We welcome David Oates to read from his new book The Mountains of Paris, published by Oregon State University Press. Writing in the present tense about the seasons he spent living in Paris, waking each morning to a view of Notre Dame, Oates is led to revise his life story from one of trudging and occasional woe into one punctuated by nourishing and sometimes unsettling brilliance. It is a rare opportunity to consider what it means to be human, through time-stopping moments with music, art, and deep history. The book offers memories that intrude into the bustle of Paris life: a Billy Graham crusade at age thirteen, a mountain pass, a love, a loss. In long years of mountaineering, Oates fought the self-loathing which had…