Holbrook and sons forest products9/28/2023 ![]() ![]() 2013), Holbrook is the only writer to have served as Grand Marshall of Portland's famed Rose Parade. Mencken, Alfred Knopf, Bernard DeVoto, and assorted executives, college presidents, loggers, radicals and Wobblies. As one scholar recently wrote, "he single-handedly put the region on the literary map in the mid-20th century."īut Holbrook's celebrity also came from his reputation as a "24-karat character": a witty raconteur and storyteller a colorful dresser in his derby or rumpled stetson, who carried a snoose can in his pocket and an irreverent and skeptical social critic who gleefully took on institutions such as the Church, Chambers of Commerce and the "Cult of the Pioneers." His circle of friends was scattered from Madison Avenue to skidroads, and included H.L. Author of over three dozen books he being one of the nation's most popular historians/commentators, he taught at Harvard University, lectured at Reed and was known as the "Lumberjack Boswell." He was the nation's leading spokesperson for what he called the "Far Corner" Oregon, Washington, and Idaho. His byline in magazines and newspapers, including The Oregonian for 36 years, was known to readers across the country. By the time of his death, the former logger had become an almost legendary figure for anyone in the Pacific Northwest with an interest in writing, journalism, history, current affairs, or the area's leading industry forestry products. ![]() Holbrook's career was remarkable when considered that when he moved to Portland in 1923 when he was a 30 year old unemployed ex-logger without a high school degree. Holbrook's writings reflect his sympathy for and romanticizing of loggers and other workers, underdogs, visionaries and fanatics, his interest in the humorous and offbeat, and his penchant for puncturing myths and poking fun at stuffed-shirts and hypocrites from all walks of life. Holbrook helped record in a readable and colorful manner the lowbrow history of this region, which was generally overlooked by many historians during his lifetime only recently has become a subject for academic study by the "New Western Historians." Holbrook's trail through the Northwest was a very different type of Oregon Trail than Chambers of Commerce promoted or the conventional heroic view of the pioneers/missionaries of the West that prevailed during his lifetime. Mencken for Portland in the Pacific Northwest. Oregon in Portland's Stewart Holbrook became a leading American journalist and historian by writing what he himself called "lowbrow" or "non-stuffed shirt history." His writings, sense of humor, and social criticism also made him a sort of combination of Will Rogers, Mark Twain and H.L. ![]()
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