation. This book traces Tallis’s creative life in a series of 15 vivid documents, taking the reader on a tour through the musical communities and architectural spaces where he worked. The discussion of Tallis’s music, illustrated by 60 online audio examples, offers an accessible portal into the sound-world of the Renaissance.

Kerry is a musician, a musicologist, an author, one of the world’s experts on English church music of the Renaissance, and one of the preeminent scholars on Tallis and William Byrd. Her book on Byrd, which garnered international acclaim, was given the 2014 ASCAP Nicolas Slonimsky Award for composer biography of the year. She discovered the delights of early music while in high school in Portland, joined the renowned Cantores in Ecclesia choir while attending Reed, and has been part of the Byrd Festival since it began. Kerry also performs with Cappella Romana, a vocal ensemble dedicated to combining passion with scholarship in its exploration of the musical traditions of the Christian East and West.

Quoting a profile in Stanford Magazine, “Kerry McCarthy fell in love with William Byrd over iced coffee in Portland, OR. She was a freshman at Reed College. He was the foremost composer of the English Renaissance. The 18-year-old alto was smitten as she sat in a café and read through Byrd’s Corpus Christi mass, preparing for a choral performance. At the time, she was a history major with scant musical training, but going through that score was like entering another world. ‘I was absolutely knocked over by it,’ says McCarthy. ‘This was some of the most beautiful stuff I ever heard—I didn’t yet realize this was one jewel in a whole structure.’”

For a deeper dive, Kerry discusses Tallis and Byrd in a three-part series of interviews (each running 90 minutes) available on YouTube as The Tudor Greats. (Oxford University Press, 2020)

The fifth book by Michael Bess ’79 is about the top mega-dangers facing humankind: climate change, nuclear weapons, pandemics, and advanced artificial intelligence. He explores how to get past ideological polarization and political fragmentation, drawing lessons from the environmental movement and the European unification movement, in responding to these global catastrophic threats. An award-winning historian of science and technology, Michael is Chancellor’s Professor of History at Vanderbilt University. (Cambridge University Press, 2022)

Mark Nathaniel Mead ’84 has coauthored his first medical textbook. Fully illustrated with both normal and abnormal images, this manual provides practical instructions on the physical needs of a thermography service, from the imaging room layout to the computer requirements. He shares that he first met his coauthor, James Campbell MD, way back in 1978, a year before attending Reed. “We reconnected fortuitously in a coffee shop in Winston-Salem in 2020, just as the pandemic was taking off.” (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis Group, 2022)

Molly Todd ’96 has written a textbook that offers a blend of theory and practice relevant to new routines of the digital age. This book provides practical advice, while also explaining how research by undergraduates fits into the broader contexts of the discipline of history. An associate professor of history at Montana State University, Molly has been appointed a resident fellow at the National Humanities Center for the 2022–23 academic year. (Routledge, 2022)

Katya Wesolowski ’92, a lecturing fellow in cultural anthropology and dance at Duke University, has written a book chronicling her long engagement (which began at Reed) as a practitioner, researcher, and instructor of the Afro-Brazilian combat game of capoeira and its practice around the world. “She reveals camaraderie and conviviality in the capoeira ring as well as tensions and ruptures involving race, gender, and competing claims over how this artful play should be practiced.” (University Press of Florida, 2023)

A new book by Michael Casper ’06 and Nathaniel Deutsch tells the fascinating history of how a group of determined Holocaust survivors encountered, shaped, and sometimes fiercely opposed the various urban processes that transformed their neighborhood, from white flight to gentrification. In 2021, the book won a National Jewish Book Award. (Yale University Press, 2021)

In this new book based on qualitative interviews with parents of young children, Kristin Munro ’07, assistant professor of political science at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, describes what happens when people make daily choices about consumption and waste. Looking at the environmental values and practices of real families sheds light on the trade-offs involved in promoting sustainability at the household level as a solution to environmental problems. (Bristol University Press, 2023)

Lauro Martines, an assistant professor of history at Reed from 1958 to 1962, has written his second novel, and at two points in the story, the college features prominently. This fictional narrative follows the fortunes and misfortunes of three generations of the Castellani family as the fates buffet them between Florence and America. It is an exploration of familial loyalties and tensions and the ways in which “good looks and charms can sometimes turn to curses.”

(COGITO Publishing, 2022