John Prine at sea

Can you believe this??? A bunch of my favorite bands, floating on the ocean at the same time, with well drinks, songwriting workshops and the chance to play blackjack with Steve Earle. If one of you wants to buy me a ticket to this thing, I'll work it into my busy schedule.

Line-up for Literary Orange

I'll be taking part in this literary festival at UC Irvine, featuring Ron Hanson and T. Jefferson Parker. The full list of speakers is now online. Save the date.

Standing up for unlikeable characters

Lately I've heard people trash certain novels and short stories because the central characters are "not likeable'' -- characters who do or think the wrong things, and don't pass the personality test. The characters are too ornery, too brazen, too selfish, too full of themselves. The charge has been levied at Jonathan Franzen, among others. Personally, I'm fine with challenging, off-putting, confounding or "difficult'' characters. If the story and the characters are compelling, and if the character is striving for something (even if it is something unsavory), I don't care if the central character is someone I wouldn't invite to my house for dinner.

I think it's a strange reason to dismiss a book out of hand. A couple of weeks ago, Vendela Vida addressed this question when she passed through town to promote her new book, The Lovers, which features a challenging central character, a widow returning to the place of her honeymoon 25 years later.

Vida told the audience that stories are a good way to learn about people you wouldn't necessarily spend time with in your day-to-day life, a chance to dwell in their world for a while.

She added that she isn't "looking for friends'' when she opens up a book.

(Speaking of Vida, she and many others can be heard in conversation online with Rick Kleffel, a books interviewer who asks good questions. )

Australians embark on Cactus Eaters themed adventure hike

Crazy coincidence. My folks are in town to visit, and the people next to them on the airplane had read The Cactus Eaters, are from Australia, and (from what i understand) are planning a three-week PCT hike. I hear they are going to write into this blog, and when they do, I'll post the whole thing. By the way, I don't think they actually plan to eat an opuntia. My father explained that he was the "gap-toothed'' paterfamilias featured in the book, and throughout the entire flight, the Australians good-naturedly referred to him as Gappy.

If you hear of any other spontaneous Cactus Eaters themed events, let me know, and I'll post something.

Not your neighborhood stink bug expert

For some reason I am getting a lot of emails and inquiries lately about stink bugs, perhaps because I blogged about them a couple of years ago. I just want to point out that I am (sad to say) not a stink bug expert, but if you are interested in a one-stop-shopping site with interesting factoids and pictures of stinkbugs, I suggest you look at this website instead. It covers the topic from every angle.

Coming soon: the dumbest author reading Q and A questions of all time

How many times have you gone to an author's reading at a book store and heard someone ask a question that made you want to crawl under your chair? Groan? Cover your ears? Flee the store? Cry? Move to another neighborhood?

There's one in every crowd -- that one person who's got to raise his hand and ask Alice Munro if she's related to Marilyn. Personally, I think these questions -- and the responses -- are often the most revealing part of a Q and A because they reveal more about authors' personalities, their capacity for empathy, and their ability to think on their feet, than any of the usual questions.

I'm putting together a partial list of the daffiest Q and A questions of all time --- and no, I won't spare myself on this list because I've asked a few staggeringly dumb questions to authors over the years, including a question to Janet Malcolm that was so confounding, even to me, that she couldn't answer at all. She just stared at me. And after a while, I think she said: "Next question?''

So far I've got a list of teeth-grinding questions that people have asked to Toni Morrison, Joan Didion and others.

If you have any examples of your own, send in.

If not, stay tuned.

Coming soon: the dumbest author reading Q & A questions of all time

How many times have you gone to an author's reading at a book store and heard someone ask a question that made you want to crawl under your chair?

Cover your ears?

Flee the store?

There's one in every crowd -- that one person who's got to raise his hand and ask Alice Munro if she's related to Marilyn. I'm putting together a partial list of the dumbest Q and A questions of all time --- and no, I won't spare myself on this list because I've asked a few doozies in my time, including a question to Janet Malcolm that was so confounding, even to me, that she couldn't answer at all.

So far I've got a list of dumb, cringe-worthy questions that people have asked to such luminaries as Toni Morrison, Joan Didion and others. If you have any examples of your own, send in. If not, stay tuned.






Here is a partial list of some of the loopiest questions I've heard during the many author events I've attended. Most are verbatim (or, at the very least, I've tried to remember them and reproduce them as accurately as posisble.)

I think i'm entitled to write about this since I, personally, have asked incomprehensible questions at authors events. I once asked a question to Janet Malcolm that was so nervous and loopy that she literally did not know what I was talking about and could not provide any answer at all.

