Rick Simonson

no hurry
August 31, 2007

As the calendar page is turned to September, the onset of autumn is still three full weeks away. From the look of some shipments in receiving - next Tuesday's Random House, for one - it looks rather as though fall begins the day after Labor Day. Indeed, if the orchestration goes as scripted, Bill Clinton's sophomore effort as author gets the Oprah touch that day, and we all can start selling Giving. Something tells me it won't be long before there is scrutiny as to how many move how quickly, the calls, the tracking. This book, and soon many another. Off and away we'll be.

More on that in time. The last weeks of August, besides seeing the bustle of travelers and vacationers, loading up, setting off for remote places in wilderness here, or heading back home, there has been some season-ending tidying and preparations for what's to come.

Part of the preparing isn't for the fall sales season, but the buying - and the requesting of authors for readings and signings - for the season beyond, that which some New York houses deem as 'winter,' and others, the very same months, as 'spring.'

For some of us, the process of requesting authors has become the complex navigation of excel spreadsheets where a few publishers are concerned (one wonderful publisher decided to add excel to its mix this season, but encountered a mess or two in the sending-out, in the process of which we all got to see everyone's request comments from seasons past.) All of that is to the good, making cases for cities and stores where an author might go, done on a scale that can accomodate the many of us who might propose and plea for such. Many of the authors in the months ahead will be here, in part, as a result of this process.

Last week, however, was a refreshing break from the increasingly elaborate business of proposing, of reporting, of various schematic strategies plotted out between New York office cubicules and back-counters of  bookstores 3,000 miles away - pleasant or necessary as that all can be. It was like some days all bookstores who host events have - locally cooked-up, the result of an over-the-counter chat or a phone call. And it was like the old days in that it was how many more of the readings then came to be, seemingly loosely conjured, then cobbled together with calls here and there (some of us used to remember all sorts of phone numbers, when this was how communicating happened, including a good number of New York publicists - now that is mostly email).

The week was a full one. New York did have a hand in some of it. Newly local writer Will North debuted his autobiographically-derived novel, The Long  Walk - this was brokered by his publisher, Shaye Arheart. Tess Uriza Holthe, who was here for her debut novel, When the Elephants Dance, did her own legwork in arranging and returning with a well-received book of stories, The Five-Forty-Five to Cannes (Crown).

Then, as it worked out, we had poets, local ones. Paul Hunter has been active locally as a poet and publisher for decades - he was here as poet, with a nice new collection, The Ripening. For another poet reading, Grant Jones, it was a sort of coming out. Forty-plus years after being one of Theodore Roethke's last poetry students at the University of Washington, Grant, a principal in an internationally-renowned landscape architect firm (that just happens to own and be in our building), read from his just-published first collection, What Rocks Know (Skookumchuck Press, if you're trying to track it down), to an audience that included some notable other architects and artists not often spotted at nights such as this. All of these nights had elements of pleasure, of surprise, of audience in a kind of communion - a nice feeling, all in all.

The capper of the week, though, might have been the week's first evening, when artist/poet Alan Chong Lau read poetry (a beautiful little chapbook, no hurry, from John Marshall and Christine Deavel/Open Books' Cash Machine Press) and prose, and was 'accompanied' (if that is the right word) by sound artist Susie Kozawa. She took up a whole side of the space with an array of items and objects which would be struck or played to make sound. Alan had a podium to do his part.

There was very much a sense of the present - the attention to be paid to the 'sound' helped collect/direct that energy or focus. Susie Kozawa is nationally noted for her work. But the evening also carried, lightly, its sense of the past. Alan was one of the very first writers to read at Elliott Bay, first doing so in 1985, when we were barely underway. He would have read many more times than he has over the years were he more prolific with the writing (he is an accomplished and widely exhibited artist, and a produce worker of note - see his book, Blues and Greens - at the renowned Uwajimaya supermarket). Alan has also played an extraordinary other role, only a little of it - as the literary editor of Seattle's International Examiner - being explicit, in helping cultivate, orchestrate, promote, and draw attention to the writing (and appearances) of Asian American writers (and other artists) over the decades. My introductions at readings, given extemporaneously, tend to have (hopefully brief) sideway excursions, thought of in the very moment: that night, acknowledgement was paid to Alan's role in this, pointing out that 20 years ago, there was no Asian American literary author - none - published by a large New York house (save Maxine Hong Kingston), that it was only the work of smaller, independent presses that kept any of it in alive or in print. There were others in the sizable audience that night - legendary bookseller David Ishii - that had played a part in this.

Nothing was said that night, but I remember this coming to a head, a tidal  seachange, in March, 1989, when in the same week, we had pioneering writer Hisaye Yamamoto with her book of stories, Seventeen Syllables and Other Stories, from Kitchen Table/Women of Color Press, and the very first public reading by Amy Tan for her landmark debut, The Joy Luck Club, edited and published by Faith Sale at Putnam. Both nights were very well-attended, had a great air of momentousness to them, thanks to all kinds of aid and assistance that Alan provided.

Alan's reading and Susie's 'sound' this night were perfect August night reminders of being wherever one is in time, less hurry or worry for the moment, for the seasons going and coming as they will.

Posted by Rick Simonson on August 31, 2007 | Comments (0)