Bodett On ‘American Odyssey’
A couple of generations ago, readers waited by the mailbox for the new Saturday Evening Post and other magazines of the time in delicious anticipation of the next installment of the latest serialized story.
Storyteller Tom Bodett recaptures a bit of that delight with “The Free Fall of Webster Cummings,” (three hours, unabridged, Brilliance; $16.95), the first installment of “Tom Bodett’s American Odyssey.” In a reversal of usual publishing practice, the print version will be published next spring by Hyperion, but “Webster Cummings,” the first of five audio chapters, appears this month. The rest will follow at two-month intervals through February 1996.
“Tom Bodett’s American Odyssey” is a breakout book for the Homer, Alaska, writer who first emerged as a commentator for National Public Radio’s “All Things Considered” in 1984. (His fame also has grown with his folksy ads for Motel 6.)
Most of Bodett’s fiction has concerned the characters in a small Alaskan community, and in a recent interview Bodett said his “American Odyssey” is an extension of that previous work.
Some of the characters have come along for the ride. “Up until now, I’ve written most of my characters in stories taking place up in Alaska, where I live,” Bodett said.
“Some of those characters that people are familiar with - Ed Flannigan, Norman Tuttle, Emily Flannigan and the kids - also appear in here.”
He describes “American Odyssey,” first developed a couple of years ago for a radio series, as “a bit broader” than his previous books, but still on the same theme: “All of my work has led to the next thing. … I only do one guy, and whether I’m writing fiction or firstperson essays, it all is about the same thing, which is basically ‘What are we doing here, and why?’ “
It’s the recurring question in “American Odyssey,” Bodett said. “Americans have been on the move for a long time. We give a lot of attention in our culture and our media and everything else to family values and home; it’s very much a part of our mythology, if you will.
“But what I realize, looking on, is that we’re less that way than we used to be - that Americans are much more mobile than we ever have been before, and we will move at the drop of a hat.