Literary Nonfiction. California Interest. Photography. What would it be like to discover your very own ghost town? To stumble upon the place by accident and feel it grow more and more mysterious with every step you take? The buildings, still standing tall with their importance, abandoned, every window broken; heavy equipment in chains, rusting in plain sight; weeds taking over the premises; the feeling that everyone's just left yesterday or the day before. It's this chance encounter with Mare Island, the first naval base the US opened on the Pacific Ocean, once the shipbuilding capital of the western world, home and workplace to over 50,000 people but shuttered by an act of Congress on April Fools' Day, 1996, that leads the writer to make up stories about what he's seeing, and to ask himself questions about his own life that he wouldn't have otherwise asked. MARE ISLAND is part documentary in words and pictures of a place the writer calls, "the Stonehenge of the American empire," and part self-portrait, an extremely personal encounter with the past, present, and a possible future. Established in 1854, Mare Island Naval Shipyard was the first US Navy base on the Pacific Ocean. 514 ships were built at Mare Island and thousands of other vessels overhauled in dry dock during its colorful heyday. Once considered America's military shipbuilding capital, Mare Island was registered as a California Historical Landmark in 1960, and parts of the base were declared a National Historic Landmark District in 1975. "Bombing along the highway at the north edge of San Francisco Bay, as we moderns are wont to do, the turnoff to Mare Island passes in a blink, and most of us don't think twice. But Brooks Roddan takes the exit—and finds himself in a sprawling, ghostly monument to the American Empire. Slow down now and walk with him on this provocative meditation on power, impermanence, and the stories we tell ourselves about ourselves."—Jay Harris, Former Publisher of Mother Jones

Mare Island

Literature & Fiction

Roddan, Brooks

History & Criticism

IF SF Publishing

A tour de force of a book by a well-seasoned poet-golfer who struggles between agony and ecstasy while playing a gentleman's game. Golf is the most perplexing sport in the world, a game where questions far outnumber answers. You're decent one day and deplorable the next? Brooks Roddan enters this bizarre, contrary kingdom accompanied by his sidekick Jack and a weird collection of strange playing partners, finally discovering a glimmer of hope in an accidental encounter at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art with the world-famous Dada artist Kurt Schwitters who reveals the complete absurdity of a game he never played. "Lechery, Anarchy, Delirium, Bourgeois Inertia, Flagrant Hypocrisy, Primitive Injustice, An Order of Organized Crime in Fact"--Antonin Artaud "A book of meditative reckonings, both playful and serious, told by a poet-golfer who has a love/hate relationship with the game. Chock full of photos and memorabilia, Part Dada art book, part social criticism, part physical and intellectual adventure with a trusty sidekick named Jack, and part personal confession. Does the narrator hate golf? No, he loves the game but sometimes dislikes the people who play it, including himself. As the narrator himself puts it, "Nobody understands my struggle, it's as if I am walking in a circle that I've made with my own hands and can't find a way out. This book has wings--it's going to fly off the shelves. --Thomas Fuller "I love golf but there's something about golf and golfers that's really disturbing. I'm not sure what it is but I'm going to get to the bottom of it, even if it takes the rest of my life."-- Brooks Roddan Literary Nonfiction. Art.

Golf is Ruining My Life

Sports & Outdoors

Biographies

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