1/22/2009 10:54:00 AM bookbeat: "Pugetopolis" hits its mark
By Doug Schwartz
The times they are a changin', sang that bard from Duluth, and it's safe to say that change has defined Seattle in recent years. And who better to put such change in perspective than Knute Berger, the veteran Seattle writer best known for his long tenure at Seattle Weekly and his current gig at crosscut.com. His widely-read Mossback column has attracted a large number of devotees over the years.
Such readers will likely greet "Pugetopolis," his latest book, with considerable enthusiasm. The book is a collection of Berger's columns, columns which often find him separating Seattle's myth from its reality. Berger has a voice of authenticity gained through years in the journalistic trenches. Berger cuts to the quick and gets at the truth about what's fake and foolish in our city and many of its politicians.
Berger laments Seattle's careless growth, the trend toward 21st-century homogeny that is slowly substituting a veneer of shiny respectability for those characteristics that made the city special. Seattle gets to call itself world class and smile at what it calls progress. But in believing the hype about itself, Seattle may have lost much about what made it desirable in the first place.
But it would be wrong to reduce "Pugetopolis" to being merely an ode to a better time. As a longtime observer of the city and its evolution, Berger cast his keen and critical eye to many aspects of Seattle life through which its citizens define themselves. As an example, "Seattle nice" takes a well-desrved hit as Berger decries the city's passive-aggressive leanings.
Berger's voice is at turns affectionate, paternal and even curmudgeonly. But when he writes, "Already, the egalitarian city that persisted into the 1990s is largely dead. Seattle's underlying mythology is also being challenged. Many of our old points of pride are gone, or in jeopardy," it's clear he knows of which he speaks.
"Pugetopolis," by Kunte Berger, published by Sasquatch Books. 284 pages. $18.95.
