Rick Simonson

After Words: Ursula & Pico
May 5, 2008

Last Wednesday's (April 30) note about Ursula Le Guin made mention of some other goings-on that same evening in Seattle. Not being able to be all places at once, I do make attempts at doting about.

Ursula's April 29 evening at Elliott Bay for her new novel, Lavinia (Harcourt), was compelling - and attended enough - that I did stay the course, being on hand as the signing wound down, chairs put away, sound system put in its place, people chatted with. An eye on the clock, though, I bid a somewhat early good night and thanks - there was still last stock to be signed - and set off I knew it was too late to check in on Alice Hoffman's reading at the Seattle Public Central Library - it had started thirty minutes before the one at Elliott Bay.

I did know there would be a chance of catching Pico Iyer and others at the reception for Seattle Arts & Lectures. He would have finished his speaking part for the two thousand assembled, a night a little out of the routine for an author otherise on tour for his new book on the Dalai Lama, The Open Road (Knopf). Stipulations of the Arts & Lectures evenings are that it be new material, or perhaps more accurately, material newly presented. They don't want an author 'simply' reading from the book.

Indeed, by the time I legged it up the hill to Benaroya Hall (more often the home of the Seattle Symphony), the reception was going full-bore. Dinner, such as I would know it this evening, was there in the form of finger food and hors d'ouerves. People were there to be visited with and chatted. I was accused of making for hard choices: Alice Hoffman and Ursula K. Le Guin and political writer Howard Fineman (holding forth at Town Hall Seattle) all this same evening. The first two, I could at least point out, had other appearances going the next night. No holding us (Elliott Bay) strictly to account - this all with smiles.

When at last the receiving line receded and I had a chance to visit with Pico, his being decked out in a suit was the first source of comment. He has read for each of his eight previous books, except for his debut (Video Night in Kathmandu), in the years of his writing and our presenting authors. Our banter this evening was kept short - there were others yet waiting - and it was left that he was coming to the store to visit - and shop - the next morning. The one thing I told him was that I had spent the evening elsewhere - with Ursula Le Guin at our place. To that, Pico Iyer all but lit up, She's my hero.  There was an anecdote quickly told about when he was fourteen.

Wow, I thought, leaving, we all have our formative influences when we are young. But how about ones like Pico Iyer had had? Remembering thirty-five or so years later, something about Ursula Le Guin, and, as written of in his new book, all of these family-referenced contacts and context with the Dalai Lama ... 

The next morning it soon is and Pico is in, having his eyes on our shelves - noting especially the handwritten notes in the 'staff recommended' section - the largest such he's seen, he says.

Authors on tour can generally (if too broadly) be divided in two ways - those whose total focus while they're out is on their own work - how it's doing, how it's being received, numbers of people, numbers sold - all understandable pretty much any way one looks at it. Then there are the others who, while not disregarding their own work and its place in the universe, seem avid and curious about other books, who's reading what, what is of interest. I will always remember Michael Ondaatje coming by once, hours before he would be reading, asking if we had yet gotten our first shipment of W.G. Sebald's The Rings of Saturn in yet from New Directions. I remember that if I hadn't taken Sebald's work yet to heart, after that I most certainly would, and did.

At our place, some of these writers say they tend to find things they might not readily elsewhere. Pico has this list of books he'll say we put him onto that he otherwise wouldn't - a list that surprises me. But, that is what we do. This day's visiting is no different - we talk over books we both know, and exchange views on some one or the other of us doesn't yet know. At a point, we bid each other farewell - he'll do his final choosing and shopping on his own - and I go back to my lair.

This story could or would be over, but that at day's end, I was running about, ultimately headed for the University Bookstore. Through some miscalculation, we were short on copies of Lavinia. Our friends at the University, which would be having Ursula the following (April 30) evening, kindly fronted us some. The stipulation of such arrangements is generally that 'borrowed' books be replaced in time. Alas for us, our local source, Partners West, was out of stock at the moment. We did some quick-shopping at store elsewhere to replenish and replace. It was almost literally as Ursula and her husband Charles and Vonda N. McIntyre were all coming in - as they had at our place twenty-four hours before - that I arrived at the University with the returned goods.

There was surprise in the greeting - in seeing me there, certainly. I was glad for the chance encounter - having meant, but forgotten, to thank Ursula for the terrific piece she'd written, "Staying Awake: Notes on the Alleged Decline of Reading," for the February 2008 issue of Harper's. That piece had been much-talked of within book circles. The other thing I got to do was pass along Pico Iyer's compliments and praise and envy that I had seen her. Hearing Pico's name mentioned, Ursula lit up - the same glow of alert enthusiasm I'd seen with Pico the night before. Mutual respect and admiration all the way around - and I don't believe they yet have met.

So the greetings circulate ... something else that's part of the work.

One other Ursula K. Le Guin note: in case this gets overlooked when Salman Rushdie is more evident and about with the U.S. release of his new novel, The Enchantress of Florence (Random House). One of the big praising reviews over in the U.K. was that by Ursula in The Guardian. Come full circle time: thirty-two or thirty-three years ago, she was perhaps the first widely recognized writer to anoint Salman Rushdie with praise, that for his 1975 debut, Grimus.

Posted by Rick Simonson on May 5, 2008 | Comments (0)