On Monday I took Kim's ticket to see the Progressive Reading Series at the Make Out Room in SF.
The host was Stephen Elliot – with Andrew Alshad (sp?) assisting.
LitPAC, the sponsor of the event, is an organization that holds literary fundraisers in order to "get authors more involved in the political process."
Intro: Stephen talked about "bad guys on the offensive" and Iraq plunging into civil war. Emphasizing the political activist nature of the evening. Also the importance of a free press.
Jack Boulware
Journalist, Author of SF Bizarro, founder of Lit Quake
He read a piece in which he compared the image of the US overseas to a dog eating its own feces. The metaphor was extended to absurd degrees. The practice of eating one’s own feces is called "coprophagia." Statistically improbable phrase: "daily scatmunch." Summation: "Don’t judge me by my flag or my dog."
Katharine Noel
Author of Halfway House, a book about mental illness. Teacher at Stanford University.
She read an excerpt from Halfway House. It is the story of Angie, an exceptional high school student who has a psychotic break in her senior year. Angie wants to move to SF, but knows no one in the area. In the excerpt, she plans her move and decides to liberate the neighbors’ abused dog.
Jason Roberts
Author of A Sense of the World: How a Blind Man Became History’s Greatest Traveller
Roberts mentioned a Lit-PAC program called "Adopt-a-Writer" in which authors will do a phone-in or live appearance at a book club if you donate. It’s described at the bottom of the Lit-PAC page.
A Sense of the World is about "the greatest traveler of all time, prior to the invention of the internal combustion engine." James Holman (1786-1857) was a lieutenant in the British Navy who contracted rheumatism at age 21, and went blind at 25. He retired from the Navy but never lost his strong urge for long journeys. According to Roberts, his sightlessness and peripatetic nature meant that he "experienced the world more completely than anyone who ever lived."
He traveled in native fashion, on horses and carts. In the passage that Roberts described, Holman journeyed to Siberia over land just as winter was approaching. The terrain was hostile, windy, infested with biting insects. Bandits roamed the countryside. The horse cart he had hired kept breaking down, and the driver had a very rough go of it. Holman insisted on exercising daily by tying himself to the horse cart with a string and telling the cart driver to go ahead so that he could run alongside. At one point they crossed paths with a caravan of merchants from China who could scarcely believe what they beheld – a blind, lame man in a dilapidated cart with three beaten up horses on his way to Siberia.
Nato Green
He’s a comedian. I remember him talking about Oregon. "Oregon is the only place where you can be beaten up by a bunch of black guys for not recycling." There was more, and a lot of it was funny, especially towards the beginning.
At this point there was a three minute break.
W.S. Di Piero, poet, author of Brother Fire
He read five picturesque poems, in a Philly accent. I liked him. Poem titles: The View From Here, Increased Security, Solo R&B Vocal Underground, 1864, and To Aphrodite. "1864" was about a photograph of a bunch of corpses in a trench in the Civil War.
Jane Smiley
Author of too many books to mention. She’s tall. She wrote a biography of Dickens! "Is there anything Jane Smiley cannot be?"
The excerpt she read was from 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel, a chapter called "The Novel In History."
She calls the novel "an inherently political form." Implies that Scottish tradition/heritage negatively influenced the reception of novels in some parts of America.
Some discussion of Garrison Keillor’s 1992 novel WLT, which is a commentary on the media.
Al Gore and George W. Bush were asked to name their favorite novels. Gore chose The Red and the Black. Smiley wonders why; it doesn’t seem like he is similar to the main character. Bush chose The Very Hungry Caterpillar.
Smiley feels that people in power should read more novels; their personal ideology is too involved with the idea of "prevailing." "Had these people never read Moby Dick?"
Reading novels from the past enables one to experience sensations and feelings that authors have transmitted across the years; what it was like for these characters at that place and time. "A sense of the consciousness of others on the part of those whose fingers are on the trigger is essential to human survival." It is very important for people to maintain their ability to feel empathy.
Jonathan Franzen
The Corrections won a National Book Award. Franzen just finished his memoir, The Discomfort Zone. He is even taller than Jane Smiley, which is impressive.
Earlier Franzen spoke with Smiley and they discovered they grew up at the same time in the same town, Webster Groves, Missouri. (near St. Louis)
Growing up in Missouri, he was never far from the population center of the US. His mother was a highly intelligent woman who tried very hard to fit in. She never wanted to call herself "smart" – the term she substituted was "highly able."
Much of Franzen’s talk was about how frustrated and sad he felt in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.
What else is there to report? Po Bronson was in the audience. It was fun. Thanks to Kim for the ticket!
-Brian