Here are some of the choicest moments:


asked to Joan Didion in New York City during an event to promote The Year of Magical Thinking: "So what I want to know is what made you feel the worst? When your husband died or when your daughter died?''

asked to Laurie Garrett, the author of the Coming Plague, at a reading in the Capitola Book Cafe. "I want to know if you think the e bola outbreak was timed to coincide with the release of the movie Virus starring Dustin Hoffman.''

asked to a Steinbeck biographer Jay Parini by drunk person. "Steinbeck knew he was good, didn't he? I mean, he really, really knew he was good!''

asked to a Steinbeck biographer by same drunk guy. "that Steinbeck, he was a real sonovabitch wasn't he? I real sonavabitch!''

asked to Toni Morrison in New York City (during the middle of a Q and A): "Can I read you some of my poems right now?''

“J-Dog’’ launches book tour: Jonathan Franzen and Freedom at the Capitola Book Cafe

It’s hard to believe nine years have passed since I saw Jonathan Franzen read from The Corrections at the Book Café. He was so much more of a performer this time, and relaxed enough not to take offense when someone shouted out "Go, J-Dog" right when he approached the podium. There was a distinctly local flavor to the reading, his very first for this book tour and his only Bay Area book store appearance. His friend Claudia Sternbach introduced him by sharing a funny, rueful story about giving him some advice before The Corrections came out.

“I told him that my book had sold dozens of copies and it didn’t really change my life all that much.’’

Of course, The Corrections went on to sell three million copies, win a National Book Award for fiction and end up at the center of an Oprah’s Book Club kerfuffle. Last time around, Franzen seemed ill at ease with all that attention, and the reading was a little stiff. This time he claimed to be so nervous that he appealed to the audience for a way out:

“It’s a little bit like the NFL pre-season but the starter can’t come out after the first quarter. Should I even do the reading?’’

Of course, the willful Santa Cruz audience refused to let him wiggle out of it, and he delivered a reading so powerful that I wondered if the pre-amble was a put-on to mess with expectations. The reading itself seemed to use that rhetorical trick. I’m not going to put any spoilers in here, but I’ll just say that he read a long section from Freedom that started light --- with a funny, expository section leading to a scene of violence, followed by a betrayal. The satirical humor of the first section took on a corrosive edge by the time he was finished. The effect made me uncomfortable. It's hard to pull off a reading with that emotional range, especially considering he hadn't read publicly from the book at all this year.

Often, at bookstore Q and A sessions, at least one person in the audience asks an off-kilter question that makes you do a double-take. At a recent Gary Shteyngart reading, someone asked him something completely incomprehensible involving the trading and raising of sheep across international borders. You should have seen the look on his face. But this time all questions were on point. One person asked Franzen about his reported misgivings about the title.

“Freedom is a good old word that’s kind of been misused for political purposes,’’ he said. “If you don’t have a question mark or scare quotes around it, it is an incredibly pompous seeming title. It seemed self important – and gave me something to write towards."

Someone asked him that old Q and A chestnut – do you have any words of advice for a young, struggling writer -- and he came up with a great answer.

“Be prepared for the struggle,’’ Franzen told him. “Read lots and lots of books. Good writing gets internalized. Sentences become less mysterious and daunting. Find someone who will be really, really hard on your prose while still loving the writer.’’

In closing, he was asked “What gives you the courage to commit to a premise, shut off the (inner) critic and begin writing. ‘’

He responded, “The critic is not shut off at the early stages. Right from the first page, it starts rejecting every attempt out of hand, with insults to the writer. Sometimes you can get that critic to shut up for 20 or 30 pages. One tries to be friendly with that critic. I’ve gone as far as I can with that metaphor.’’

The end of Barnes and Noble?

I heard they were hurting, but this story about my neighborhood Barnes and Noble (two moves ago, I used to live just a few subway stops away from this) took me by surprise.

Wearing a hat this week

I just went to one of those 'cheap haircut' strip-mall places. Bad move. It looks like someone worked me over with a Rototiller.

I'm going to try to fix this when I get home (with a couple of mirrors and culinary scissors.)

Jonathan Franzen poses in front of decrepit barn

Time Magazine recently ran a cover story that (coincidentally) showed Jonathan Franzen posing in front of a barn that I wrote about in one of my recent stories. Incidentally, he'll be speaking at Bookshop very soon.

"We don't sell dank.'' (Reruns, part two.)

My eccentric neighborhood has some of the most unusual signs I've seen in a long while. Here is my latest sampling. The words are unchanged but the italics are all mine.

This is from two signs hanging up at the Daljeet's Boutique.

