Thursday, September 11, 2008

Guest Post by Richard Baldasty

September 11, 2008: 50th anniversary of the death of Robert Service, bard of the great and far north, poet of deep, abiding cold, minstrel of miners and outlaws, romancer of lands unforgiving and beautiful in their vast defiance of puny humans upon them. Robert Service came to North America from his native Scotland looking to make his way in the New World. He succeeded beyond the wild dreams of any gold seeker. Those popular and sing-song rhymes were not great literature but they were, and remain, superb entertainment. He took snapshot photos with words. Many a reader who wouldn't have wanted five minutes actuality in the Yukon couldn't get enough of the book-by-fireside version of it Service provided. His was a one-man National Geographic band.

And what did the frugal Scot do with the wealth his writing brought? Why, took it with him to France. The deflating fact of it--Robert Service died September 11, 1958 not on the marge of Lake Labarge where they cremated Sam McGee but at his summer home in France. Unlike his characters, he was no unshaven outsider but the husband of a fair Parisian, long accustomed to the sweet life. And when World War II necessitated his departure from France, why he spent the war years safely in Hollywood, the Dream Factory.

And so we observe with mixed emotions the golden 50th of his departure. But there's no question what he'd have thought about Paul and his journey. It would have deserved immortality in poetry. It's a story with all the Service materials: determination, individuality, a dash of the absurd (why this?), loneliness, distance, the hero small yet magnificent in his smallness amid the mightly elements. "Get down to bedrock and meet people": Service said that was his credo. Huzzah for Paul. There are fine things done in the land of the midnight sun by the man who holds the road.

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