Anyone expecting a convention report from me during or even right after a convention should look at my never-quite-caught-up New York trip report here. Immediate reporting is not the forte of the department of laconic writing. I’m still trying to figure out what to say about J.G. Ballard’s death in April.
I hadn’t been to World Fantasy in three years. It’s a convention that I always enjoy, but this year’s felt larger and less comfortable than I remembered, maybe because the hotel floor that housed the events was a confusing labyrinth, and also because my getting there was difficult and I never felt caught up on sleep. There were people I knew would be there and had even communicated with ahead of time, but never saw them. But I did see a lot of old friends, including people from my Clarion West ’97 class, with whom I can always slip into easy familiarity. As usual, I spent much of my time sitting around talking to people about writing.
The highlight was meeting Zoran Zivkovic in person, after having corresponded via email for several years. I also got to meet Jill Roberts, from Tachyon, for whom I did interior design and layout for Carol Emshwiller’s novel, The Secret City.
The book bag contained some gems, including Leigh Brackett’s Sword of Rhiannon (which was the perfect read for the long flight home), and Tom Disch’s The Wall of America and The Word of God, from Tachyon. And some less desired objects, which I donated to the discard table.
My only scheduled event was a reading Friday morning. I read from The Painting and the City, a shorter version what I’ve been reading. I missed having Brady’s guitar-playing, but maybe next year in Columbus he can accompany me.
My friend Ben, from Texas, who’s now living in San Francisco and whom I hadn’t seen in five years, came over to San Jose for the evening on Friday; we had mediocre fish and chips with jazz combo at a place near the hotel. There was a small Vietnamese neighborhood a few blocks away with several excellent restaurants, which I unfortunately didn’t discover till Saturday afternoon.
And next year’s World Fantasy is an hour’s drive from my house.
Which is in San Jose, CA and is what I’m trying to get to but I’m stuck in the Columbus, OH airport (with free wireless). Assuming I get there, I’m giving a reading tomorrow (Friday) at 10:30.
The recent news that Barnes and Noble is closing its B. Dalton stores got me thinking back to when I worked at a Waldenbooks, starting in June 1984. B. Dalton and Waldenbooks were shopping mall bookstores, precursors to the giant chains of Borders and Barnes and Noble. I don’t know who (what corporate entity) owned B. Dalton then; KMart owned Waldenbooks.
At the time, these chains still carried actual books. The one where I worked was in Hancock Plaza (in Austin), an older, pre-mall shopping center, with stores facing an open-air courtyard. The store was much smaller than its fellow stores in the newer shopping malls, and the staff were not know-nothing mall-store employees. We actually liked and read books.
The store’s inventory was determined elsewhere, regional managers, or perhaps KMart accountants…but because the store was small, we had a lot of freedom to add extra books that didn’t appear in corporate lists. You could order books for the store but they rarely came. It worked better to treat them as special orders for a customer, and then put them on the shelf.
I discovered many writers while working there, reading things that shaped my current and later writing. Angela Carter’s Nights at the Circus, William Gibson’s Neuromancer, and J.G. Ballard’s Empire of the Sun all came out that year. Mark Helprin’s Winter’s Tale came out in 1983, and entered my life via a display of mass market paperbacks. I had read Ballard before Empire of the Sun (I think I started with the “Best of” collection), and I read Angela Carter’s Fireworks collection before Nights at the Circus. I also started reading Robert Coover during that period, but I lost interest in him quickly. Of those books, Neuromancer had the least influence for me. I liked it but it wasn’t what I wanted to write.
Carter and Ballard were much influenced by surrealist art, which was already an interest of mine. Helprin has more of a realistic style but with a magical feeling to everything…sure, call it magical realism. Would those be a big three of influences? I haven’t read anything of theirs in quite a while. It would be interesting to reread some things.
I’ve been listening to an advance copy of Sleepybird’s new cd, The Sadness Will Last Forever. It’s a stunning album, but one that takes several listens to absorb and comprehend, which was also the case with their previous, All Things Are Mine.
I’m reading this evening, 6:30 pm, at the Dayton Metro Library in New Lebanon, OH, 715 W. Main St., New Lebanon (937/496-8948). This is a low-key world premier multimedia experiment of words and music. I’ll read from The Painting and the City, accompanied by Brady Burkett on electric guitar.
And we’ll do it again later in the month, Saturday, October 24, 4 pm, at the Dayton Visual Art Center (DVAC), 118 N. Jefferson Street, Dayton, OH.
And in the googling oneself department…a new-to-me review of In Springdale Town from 2004, in Issue #269 of the journal of the SFRA (Science Fiction Research Association), available as a pdf.
From Michael Levy’s wrap-up of some small press publications:
“Robert Freeman Wexler’s quietly effective In Springdale Town from PS Publishing, concerns a peaceful New England village with a dark secret. The tale is beautifully written and reminded me a bit of the work of Elizabeth Hand. It received a rather odd mixed review in The NY Review of SF earlier this year which it didn’t really deserve, largely, I think, because the reviewer was offended by Lucius Shepard’s somewhat strange introduction.”
Conducted by Rose Fox and Josh Jaspter, after the reading at KGB in New York. Go here to see a transcript (the sound is pretty bad). The page also has a link to the video. Kaaron’s interview is first, then mine.
New review by Peter Tennant in Black Static 12 of The Painting and the City, part of a group of reviews of three other recent titles from PS. He says: “Wexler’s novel is uniquely his own, a slippery thing that, just when you think you’ve got a firm hold on it, is off somewhere else entirely.”
Day two, written some in the morning of day three, some the evening. That’s how it goes sometimes. I can’t blog when I’m not at a computer then, can I?
Day two was all about the reading (being which it was the reason for the trip). I didn’t feel like doing a lot during the day, and the heat made doing difficult. Walking, quick trip to Pearl River to look for children’s chopsticks (the kind with the little finger clip on one side). Merida is still too small for said clip, but apparently they keep growing. Children, not clips.
Then on to Pearl Paint (no relation) to get cartridges for my Parker fountain pen, and was astonished and disappointed to see how the pen department there has been decimated. And the man working there didn’t even know if they had cartridges and sent me down an aisle that didn’t have any. There were cartridges at the counter that may have fit, but I didn’t have my pen on me and didn’t feel like risking it. This is for my replacement-Parker, that I bought on Ebay for $25 after losing my other one in Austin, after World Fantasy, I think at the Flight Path Cafe but when I called the person didn’t know what a fountain pen was…a pen I had bought at Pearl Paint as a $10 close-out from the Pen Guy, who must still be taking care of pens somewhere if not at Pearl Paint. The Pen Guy would have known what cartridges to use. However, my replacement Parker came with an ink converter, but when I bought the first Parker, the Pen Guy told me that the barrel of the pen was too small for a converter. Could Pen Guy have been wrong?
At the time, these chains still carried actual books. The one where I worked was in Hancock Plaza (in Austin), an older, pre-mall shopping center, with stores facing an open-air courtyard. The store was much smaller than its fellow stores in the newer shopping malls, and the staff were not know-nothing mall-store employees. We actually liked and read books.