"No photos. No brats. No cellphones. no restroom so don't ask. No loitering. This is not the place to eat your pizza, tie your shoes, smoke whatever you smoke or hang out.''

Wow! Thanks, Daljeets, for making us all feel so cozy and welcome. And here's another one, from the Cannabis Company: "We don't see weed, bud, herb, dank, ganja, trees, or marijuana, and not even reefer. We don't know where you can get some. Thanks for reading, and welcome to the Cannabis Company.''

Well, that just about covers it, although they didn't mention green bud or fat nuggs. And here's one more sign, at Murio's Trophy Room. I'm wondering if an over-vigilant bartender put it up there:

"If you look under 125, be prepared to show I.D.''

PVHS Reunion at MotoArt

Had a great time at the PVHS reunion. Still, I sensed I was growing older when my father, who drove me to the event, walked into the venue and asked if we were in the right place -- and someone came up to him and asked if he was part of my graduation class! (My Dad just turned 84 years old.) It was great to catch up with everyone, and the venue looked like a bit of Soma right in the middle of Torrance, CA. It was part aircraft hangar, part art gallery, with bits of airplane rejiggered as furniture, sculpture, etc.

Had to cut out earlier than expected after imbibing a mysterious libation known as a "Sea King.'' Will not confirm or deny rumors that my parents drove me home from this event.

Revenge of the microphone: Gary Shteyngart at Bookshop Santa Cruz

The microphone kept cutting out on Gary Shteyngart during his informal Q and A this week at Bookshop Santa Cruz. “Technology hates me, obviously,’’ the 38-year-old author and writing professor explained. The danged thing cut out three times.

The world of gadgetry has every reason to despise Mr. Shteyngart. His new book, Super Sad True Love Story, is a funny, scathing response to shortened attention spans, the waning of books and reading, and the dominance of the digital world. In his new novel, reading is so marginalized that people think books smell like unwashed feet, and sometimes spray them to conceal their odor. Instead of reading, the people of SSTLS check in regularly with their apparat, a gizmo that, among other things, helps people log onto the Web, keep tabs on their health and broadcast their “hotness’’ rankings. To prepare himself for this book, Mr. Shteyngart broke down and got an iPhone. “It pings all the time with useless information all day long,'' he said. While Shteyngart said he had no problem with digital reading devices, he fears that books “are becoming yet another file that gets transmitted through the air like so many millions of other things.’’ Reading, he said, requires “a huge act of empathy” and emotional commitment, which is becoming increasingly difficult '‘when all day long we are being bombarded with little packets of information.’’

According to Shteyngart, his new book is not a cautionary glimpse into the world of tomorrow.

“Speculative fiction is not about the future,’’ he explained. “It’s about where we are right now.''

(I chose this illustration because it looks vaguely like the bear on the cover of his first book.)

Reunion stripper

I found that link I was talking about in a previous entry. Could hardly believe this. She hired a stripper to go to a reunion in her place last year -- and had the stripper wired with an earpiece so she could give offstage directions!

I think the big running joke from this 'documentary' is that people always look so different at reunions anyhow (so how would someone really know if it wasn't you?)

This person grew up in the same town as me but technically it wasn't the same high school (I think her high school was a temporary merging of my high school and a rival nearby high school, unless I'm mistaken ...)

Anyhow, looking forward to my own reunion -- if any PVHS friends are out there reading this, would you let me know if you're going?

Formerly Hot book

Enjoyed reading this article about a college classmate's book, which creates a new demographic. I don't know Stephanie very well but I wish her success with this.

Politically correct used cars

In my new hometown, "used cars'' is considered an offensive expression, and highly insensitive.

In fact, there's a car lot, two blocks away from me, in which the words "used cars'' cannot be found anywhere on the parking lot or on the merchandise.

Instead, there are little stickers on the windshields saying "this car has been previously loved.''

My new Author's Photo.

Here it is.

You'll notice that I'm not smiling in this one either.




The photographer is Carolyn Lagatutta.

Going to my high school reunion

I've only been to one before in my life. Determined not to look at any of the name tags and see if I can recognize everybody.

There is an outside chance that I will have a most unusual chaperone (or driver) for this particular event.

By the way, I just stumbled across this crazy story about a woman who went to the same high school as me, but instead of going to her 10th reunion, she hired a stripper to go in her place! Wondering if this is a true story. Personally, I don't think I'd get away with doing something like that.

Yarnbombing in Santa Cruz?

Thank you to Helene, who wondered if my Fuzzy Tree (see below) is part of the Yarnbombing trend. Check this out.