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Dudeville
Imagine Huck Finn "lighting out for the territories" 150 years later, this time as a late-30s corporate dropout turned backcountry snowboarder and mountain climber. Dudeville is a coming-of-middle-age adventure story, set in and all around small-town Colorado during the outdoor sports explosion of the 1990s. Inspired by a wide and wild range of influences -- from Thoreau, Whitman, Muir and Twain, to Jack Kerouac, Edward Abbey and Warren Miller -- Dudeville is equal parts extreme sports tale, male bonding romp, and reluctant love story, a sensuous, lyrical, exuberant exploration of the American West.
Dudeville's author, J.D. Kleinke, was a serious health care guy in Baltimore until he discovered snowboarding, hang gliding, jam bands, and the raw spiritual power of life above treeline . . . and moved to Colorado. He is the author of three books about medicine in America, including Catching Babies, a novel about the culture of maternity care and childbirth. He has also been involved in the formation, management, and governance of several health care companies and non-profit organizations. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and dozens of medical and business publications. He lives with his wife in Half Moon Bay, California, and Portland, Oregon.
From "From this summit, the horizon seesaws open into an electric blue dream of Colorado sky. The adolescent swagger and brawn of the Rockies is nothing like the stooped and rounded hills back east. Spiked with mammoth formations of rock and ice, this vast, continental cacophony is the very roof of the world, pushed skyward by geologic time while collapsing under its own weight. I drop in, and surf off the wind-scoured edge, working the margin between transcendent bliss and utter catastrophe, a controlled fury exploding from my core into arcing snowboard turns as I crisscross the fall-line and dissolve into gravity..."
Dudeville's author, J.D. Kleinke, was a serious health care guy in Baltimore until he discovered snowboarding, hang gliding, jam bands, and the raw spiritual power of life above treeline . . . and moved to Colorado. He is the author of three books about medicine in America, including Catching Babies, a novel about the culture of maternity care and childbirth. He has also been involved in the formation, management, and governance of several health care companies and non-profit organizations. His work has appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and dozens of medical and business publications. He lives with his wife in Half Moon Bay, California, and Portland, Oregon.
From "From this summit, the horizon seesaws open into an electric blue dream of Colorado sky. The adolescent swagger and brawn of the Rockies is nothing like the stooped and rounded hills back east. Spiked with mammoth formations of rock and ice, this vast, continental cacophony is the very roof of the world, pushed skyward by geologic time while collapsing under its own weight. I drop in, and surf off the wind-scoured edge, working the margin between transcendent bliss and utter catastrophe, a controlled fury exploding from my core into arcing snowboard turns as I crisscross the fall-line and dissolve into gravity..."
433 pages, Kindle Edition
Published November 13, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews
February 15, 2018
This isn’t just a great book: it’s TWO great books, a serious literary work hiding inside a funny, absorbing, affecting adventure story.
The first and more obvious book – and the way the book is packaged – is a wild romp about a guy dealing with an early mid-life crisis by running around in the mountains and deserts and small towns of Colorado and Arizona. It’s about finding yourself through nature, solitude in beautiful places, and the challenges of adventure sports, served up like one great story after another all told at a bar at the end of a great hike or ski. The stories about big summits, climbing accidents, wolf encounters, and harrowing rescues are gripping reading all on their own, and there is plenty of sex, casual drug use, and music festivals to keep the action light-hearted and fun.
But underneath all the yarns about people doing amazing (and sometimes really stupid) things in the wilderness, Dudeville is also a very serious meditation about the Great American Myth that has always driven people to the wide open spaces of the west. You don’t have to notice any of it to enjoy this book, but the author obviously sets up the narrator as a kind of post-modern Huck Finn – a smart, independent, emotionally self-reliant guy, who is a grown-up orphan from a rough childhood, and who makes enough money to flee an early corporate job and dead marriage to “light out for the territories” and re-invent himself, or at least have a great time trying to. In the process, his encounters with different landscapes, people, and stories trigger various references to the great books, authors and ideas about that Great American Myth: there are some dark and disturbing passages about everything from the denuding of the wilderness, to what the original settlers went through, to the brutal subjugation of Native Americans, to the murder of Mathew Shepard.
It’s not giving away anything about the plot to point out what the author makes plain, if not in so many words, by setting the final scene of the book a few days before 9/11. “It is only the first week of September, but it feels like the world is ending, before we ever had a chance to finish the harvest,” the narrator says, as he walks down the empty streets of the town of Dudeville. This is where Huck Finn ends up, the author seems to be saying.
But you can ignore all that and just enjoy the amazing views. Because there is great fun in Dudeville from start to finish: beautiful descriptions of landscapes, and what it feels like to climb mountains, and the adrenaline rush that comes with skiing and snowboarding off of them. But in the end, Dudeville does seem to be saying that you can be an arrested adolescent for only so long before time catches up with you.
Dudeville truly is an astounding work on two very different levels. It is light-hearted, whimsical, and in places, laugh-out-loud funny; but it is also smart, subtle and weary-hearted in all the right places, a wild journey through the adventure sports culture and the American West, fully burdened by the history of this beautifully, thoughtfully, powerfully rendered landscape. Dudeville is a truly original and classically American story.
