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‘Noch Ein at the Stein’ celebrates conversations at the pub

The book is at local bookstores in Eugene and available on Amazon
Amazon.com
The book is at local bookstores in Eugene and available on Amazon

If you’re a fan of beer and bar culture, you may have spent some time at Eugene’s Bier Stein. The bottle shop and eatery is the setting for a new book by a local author, Timothy Shaner. Shaner spoke with KLCC’s Rachael McDonald.

The title “Noch Ein at the Stein: A Poetic Essay on Beer, Conversation, and Hippycrits” well describes the pocket-size book.

“It is definitely about my being a barfly, I guess you could say, or a pubfly, or a beerfly,” he said. “Is there a term called beerfly?”

Shaner said his original plan was to write about Eugene’s aging hippies. But the Bier Stein inspired a different direction. He was influenced by Jack Kerouac in the stream-of-consciousness style of the narrative. In fact, he used the beat writer’s name and others as pseudonyms for characters in the book, who are based on other barflies and Bier stein staff.

“The famous William Burroughs. There’s also an Alan Ginsburg. There’s a Jack Kerouac,” he said. “And I’m not going to tell people who those names refer to. I think that’s also the fun of the book, is to try to figure out who I’m referring to there.”

Shaner’s book is set at the first location of the Bier Stein, which was often a crowded, noisy place, with people elbow to elbow at the bar.

“The title of the book, Noch Ein at the Stein, means, in my pidgin German, another one at the Stein,” he said. “I picked that up when I lived in Berlin. Not learning much more than how to order another beer.”

And it’s about the way sitting at the bar can spark dialogue.

“The conversation is what I wanted to write about, celebration of good conversation, of the bar, the pub, as a public place,” Shaner said. “The public sphere. We don’t have many places where we can go to to engage in good conversation and meet new people and just hang out.”

Shaner will do a reading and author talk at Tsunami Books in Eugene on Saturday, July 16th. [NOTE: Since this story was filed, Tsunami Books has announced that Shaner's reading will be postponed to an undetermined future date.]

Copyright 2022 KLCC.

Rachael McDonald is KLCC’s host for All Things Considered on weekday afternoons. She also is the editor of the KLCC Extra, the daily digital newspaper. Rachael has a BA in English from the University of Oregon. She started out in public radio as a newsroom volunteer at KLCC in 2000.