Sinking the Ark

Sinking the Ark

Sinking the Ark tells the story of the Rose City Ark, a fictional “alternative” weekly in Portland, Oregon . In 1974, the paper embarks on a bold experiment: to dispense with hierarchy and embrace pure democracy. Under the new plan, no one will be telling anyone else what to do: every person will decide for themselves how to contribute to the paper. Can it work? Well, thereby hangs a tale. The novel follows six characters who find that romance, jealousy, politics, ideological impurities, and their own personality quirks are just a few of the demons blocking their path to the perfect future. This is a coming-of-age novel set in an era that historians have forgotten: the din of “the sixties” has faded away, but the roar of the “Reagan Revolution” has yet to sound. The Digital Age is just around the corner, but no one can see around corners. At the Rose City Ark , the staff is laying out stories by hand with waxers, artisan-style, while bracing for the collapse of industrial civilization, after which they, the enlightened few, will be building a a magnificent new world-- a world that is nowhere to be seen today. The story of the Rose City Six will make modern readers smile, even as it moves them to tears. "A tumble through Portland in the mid-seventies, played out in the politically contentious world of a struggling alternative newspaper and the empty pocketbooks of its delicious downtown hippiness. Each character comes brilliantly alive in Tamim Ansary's narration, dope smoking dreamers, radicals, knapsack journalists, idealists, artists, cultists, and so much more. Not just a romp, however. In their personal lives, Ansary's characters are waking to the ills of sexism and in their journalism, the corruption in their town. Packed with humor, this is an easy page turner, a book without brakes. If you missed the era, or lived it, inhale this novel. Steal it if you must." - Eric Nalder, winner of two Pulitzer Prizes for investigative journalism, author of Tankers Full of Trouble: the perilous journey of Alaskan crude "Like the best satires, Sinking the Ark has a heart of gold at its center, so it roots for the eccentric cast of characters even as it pokes fun at them for their idealism and their contradictions, the bowls of joints on kitchen counters and the copies of Being and Nothingness on the nightstands. This is a funny, sharp, yet compassionate look at a singular time and place in American cultural history, down to the last soul-searching detail. - Frances Lefkowitz, author of To Have Not "Sinking the Ark is equal parts adventure, acid trip, and dramedy. Reading Ansary is like taking a seat by the campfire, the master storyteller catches your eye, you see that knowing twinkle and know that you're in for a ride. Sinking the Ark is one of those books that you hope won't end, but you can't put down." - Ransom Stephens, author of The 99% Solution "Before Portland, Oregon, was "Portlandia," before it was the center of the universe, before it was Brooklyn West...it was a really quirky and vibrant place. What a thrill to revisit that moment, brilliantly recorded and yet reimagined by Tamim, in this funny and poignant novel. Makes me wish I'd been destined to be a novelist, rather than an historian." - Maurice Isserman, Professor of History, Hamilton College, co-author of America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s