Book completed

[eve_prime]

Here on the Edge: How a small group of World War II conscientious objectors took art and peace from the margins to the mainstream, by Steve McQuiddy. I’ve owned two copies of this 2013 book by a local author for years (quite likely since 2013), and this month it was my self-assigned reading. I’m fascinated by the premise – a conscientious objectors camp dedicated to the fine arts and located on the Oregon Coast, just 30 miles north of my home town, in the small community of Waldport, and whose residents and activities helped inspire the Beat poets of the 1950s and the activism of the 1960s. The book gets off to a slow start, and when I was approaching the midpoint I was thinking that I’d probably have been fully satisfied with a ten-page synopsis. Things do become quite interesting after that point, though, and it’s easy to see why. If you put together a bunch of artistically inclined people, many with strong personalities and principles but also tendencies toward anarchism, along with others who may not care about the arts but have strong religious beliefs, then require them to work long hours at physically dangerous jobs for no pay while encouraging them to be creative together in the evenings, all packed into a communal living situation often far from their families… that seems like a recipe for a lot of interpersonal drama. And sometimes it was. I’m glad I finally read it.

Comments

[eve_prime]

It sounds like they were having a lot of fun and doing some cool things.