A guest post from Pittsburgher at heart, Nick Courage of amutualrespect.org.

I’ve been to Pittsburgh a few times now, can tell the Monongohela and the Allegheny apart; recognize where they meet at the downtown point of the city to form the Ohio. I’ve had a Chicago veggie at D’s Six Pax and Dogz, biked the jail trail, and seen the cloud factory behind Carnegie Mellon (twice). Shoot, I had drinks with Mr. McFeely at an astronaut’s house, which is about as Pittsburgh as things get as far as I’m concerned.

But before that – when my girlfriend wanted me to visit her family in the ‘Burgh for the first time – I was suspicious. Beyond Annie Dillard and Michael Chabon, I hadn’t ever really thought about Pittsburgh. And Dillard was too pleased with herself for me. And Chabon felt like he was hiding something. Outside of those two literary landmarks, I could barely find Pennsylvania on a map. After a disappointing trip to Philadelphia a few years earlier, I was actually opposed to finding Pennsylvania on a map; there was a geopolitical ethos of exclusion in play.

And now I know where the Monongohela and the Allegheny meet to form the Ohio, which – I also now know – contours West Virginia, Ohio, Kentucky, Indiana, and Illinois before feeding into the Mississippi, a popular favorite that’s worked its way down into the effluvium where I was born since well before it was discovered by Hernando de Soto (who called it Río del Espíritu Santo – “River of the Holy Ghost”), or the Cheyenne before him (they went with Ma’xe-e’ometaa’e – “Big Greasy River”).

Read more…

This book magically appeared on my bookshelf when I was in high school.  I don’t know how it got there,  I don’t remember anyone giving it to me, and I didn’t buy it myself.  I ignored it for months (maybe longer) because I thought it was a collection of stories about things you never understood about the ‘burgh, such as: how many bridges do we have?  What is the entomology of “slippy”?  Or perhaps it was a collection of unsolved mysteries in Pittburgh, relating to a theft of Mrs. Carnegie’s jewels…

But then one day I was bored, I had read everything on my shelves many times (everything from The Secret Garden to Clan of the Cave Bear), and so I grabbed The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and everything changed.  From the very first page I knew it wasn’t one of those books I thought it would be.  I must say, as cliché as it sounds, it changed my life.  Growing up as an only child in Pittsburgh, a somewhat lonely and bookish experience, I didn’t dream of escape, but I didn’t realize that adventure and love and life could happen right here—in Oakland, Shadyside, Squirrel Hill…

Read more…

Pittsburgh Authors in the News:

Pittsburgh’s own Nathaniel Philbrick has written a review of Philip Hoare’s The Whale in this week’s New York Times Book Review.  Philbrick writes acclaimed historical nonfiction, and his parents lived in Point Breeze.  We’ll be talking more about Philbrick, he’s a great writer and a really nice guy.

Michael Chabon has a funny, self-deprecating interview in the Wall Street Journal, that focuses on the literary life in San Francisco.  I’d argue that ours is just as great.