February 5, 2018
Author J.D. Kleinke captivated my attention for this book from start to finish, taking us on a vivid tour of the mountainous West. This is all while a story of main character Jack’s past and present unfold and develop. The marvelous details and storyline about mountaineering, an activity most people have heard about, creates an intense backdrop to Jack’s life choices and changes. Chock full of beautiful descriptions of actual mountains, ranges and states Jack visited (and conquered), reading Dudeville just might cause you to buy a plane ticket, head out West to the nearest snowy peak and explore places you never thought you’d dare to. And what’s better than meeting characters who truly live life to the fullest?
February 15, 2018
One of the best things about this book is the handling of the spiritual nature of being outdoors. The main character is clearly not religious, but also not impervious to what he calls “The Presence.” Almost a character unto itself, the Presence is what pushes him to keep surviving - the physical hardships he puts himself through on each climb, as well as the mental anguish he experiences from his relationships and life-changes.
The book portrays the vibrant 90’s outdoorsy community beautifully: so many of the colorful characters seem real, their stories like something you might hear recounted at a party in Portland. Their development spans the whole book, with J.D. parsing out integral moments of character development right up to the end.
He also weaves past and present together very artfully - scenes from the main character’s past splash up into his consciousness throughout the book at just the right times, and he makes interesting, insightful connections.
My main complaints with the book are the overuse of jargon and “Dudespeak,” (which drove me up the wall throughout the 2000’s and continues to do so now), and the not-so-cool portrayal of women in the book, especially from a writer I know to be culturally aware of these sorts of things.
I think the writing relied too much on jargon in sections, particularly as the same events happened many times (like summiting a mountain and snow-boarding back down). Two phrases in particular: “dropping in,” and “calories.” It’s like there are no synonyms for these words in existence, and their presence became jarring after a while. In one single mountain sequence the main character “downed some calories and water” about four separate times in as many paragraphs.
“Betty” falls into both categories - I’m not a fan of the jargon, and disappointed with the way that word sums up women in the outdoor community. I feel like even if that was a popular phrase back then, one could use it sparingly, for authenticity, or at least refrain from making it the main noun to describe all women.
On that same subject, all the women in this book are there for the sake of their male counterparts, valued for their twin traits of sexual prowess and “game for anything” attitude, and mostly described in terms of how they looked (much was made of how big or tiny boobs were, how tall or short, how thunderous the thighs, etc). When not performing sex, they were portrayed to be “one of the boys,” slugging beers and referring to each other as “dude” and “man,” and any expression of “girly” emotions was viewed purely as fodder for the guys’ campfire commiseration sessions.
Anyway, all in all, a solid read, definitely worth checking out, especially if you’re interested in the outdoors. Lots of good food for thought.
The book portrays the vibrant 90’s outdoorsy community beautifully: so many of the colorful characters seem real, their stories like something you might hear recounted at a party in Portland. Their development spans the whole book, with J.D. parsing out integral moments of character development right up to the end.
He also weaves past and present together very artfully - scenes from the main character’s past splash up into his consciousness throughout the book at just the right times, and he makes interesting, insightful connections.
My main complaints with the book are the overuse of jargon and “Dudespeak,” (which drove me up the wall throughout the 2000’s and continues to do so now), and the not-so-cool portrayal of women in the book, especially from a writer I know to be culturally aware of these sorts of things.
I think the writing relied too much on jargon in sections, particularly as the same events happened many times (like summiting a mountain and snow-boarding back down). Two phrases in particular: “dropping in,” and “calories.” It’s like there are no synonyms for these words in existence, and their presence became jarring after a while. In one single mountain sequence the main character “downed some calories and water” about four separate times in as many paragraphs.
“Betty” falls into both categories - I’m not a fan of the jargon, and disappointed with the way that word sums up women in the outdoor community. I feel like even if that was a popular phrase back then, one could use it sparingly, for authenticity, or at least refrain from making it the main noun to describe all women.
On that same subject, all the women in this book are there for the sake of their male counterparts, valued for their twin traits of sexual prowess and “game for anything” attitude, and mostly described in terms of how they looked (much was made of how big or tiny boobs were, how tall or short, how thunderous the thighs, etc). When not performing sex, they were portrayed to be “one of the boys,” slugging beers and referring to each other as “dude” and “man,” and any expression of “girly” emotions was viewed purely as fodder for the guys’ campfire commiseration sessions.
Anyway, all in all, a solid read, definitely worth checking out, especially if you’re interested in the outdoors. Lots of good food for thought.
March 23, 2018
Super fun and engaging read, I really enjoyed hanging out with these characters on their (internal and external) adventures despite my personal inexperience with snow life. Lovely combination of philosophy, reverence for nature and the unknown, and flawed human relationships. I'm glad I took the ride!
August 22, 2018
This book is so honest to the ski life experience that I needed to write a review of it for Backcountry Magazine. I've loved reading this beautiful and funny and dark book about ski life and love life and Colorado life and just life.
June 13, 2018
I thought "Dudeville" was OK. Mr. Kleinke has some ability to describe that magic that exists in nature that is always difficult to pin down. He calls it, "The Presence." The "kiss and tell" exploits of his conquests were more information than I needed...and I'm no prude. If Jon Krakauer doesn't need to tell you all about the Betties he's shagging...you probably don't need to either.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews