Author's new book takes square aim at Beaverton

‘Paranoid Park’ author Blake Nelson’s new teen novel is about rebelling against SUVs

By Stover E Harger III

The Beaverton Valley Times, Jun 18, 2009, Updated Oct 30, 2009 (2 Reader comments)

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A few years ago, while visiting his old hometown of Beaverton from New York, author Blake Nelson found inspiration in an unexpected time and place – the headache-inducing afternoon gridlock on Highway 217.

Here are these polluting cars, these tank-like SUVs, these brainless soccer moms, these surly teenagers, he said he remembered thinking. All of them hustling and bustling in the heat in their metal cocoons, traveling nowhere slow.

Oh, how it must be awful to live in a concrete-covered suburb like Beaverton, he thought, with little to do and everywhere to drive.

But then he thought deeper. Don’t most people live in suburbs? Isn’t his ‘walk everywhere’ New York lifestyle the unusual one? What are these people’s stories?

Putting pen to paper, Nelson quickly wrote down the beginnings of what would later become “Destroy All Cars,” his new, often humorous, and sometimes touching new novel. It is satirical of Beaverton and suburban life in general, yet manages to avoid being cutting. Nelson feels he can criticize Beaverton because in many ways, he is Beaverton.

“I just like to make fun of people sometimes,” he said in a phone interview from his Los Angeles home, before reasoning, “I try to be a good person in other aspects of my life.”

Nelson, an adult and young adult author with nine published books under his belt including “Girl” and “Paranoid Park” is a Jesuit High School alum who currently lives in Los Angeles.

His most recent story follows 17-year-old James Hoff through his troubling junior year of high school. He rants and raves about environmentalism and how we are all killing ourselves with our rolling smog machines. As he rages against society and capitalism, he yearns for the love of his ex-girlfriend Sadie. James’ soft side is slowly revealed in between his humorous rants.

One day after a mall visit he writes, “I love the rumor that the air in the malls is oxygen enriched to make you stupid and make you buy stuff. Why are you there if you’re not stupid and going to buy stuff?”

Later he opens up in an essay: “No matter what we do, Nature remains our protector. Even as we ignore it, contaminate it, destroy it, Nature offers us sympathy and love. It comforts us in our darkest hour. We do not deserve this. And still it is offered.”

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