About Portland: "Geek Love" Author Katherine Dunn Dies at 70

It seems like a simple lesson.

Mark Zusman, the editor and publisher of Willamette Week, has explained it to reporter after reporter over the years, hoping they pick up on it.

“The opening of a story, the first 250 words, are the equivalent of a water slide,” he will tell them. “You start the story, it’s like getting on the water slide and you will have no choice but to end up in the pool. Writing the beginning of a story is like constructing that water slide, leaving the reader no choice but to be propelled into the story.

“And every time that I use that lesson, I make sure to credit Katherine. It was her analogy. And it is brilliant.”

Katherine, of course, is Katherine Dunn.

She died last week.

She was 70-years-old. The cause of death was complications from lung cancer.

Dunn was famous for her 1989 novel, “Geek Love.”

“It was an iconic book and made her an iconic figure here in Portland,” says Zusman. “It was a remarkable book on several levels, not the least of which was the absolutely unique voice that fills it.”

It’s there in the first paragraph.

“‘When your mama was a geek, my dreamlets,’ Papa would say, ‘she made the nipping off of noggins such a crystal mystery that the hands themeless yearned toward her, waltzing around her, hypnotized with longing. ‘Spread your lips, sweet Lil’, they’d cluck, ‘and show us your choppers!’”

It’s there throughout the book.

From Chapter Eight: “A carnival in daylight is an unfinished beast, anyway. Rain makes it a ghost.”

Zusman knew Dunn for more than 30 years, so long ago that he no longer remembers if he had hired her at Willamette Week or if she was already there when he arrived.

“What I do know is that, on some level, I always thought I was wasting her time then,” he says of being her editor. “I felt like she was my mentor. When I worked with her I was working with someone who was an absolute craftsperson, someone who had an absolute appreciation for the written word.

“I am quite sure that I never helped her one bit.”

“Geek Love” tells the story of a sideshow-owning couple who breed children to be acts including an albino hunchback and a boy with flippers instead of arms and legs.

She first thought of the story on a walk through Portland’s Rose Garden, with its many hybrids. She had wanted her son to come with her. He had refused. She found herself thinking what it would have been like if she had been able to breed a son who behaved better.

“When it came out it got amazing reviews for Katherine’s unique, original voice,” says Zusman. “But for those of us who knew her, and not just knew her in person but those who knew her writing, we already knew how unique she was.”

Dunn had written two novels before Geek Love and been writing for Zusman and Willamette Week for a decade.

“She was a superstar,” he says. “She was a very classy lady who was also very direct. She used to wear a button on her jacket, ‘The meek shall inherit shit.’”

One of the things that brought attention was her love of boxing.

“She was able to capture the imagination of people who never cared about boxing,” Zusman says.

In a collection of her boxing writing, Dunn writes about the effect of going to a live fight for the first time.

“I was electrified,” she writes. “It was a plunge into one of the great mysteries - the nature of violence. This mania for the task at hand contributes to the inclusive nature of the sport. Race, gender, religion, size, age, education - none of it matters are serious about the work.”

And Zusman says she was serious.

“She saw boxing as a metaphor for so many other things,” he says. “For a long time, she was the only female boxing writer anywhere in the country and the combination of her skill with her perspective gave us unique coverage.”

Even after the success of Geek Love and her days as a regular columnist were past Zusman says she would come in at his request to talk to the staff, offering critiques and praise.

“She was a consummate professional who loved the written word and cared for writing and spreading the gospel,” he says.

The one thing that seemed to get at Dunn, Zusman says, were questions about the next novel, the follow-up to “Geek Love.”

“It wasn’t that she wasn’t writing, there were lots of magazine pieces, pieces on boxing, stuff for newspapers,” he says. “But it was the one thing she didn’t want to talk about. It sort of frustrated and annoyed her that people kept asking when was “Cut Man” going to come out.”

Not a lot is known about the book.

There was an excerpt in The Paris Review a few years ago - and as much as Zusman would like to read more by her (“Maybe the completed manuscript is there on her desk,” he says), if it doesn’t happen, he’s satisfied with what she left us.

“She was funny and thoughtful,” he says. “Some people thought of her as this retiring flower, which couldn’t be more wrong. We had some huge battles. If she thought I was wrong, she was not afraid to tell me. She was the furthest thing from a pushover. She was one of those writers who care deeply aout their work.

“She contributed more than her fair share to the country’s literature. If nothing more is published by her, she will still be remembered as a unique talent and an excellent journalist. She helped make Portland Portland. She was a tough cookie and a good friend.”