PSU Magazine Spring 2004

New campus press publishes first book Abraham Lincoln: A Novel Life is a firsL for Ooligan Press, the University's Leaching press, and a firsl for its auLhor, Tony Wolk, professor of English. The novel Lells a whaL-if slory in which President Lincoln spends a day in 1955. He doesn't have any idea how he suddenly arrived in EvansLOn, llli– nois, but he is glad to have left behind 1865 and Lhe heavy burden of civil war. Lincoln is delighted wiLh Lhe nation's progress-motion pictures, radios, and LOasLers-buL iL is an encounler wiLh a woman, very differ– em from his Lroubled wife, Mary Todd, that gives him real respite. The encounter is brief, but the laws of time make an exception for this obviously "I t wasn't much more than an hour ago that he had come awake in the darkness of the hotel room, trying to make sense of the steps that had led to his lying on a bed in the next century. He had dressed, descended, said "Can't sleep" to the night clerk, and gone investigat– ing. This present, he realized, no longer seemed so far beyond his own time. The rows of automobiles parked on both side of the street were becoming commonplace, as were the electric streetlights, and the wires strung overhead, for still more electricity, and for their telephones. A telephone would be meant-to-be love affair. Wolk became a fan of Lincoln with the acquisiLion of all 10 volumes of The Complete Works of Abraham Lincoln, edited by John Hay and John Nicolay (remember those names) , Lincoln's two young secretaries when he took office in 1861. Thal and other reading gave Wolk an appreciation for Lincoln as "the essence of a good man." By slip– ping into the man's personality, Wolk crafts for readers a glimpse of Lincoln walking in a differem time. Publishing of the book was made possible by Ooligan Press, part of the publishing program in PSU's Center for Excellence in Writing. Students staff by Tony Wolk Lhe press as Lhey take advantage of the program's courses in editing, design , marketing, and bookselling. The core curriculum leads to an M.A. or M.5. in writing wiLh a concentration in publishing. At Limes Wolk had 30 or more students copyediting his book, as part of their class project. "They put the whole novel through the ringer," remembers Wolk, but it was the "best possible" process. Wolk has taught English at Portland State since 1965, specializing in Renaissance literature, science fiction, and writing classes. He has published a number of academic articles and short stories, but this is his first novel. D a frame. He had found himself here; he would find himself back. These were no doorways. It was like a river flowing. Perhaps in his own time there had been no disruption, no one wondering where he had wandered off to. He had a picture in his mind of everyone frozen, a whole host of folk in mid-stride, yawning, or scratching, or halfway through a gesture. Aleck Stephens, Nicolay and John Hay, and Stanton, even Lee, sword by his side, and Traveller, saddled and alert. All caught in a web, suspended in time. handy on a stormy night-no need to walk over to the War Department to read dispatches. He had yet to see an airplane, just a picture in a magazine entitled Life. A good title, he thought, if broad. A magazine with There was another picture, which he hated the thought of, where the clock had never stopped . Where everything he had ever known was gone, was dead. Where only the newborn could be alive today, and in her nineties. He had never had a daughter. His sons were gone, all gone. He closed his eyes to a date, 1955. It's not that he knew with a certainty that his inter– lude would come to an end . And maybe "end" wasn't the right word. Like a dream this-this interruption, this journey, this lesson-it was all middle, without 6 PSU MAGAZINE SPRl G 2004 clear away the image of gray stones in a cemetery, weathered, canted, overgrown with weeds. Forgotten. Such a quiet time of night. He needed to get on back."