Shopping for porcupine : a life in arctic Alaska

Select an Action

Title:

Shopping for porcupine : a life in arctic Alaska

Author:

Kantner, Seth, 1965-

ISBN:

9781571313010

Edition:

1st ed.

Publication Information:

Minneapolis : Milkweed Editions, 2008.

Physical Description:

xi, 240 p. : chiefly col. ill. ; 23 cm.

Contents:

The candy store -- Non-dairy creamer -- Counting fish -- Brothers on the trapline -- Iñupiaq mailman -- Walking from Barrow -- Shopping for porcupine -- Sharpshooter -- Good-bye our season -- Flower of the fringe -- Darkness -- Hanging with the hang-out-kings -- Once upon a frontier -- Bob and Carrie come out of the hills -- Conversations with China -- City boy -- Salting a moose -- These happy spruce -- Silver strangers -- The whiteboy award -- Watching for mammoth.

Personal Subject:

Kantner, Seth, 1965--Childhood and youth.

Subject Term:

Authors, American -- 20th century -- Biography.

Wilderness areas -- Biography.

Conservation of natural resources -- Arctic regions.

Arctic peoples -- Hunting.

Geographic Term:

Arctic regions -- Biography.

Arctic regions -- Social life and customs.

Alaska -- Biography.

Holds:

Available:*

Library	Call Number	Status
Searching... R.H. Stafford Library (Woodbury)	921 KANTNER	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Stillwater Public Library	921 KANTNER	Searching... Unknown

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

Growing up in the Arctic, pragmatic, simple questions had useful answers. And frostbite was a way of life. In Shopping for Porcupine, Seth Kantner returns to the setting of his debut novel, Ordinary Wolves, with a fascinating account of life on North America's last frontier.

In these essays and photographs, Kantner chronicles the "by-hand times so recently passed," watching through the lens of his life the transformation of the Arctic as mainstream America moves relentlessly north. His story begins with the arrival of his father, Howard Kantner, to this world in the 1950s and ends with Kantner, a grown man, settled in the same landscape. "My memory begins under snow," he writes, recalling his early and longstanding respect for the old Iñupiaq ways, cold nights on caribou hides, swimming in the ice floes for wounded waterfowl, and fur-clad travelers stopping with their dog teams for visits.

Bracing and humorous, perceptive and profoundly illuminating, this extraordinary collection offers an ode to respect--that oft-forsaken, unromantic quality--for the land, for animals, and for "something as virtuous as gathering food."

Reviews (3)

Publisher's Weekly Review

In a lovely memoir, writer and photographer Kantner (author of the novel Ordinary Wolves) shares scenes from life in Alaska, from his childhood in the remote tundra, where his parents lived off the land in an isolated, "semi-Eskimo existence," to his current home, the small town of Kotzebue, with his wife and daughter. Kantner reflects on wilderness, global warming and human encroachment, the changes that slowly make their way to the tundra ("the snowmobile and the demise of working dogs was a major tipping point") and the hard reality behind the American Dream: "as in the Old West, it is what we've lost that marks who we are much more than these things we've gained." While turning in a thoughtful and captivating memoir of subsistence living, isolation and uncertainty ("There was always meat but questions too: What would happen if our dad fell through the ice...?), he documents the wisdom of the disappearing Inuit culture his dad revered, and locates its place in modern life. With a sensitive, graceful voice and his own stunning color images, Kantner proves an appealing and talented artist. (June) Copyright 2008 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Review

Inspiring stories of an upbringing in the frosty wilderness. Employing a pleasant, conversational tone, novelist and outdoor photographer Kantner (Ordinary Wolves, 2004) fondly relates his life in Alaska. His prideful father Howard, an intrepid wanderer, scaled Mount McKinley in the early 1960s. Howard had previously learned the ancient ways of the indigenous I¿upiaq people, which he and wife Erna then translated into the upbringing of Seth and his brother Kole. Kantner testifies to the immense challenges of day-to-day survival in a homemade sod igloo, a structure that was regularly buried by sudden snow squalls, in a climate where "frostbite was a way of life." The Kantner family subsisted on animals like porcupine and caribou in its entirety: "pot roast, tongue, tenderloins, lips and leg bones, rendered back and intestine fat." They wore mukluks and wrapped themselves in hides to stay warm as they drank melted snow and welcomed stray visitors to their free-range "bush life." Throughout their youth, Seth and Kole experienced "low stone walls of racism" from nearby Eskimo villagers because of their white skin. As they matured into young men, the brothers hunted, ice-fished and trapped otter together, though the gap between their personal interests eventually pried them apart. Kole went on to study physics; Seth romanced his wife-to-be in their igloo, quit college, then later gravitated to the exacting art of nature photographs, many of which fill this book with breathtaking splendor. Later chapters find the author and spouse Stacey enjoying adventures on the Alaskan tundra, including varied moose dramas and driving daughter China to kindergarten in 30-degree-below-zero weather. Now in his late 40s, the author advocates for the preservation of the Alaskan tundra, increasingly gentrified by big-fisted politics and "heaped and flippant wealth." A majestic, frozen backdrop beautifully thawed by human life. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Booklist Review

*Starred Review* Kantner's gripping first book, the novel Ordinary Wolves (2004), embodied a unique perspective on Alaskan life. Now the Whiting Award-winning author shares true stories of his own tundra experiences in a book of bracing essays and beautiful photographs. The son of intrepid, back-to-the-land free spirits from Ohio, Kantner, born in an igloo in 1965, dreamed of becoming a great hunter in the Eskimo tradition, but most Inupiaq eagerly embraced mainstream American culture and technology. Indeed, paradox and loss abound in Kantner's riveting and provocative tales of hunting caribou and moose, and in his poignant profiles of elders with vast knowledge of the tundra who are being displaced by the results of climate change, from rising seas to melting permafrost and treacherously thin ice. Suspense and heartache are matched by wry humor and outrage, and all is infused with Kantner's humility and deep respect for the wild as he decries the practices of high-tech trophy hunters, and maps his own metamorphosis from trapper and hunter to writer and photographer. Crafted with the precision and nerve acquired by living off the land, this is a powerful and important book of remembrance, protest, and warning.--Seaman, Donna Copyright 2008 Booklist

Available:*

Bound With These Titles

On Order

Summary

Summary

Reviews (3)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Kirkus Review

Booklist Review

Helpful Links

Research Links

Contact

Events and Rooms

Follow Us

Today's Hours