Calling all Moritz Thomsen fans

Sometimes, stories that I write get the most interesting responses. Take the following from Portland writer Marc Covert, associate editor of Portland Magazine and managing editor of Smokebox , a bimonthly e-zine featuring “Pollution-Fueled Commentary.” Covert was responding to my story on Moritz Thomsen, the late writer whose memoir “The Saddest Pleasure” is the November selection for The Spokesman-Review Book Club .

Dear Dan: Just read your Spokesman-Review piece on Moritz Thomsen, and I was amazed to see it was posted just this month. I thought I had mined the Net for everything I was ever likely to find on Thomsen. It’s always a pleasure to see something new pop up.

You make a good point — “It’s easy to see why Thomsen isn’t more popular. His works are unsparing looks at his own life, and they emphasize his struggles and all the emotional pain that made his such tormented existence” — and I suppose it may explain why Thomsen remains relatively unknown. In my own experience, I have never once mentioned him to anyone who had recognized his name. Those readers must be out there somewhere, but I sure haven’t bumped into any.

I’m still not sure that completely explains it, though. It’s always seemed to me that if his books were really given the chance they deserve, they could find a wide audience. Not Stephen King wide, but certainly wider than they have now.

He’s still got an unpublished manuscript, you know, “Bad News from a Black Coast.” It’s been gathering dust on a desk at Graywolf Press for 13 years now. I get the impression that he finished it — or at least stopped working on it — within weeks or even days of his death. He also did a lot of writing for newspapers and magazines, although that stuff is hard to come by. At least I haven’t tracked down much of it yet.

So how did you discover Thomsen? I’m always interested to know how it happens. In my case, I was writing an article on Gene Savoy, a South American explorer, and saw the “Bad News” excerpt in Salon magazine back in ‘98 or ‘99. That was all it took to hook me in. I’ve read all of his books now and have gotten to know some of his family members and friends. He was quite a unique man and is not at all forgotten in Ecuador.

Well, thanks again for a good article,

Marc Covert
Portland, OR