Review by Mack Hassler
“It is a poetry where the world becomes
writing and language becomes the double
of the world.”
Octavio Paz
I will blend in this review of Make It Go In the Snow ideas and effects that I have come across in my general reading on surrealism among the modern French poets in order to capture the skill and overall effects in Jorgensen because I think his work is a fine addition to the detail and to the mood of talking about the culture of the UP. He does not tell his history in a systematic way with footnotes and large bibliography like an academic. Instead he uses many old photographs and rather rambles through his story in a leisurely way like a Parisian flâneur or gentleman expert on the feature of being a Yooper man of the North. It reminds me of my own immersion when my wife and I began our discovery of the region; and even though it was usually summer I kept thinking of my fascination at the time with the exploration of the Antarctic, of “Going South” across rough seas from New Zealand with the sad and heroic Captain Scott and his brave men and dogs. A news reporter for a TV station in Green Bay, Jorgensen first became addicted to the sport and business of snowmobiling when he bought his first sled, an Arctic Cat in 1967. It was an “air sled” propelled by a large propeller in the back.
Antarctic snow cruiser asin Popular Mechanics
My dearly departed wife’s best friend in our own adventure with UP Culture says she would rather fish than make books although she has made some marketable books about her fishing; and she is, also, like Jorgensen a journalist by training. This work of his covers much of the engineering and much of the promotion of snowmobiling as it has developed across races and trails from Alaska to New England. The multiple inventions for moving the snow out of the way are extensively photographed and described with engineering designs. Jorgensen has also been involved with the development of the eating and drinking business along the snowmobile trails. He describes some contracts he has had with the Pabst Brewing Company. When Scott and his men had to move snow to get to the South Pole, they carried dozens of sled dogs with them on their ships South. They would then have to use the dogs for food in the rigors of the trip across the continent. My own sensibility much prefers solving the problems with engineering rather than eating your dogs. Jorgensen illustrates many of the fancy designs in this latter solution to the problem.
His story, further, describes the whole economic impact of the snowmobile trails. When the North experiences a winter with little snow, the bars and eateries along he trails suffer a lot as they did this past winter. Clearly, this is preferable to eating your dogs that have pulled you so far. In sum, I think Jorgensen gives the reader a fine stroll along all the history of clever engineering designs and some very strange looking machines for traveling over the snow. There are none of the usual apparatus for a book of history such as bibliographies and indexes. But Jorgensen does provide a detailed Table of Contents at the front. Chapter 17 is labeled “Homemade snowmobiles.” And there are many many spectacular photographs. Jorgensen covers the topic well It is a fine stroll. Larry Jorgensen’s Make It Go in the Snow develops from that loaferlike start (one implication of flâneur is “loafer”) to a lengthy catalog of amazing photographs and engineering designs.
Make It Go…In the Snow: People and Ideas in the History of Snowmobiles, by Larry Jorgensen (Modern History Press, Ann Arbor, MI, 2024) 186 pages, pbk, $21.95.
