As Homer said to Garrison, "Be funnier!"

books:


	• Not Really an Alaskan Mountain Man Doug Fine Alaska Northwest Books, 2004 - 224 pages average customer review:based on 7 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

As Homer said to Garrison, "Be funnier!"

Doug Fine has given us a collection of essays from his first year or so as an urbanite living in rural Alaska. He groups these around three "steps": finding warmth, obtaining food, and building shelter. I think they're supposed to be funny, along the lines of (say) David Sedaris, and they are indeed intermittently funny. But they need to be funnier to work that way.

In fairness, some of the chapters are not intended to be funny but to be travelogues of a sort. For example, he joins an Inuit family on a whale hunt on the ice and tells us what that's like. I think this was the most successful story because Fine's a good observer and he's willing to make fun of himself along the way.

The least successful story comes at the end, when Fine joins the community in rebuilding a neighbor's house that had burned down. He never quite figures out what the point of this story is, and let's face it, holding up drywall all day doesn't really lend itself to thrilling or humorous narration. It reads more as if, "I've committed to this three steps structure in my book, and so I must talk about building shelter at the end."

As this last point may suggest, Fine doesn't have a lot of material in this book. It's not a good sign when you take several basic ideas (using a chain saw for the first time, joining Inuit on a whale hunt) and split each one across two chapters. Each of these topics needed to be tightened up to fit in a single chapter, with a new essay on a different topic put in the place of the deleted chapter.

I realize that I've been pretty critical here, and I should mention that Fine is a talented writer, and the book is a very pleasant read despite its weaknesses. In addition, Fine comes across as a very likable guy - - and that's important in a book like this because you're essentially along for the ride with him.

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Self Discovery

ARRIGAA!! Journeying with Doug Fine on his many adventures in Alaska in pursuit of becoming "An Alaskan Mountain Man" is a truly wonderful experience. He leaves the safety net of a stable environment and heads for rural Alaska. His purpose was to discover his indigenous roots by learning the skills necessary to survive the subartic winter temperatures, create suitable shelter, and prepare a food supply to sustain him and his dog, Sunny, through the winter months.He is a 'cheechacko', a tenderfoot, who has some harrowing experiences as he attempts to master these skills.
He elevated my heart rate while I anticipated the outcome of some of his adventures and had me laughing out loud as he mocked his foibles. He is a careful observer with an astute ability to give the reader and inside view. Can you just picture him eating his first piece of two-toned muktuk saturated in whale oil off his sword as a kabob? His interaction with the family of harvesters of this newly caught whale was both humorous an insightful.

As a nature lover, I enjoyed seeing the beautiful, pristine land of Alaska through Doug's eyes. His writing flows from his heart as he describes the meadows strewn with bluebells, the meditative silence of the spruce forest, rainbows across Kachemak Bay,and the glaciated peaks that framed the scenes. From woodpeckers to kittiwakes, to moose, to snowshoe hares, he acknowledges their place on this earth and their struggle to survive.

This book was a joy to read. Doug Fine is hilariously funny and an excellent writer. I look forward to reading about more of his adventures. In the end, he proves himself to be a true Alaskan Mountain man, a man unafraid to confront those challenges of growth and disconvery. AARIGAA!!

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Great book, a humorous look at survival

This is an excellent story which is told with a great sense of humor. Doug Fine morphed from New York City, through the American "west", to his rural Alaska living which he describes in the most entertaining manner. Since we share a love of animals, Doug's description of the moose around his cabin had special meaning. His free-spirited little dog, Sunny, is woven into the story leaving me surprised that a petite Golden Retriever mix could survive at all in the Alaskan wilderness, much less love her surroundings so much. Doug's trip to Barrow and beyond on the ice was yet another sensory level for me and perhaps for anyone who read Going to Extremes. Doug makes the ice and the native Americans feel like adventuresome but familiar friends -- it is a matter of focus. Doug's story struck home to the part of me that years ago secretly wished to homestead in the wilderness in Alaska - to live remotely and simply in a beautiful place without population pressures. (In my day dreams I added a dog team and sled training to my daily regimen, though it sounds like human survival would have been more than enough.) Though I worked in Alaska for several summer "field seasons" out of the Anchorage-Palmer area, and have been to Homer and the Kenai Peninsula, I never lived there and remain curious about Alaskan winter.

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Fabulous!

I ordered this book from Doug after seeing him on a local TV magazine program discussing his book. My husband and I took a vacation of a lifetime last summer by traveling for 3 weeks through Alaska by car and hiking. We left our hearts there and this book brought back wonderful memories. I enjoyed reading about Doug's adventures, especially his experience at Barrow (one place we would have liked to visit). This is a great read for any lovers of the outdoors or who dream of escaping the rat race to come back to nature...

reviews: page 1, 2

Now here's a formula for near disaster: East Coast big-city guy, world-traveler, jounalist, and otherwise politically savvy fellow settles down in rural Alaska, where men are many and manly, and women with survival skills are good to count among your friends. He wants to fit in. But how does one learn to be a Mountain Man? By observing, imitating, and making near-fatal mistakes, that's how. The choices a boy has to make. Eat processed food or on-the-hoof food, learn to operate a chainsaw or freeze to death, figure out what a bunny boot is or lose a few toes, and by the way, which end of he barrel points up? This is the story of Doug's first difficult winter in a one-room cabin, trying to stay alive and come out of it with some semblance of Alaska cool. With side-splitting, self-depreciating humor, Doug shares his attempts to elevate himself past his perpetual state of greenhorn-ness by aligning himself with tough sourdoughs to someday claim the title of manly Mountain Man.

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