ORLO J. OTTESON
(self-interview)
To begin at the beginning, I was born in Chickasaw County, Iowa, in a house my immigrant grandfather built. The house still stands, although the other buildings on the small farm are no longer there. The town of Jerico,
a mile away, has had the same number of inhabitants—twenty-five, more or less—ever since I can remember. When I turned six, my family moved to Osage, where I entered school.
The country around Osage, in northeastern Iowa, is gently rolling farmland, breaking here and there into patches of woodland and an occasional stream. It is fine country and well-adapted to the pursuits of boyhood. The streams seem somewhat shrunken now and the woodlands denuded of their shadowy romance, but certain spots there, and farther east, where I spent summers on my uncle's farm, are among my most vivid recollections.
With a dedication that I look back on with a mixture of admiration and some disbelief, I pursued and captured an Iowa state high school wrestling championship—an achievement that earned me a scholarship to the University of Wisconsin. After three years of intercollegiate competition—this following six years of interscholastic competition—my interests turned to literature, history, and politics; and I returned to Iowa, where I received a bachelor of arts in English from Luther College.
Following a stint in the U.S. Army and after three demanding but rewarding years as a Minneapolis high school English teacher, I entered the graduate Program in American Studies at the University of Minnesota, where I immersed myself in the task of further understanding what Henry James called "the complex fate of being an American." During that time, I taught courses in English composition and American Studies and served as an academic adviser in the College of Liberal Arts. After some further work in the field of education, my interest in writing deepened, and I turned to a journalism career.
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I'm an optimist. I think God loves Americans and drunkards and keeps them, for the most part, out of the way of passing cars. I'm a skeptic though. I believe that wise skepticism is the first attribute of a good critic. I accept Mark Twain's view that soap and education are less sudden than a massacre, but more deadly in the long run. I admire those who have the audacity to speak out—and keep speaking out—against injustice, sham, and inequality. I believe in writing good, standard English, but I also believe that writing is an act of faith, not a trick of grammar. I try always to do right: this gratifies some people and astonishes the rest. I yearn for significance. I can take a joke.
