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SLOW THE REVOLUTION
April 1, 2007

Sunday, April Fool's Day, a day for being here and there,  but not, today, anyway, at the store. There's no reading, either, though there is annually the temptation to announce a little in-store appearance by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (note to blogger gods: where are accents in this 'tool'?) and see how far it gets before someone realizes. Oh, April Fool's, right. One friend did get a call from her sister, saying she and their mother were en route from the east coast on a sudden visit. They were, she said, in the Chicago airport, due to be here by evening. That set my friend in motion - until a subsequent call came: it's April 1st.

One stop was made at the Henry Gallery, a city museum dedicated primarily to contemporary art. There author, critic, and activist Rebecca Solnit, a favorite, was booked for a packed, sold-out lecture. The size of the audience was heartening. We had her one time at Elliott Bay - a too-nice day (and she remembers something else afoot) - and the audience wasn't what it should have been. She's been shy on being up since, not sure if Seattle was for her and her books. It is, it is. She is one of the smartest, boldest, most original essayists at work.Pieces in The Guardian, Orion, and other publications get sent about. 

Henry program curator Fionn Meade, introducing her, made comparisons to W.G. Sebald, Lucy Lippard, and Susan Sontag. None of those is bad; I would have added John Berger. Though she hasn't published fiction she writes in stories, specifically pointed out the part stories as lore, as carriers of information play. Not that many are doing the kind of work she is.

Rebecca Solnit's books include A Book of Migrations, Savage Dreams, Wanderlust: A History of Walking, the National Book Critics Circle Award-winning River of Shadows: Eadweard Muybridge and the Technological Wild West, and A Field Guide to Getting Lost. A new book, Storming the Gates of Paradise: Landscapes for Politics, is due soon from California. One of my favorites is Hope in the Dark: Untold Histories, Wild Possibilities, put out by Nation Books. That book was a seed for this afternoon's talk, "Revolutions Per Minute: Radical Change and the Powers of Slowness."

It's a brilliant piece, hopefully to be read in the forthcoming Storming the Gates of Paradise. Tight, studied, anecdotal and analytical, it ranged into word roots and shows of hands ('who was in the streets for WTO?'). She found people, a Grace Lee Boggs of Detroit, now 90, to describe how they've seen change. There is an argument for the longer perspective, to be seen from the vantage of being rooted in a place (an argument a few such as Gary Snyder and Wendell Berry have truly lived and acted by). As for roots, the word 'radical' is etymologically connected to 'root.' And Solnit's riffs on 'revolution' are brilliant in and of themselves, showing how blithely the word gets tossed about without clarity as to actual meaning. Those looking for 'the revolution,' and obviously, not finding it's happened here, can lapse into a disappointed cynicism. Their model is something aking to the French Revolution, a sequence of events that most historians would write, have a finsite beginning and end. Meanwhile, the Industrial Revolution is one still with us, in the making, centuries along. Also her posing of context. Perhaps our revolution, if you want to say we get there, will be more indirect, our following along after the critical mass of our Latin American neighbors (many well along the way), have done so. She has a good historian's eye and a grasp of common perception. What is beyond comprehension at one point -- same-sex marriage - becomes something objected to, becomes something common, becomes something accepted, becomes something ho-hum. People of color on television, to cite a less substantial issue, but one that's out there in hearts and minds. The currently observed, but not truly new, food revolution is seen for how connected it is to other movements and drifts.

There was more. She is most certainly a writer to read and ponder. Another time, more of mine on some of what she raised. As one here thirty years, I was drawn to what she had to say about rootedness.

Last word, a busman's holiday lament (the part of me that never quite gets off-duty) - there was no one there selling her books! This was a crowd (largely an art one) that SHOULD be reading Rebecca Solnit. It was a large crowd at that. Apparently the bookstore affiliated with the Henry decided to take a pass. Oh, oh. Lost sales. Lost opportunities for people to hear - and then delve deeper by reading.

Posted by Rick Simonson on April 1, 2007 | Comments (0)