Sunday, October 19, 2003

By Bob Hoover, Post-Gazette Book Editor

Pittsburgh guys must think alike.

Both Gerald Stern and Lee Gutkind picked this month to come out with their memoirs, so let the festivities begin.

Stern, born here in 1925, is one of the country's most esteemed poets. He won the National Book Award in 1998 for "This Time: New and Selected Poems," adding it to his long list of poetry's top awards.

His academic career, spent largely at the Iowa Writer's Workshop, began at the University of Pittsburgh, which gave him an honorary doctorate last year.

Stern grew up in Pittsburgh during the city's truly darkest days: the grime and neglect of the Depression and the full-bore steel-making pollution of World War II. The atmosphere has stayed with him:

"I grew up with bituminous in my mouth and sulfur smelling like rotten eggs, and I first started to cough because my lungs were like cardboard," he wrote in "Winter Thirst."

He covers those formative years in "What I Can't Bear Losing: Notes From a Life" (Norton, $24.59). After 12 poetry collections, the memoir is Stern's first major prose book.

It holds the promise of evoking a city and a society barely remembered today, but one that nurtured Stern, his fellow poet, Jack Gilbert, and other writers such as Lester Goran, John Wideman and Annie Dillard.

To celebrate the book's publication, Stern will read from his works Wednesday at 8:30 p.m. in Posvar Hall (formerly Forbes Quad), Room 2P56. It's free, and there will be copies of the memoir for sale.

Gutkind's field is nonfiction of the creative kind. A Squirrel Hill native and writing professor at Pitt, he was an early proponent of writing that combines journalism and personal expression.

Now, creative nonfiction writing classes are taught in colleges around the country. Gutkind also founded the Creative Nonfiction Foundation, headquartered in Shadyside. The group publishes a quarterly.

The author of nine nonfiction books on such subjects as transplants and umpires, Gutkind, 59, has now turned to the memoir form in "Forever Fat: Essays by the Godfather" (University of Nebraska Press, $26.95).

This news has inspired an elaborate celebration, beginning Nov. 3 with "Creative Nonfiction Week" as proclaimed by Pittsburgh City Council, itself no stranger to some creative budgetary nonfiction of its own.

Gutkind says the honor was instigated by City Controller Tom Flaherty, a Pitt writing major. Flaherty attached a note to a city tax refund letter, congratulating Gutkind on his new book, the writer said. Then, he got the ball rolling.

Gutkind will read from his memoir Nov. 3 in Pitt's Frick Fine Arts Auditorium, Oakland, at 8:30 p.m. He also plans bookstore appearances during the week.

These events are just the beginning of an elaborate promotion -- Gutkind has even hired a local public relations firm -- with months of events around the nation and the British Isles. He calls it the "Godfather Tour." In fact, he's so confident of his reception, he's already planning a "Forever Fat" sequel.

I can now turn off the tape of Barbra Streisand's "Memories" from that memorable film, known in Pittsburgh as "The Way We Was."

But, wait, the memoirs just keep coming.

Now we hear Jeanne Marie Laskas, former Pittsburgh resident now occupying Sweetwater Farm in Washington County, is in the sequel business.

It was there she wrote "Fifty Acres and a Poodle," her story of rural conversion. The follow-up is "The Exact Same Moon: Fifty Acres and a Family" (Bantam, $23.95).

It's the story of how Laskas adds to her extended family. It will be in stores next month.

Gutkind returns with fellow memoir writer, Paul Paolicelli ("Dances With Luigi" and "Under the Southern Sun" Saturday in a discussion of the genre. It will be held in Pitt's Alumni Hall, Room 343, at 1:30 p.m. and is open to all.

The discussion is part of a program presented by the university's Department of French and Italian honoring Italian-American culture at Pitt.

Preceding it will be a lecture by Rudolph J. Vecolli, director of the Immigration History Research Center at the University of Minnesota.

He will address "To Be or Not to Be -- Italian-American? Ethnicity in the 21st Century."

It will be at 3 p.m. in the same Alumni Hall space.

A last-minute note:

Rebecca O'Connell, librarian at the Carnegie Library, will host a party celebrating her second children's book, "The Baby Goes Beep (Roaring Book Press, $15.95), at 2 p.m. today at the Arsenal Family and Children's Center, 336 S. Aiken Ave., Shadyside.

Proceeds from book sales will benefit the center. Events include a story time and children's play area.

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