"When we lived in Juneau, Alaska, it was a town of about 7,000 people and totally isolated; the only way to get to it was by ship"
About this Quote
The real engine is the phrase "the only way". Hawkes is a novelist, but he borrows the authority of reportage: one route in, one route out, no shortcuts. That kind of constraint is narrative in itself. A ship isnt just transportation; its a calendar, a supply chain, a social filter. Who arrives and when becomes an event. Leaving becomes a decision with friction. The town is not simply remote; it is curated by distance.
Contextually, this evokes mid-century Alaska as an American edge case, a place where modernity arrives on a schedule and community is formed as much by exclusion as by choice. Subtextually, Hawkes is sketching the conditions that make certain kinds of stories possible: intensified relationships, heightened interiority, the sense that the outside world is both near (you can name it) and unreachable (you cant casually touch it). The sentence works because it turns a biographical detail into a pressure system.
Quote Details
| Topic | Travel |
|---|---|
| Source | Verified source: Review of Contemporary Fiction: Conversation with John Ha... (John C. Hawkes, 1983)
Evidence:
When we lived in Juneau, Alaska, it was a town of about 7,000 people, and totally isolated; the only way to get to it was by ship. (Fall 1983, Vol. 3.3). I found the quote in an interview with John Hawkes conducted by Patrick O’Donnell at Brown University on June 25–27, 1979. The published source states that this version is 'From “The Review of Contemporary Fiction,” Fall 1983, Vol. 3.3' and that it is an edited transcript of those conversations. In the interview text, the quote appears at lines 97–98 of the Dalkey Archive reprint. I did not find evidence of an earlier published primary source containing this exact wording. Related primary interviews contain similar but different recollections about Juneau, for example, a Conjunctions interview describes Juneau as isolated and notes 'the ship came in from Seattle,' but does not contain this exact sentence, so the best verified first publication I could locate for the exact quote is the 1983 Review of Contemporary Fiction interview. |
| Cite |
Citation Formats
APA Style (7th ed.)
Hawkes, John C. (2026, March 16). When we lived in Juneau, Alaska, it was a town of about 7,000 people and totally isolated; the only way to get to it was by ship. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/when-we-lived-in-juneau-alaska-it-was-a-town-of-127990/
Chicago Style
Hawkes, John C. "When we lived in Juneau, Alaska, it was a town of about 7,000 people and totally isolated; the only way to get to it was by ship." FixQuotes. March 16, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/when-we-lived-in-juneau-alaska-it-was-a-town-of-127990/.
MLA Style (9th ed.)
"When we lived in Juneau, Alaska, it was a town of about 7,000 people and totally isolated; the only way to get to it was by ship." FixQuotes, 16 Mar. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/when-we-lived-in-juneau-alaska-it-was-a-town-of-127990/. Accessed 25 Mar. 2026.
