CULTUREPHILE: PORTLAND ARTS

Wordstock 2010

Wordstock 2010: David Rakoff & Steve Almond

The funny guys

Posted by: Geoff Earl on Oct 12, 2010 at 04:50PM 2 Comments

While some authors demurely read the words as they appeared in their books, authors David Rakoff and Steve Almond performed. Before each author took the stage, there was a buzz-band atmosphere. While the excitement preceding Almond’s act was aided by his pairing with Throwing Muses leader Kristen Hirsch, the cult of Rakoff was in full effect (to be clear, at Wordstock, anything more than silent wandering counts as nervous anticipation).

Upon being introduced, Almond, a t-shirt and leather jacketed aging punk rocker and former Boston University lit prof, walked onto the stage as though he was at a cocktail party. He began reading a short story from his book, Rock & Roll Will Save Your Life, titled “Reluctant Exegesis: All Out of Love,” the story of young lust sent awry by the cheesy Air Supply classic. As Almond read, the song was supposed to be cued from offstage. This did not happen, and as Almond repeated the lines that would cue the song, still nothing happened, so he ad-libbed until “I’m lying alone with my head on the phone/thinking of you till it hurts” finally emanated from the PA speakers. Like a pro, Almond didn’t miss a beat.

A short time later, David Rakoff emerged on the main stage, a tiny, ominous figure whose eyes shone from dark, menacing depressions under the brow of a clean-shaven, pale dome. Behind him stood the big, blue digitized expanse of the Wordstock banner, causing him to look like some James Bond villain addressing his minions.

Rakoff began by explaining how the book’s theme, “defensive pessimism,” was not so pessimistic after all. He then began to orate. “We were so happy. It was miserable,” he began, and flipped through the pages of his newest work, Half Empty, with the exaggerated urgency of an operatic star. Tension built and was released from the first lines of the book, and on through, until Rakoff reached the end of the weekend’s most energetic and entertaining performance.

Five things you missed.

1. You’ve never heard a more touching story about Metallica’s “Fade To Black.”

2. Steve Almond claims to have a “pet-like relationship with pot.”

3. David Rakoff’s defensive pessimism took form when he walked outside to use the pay phone (things were bad already) and looked up to see the first plane hit the World Trade Center.

4. Rakoff compares writing to “pulling teeth…from your dick.”

5. The word “sprightly” was uttered by David Rakoff twice in five minutes.

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Tags: Books, Talks, Lecture, Wordstock 2010

Wordstock 2010

Wordstock 2010: Kevin Sampsell vs. Willy Vlautin

Portland Authors on the Wordstock Stages

Posted by: Geoff Earl on Oct 12, 2010 at 02:00PM 0 Comments

I caught the sets of two Portland authors of recent acclaim at this weekend’s Wordstock 2010. Kevin Sampsell and Willy Vlautin have both been active locally since the early 1990s, their books take place in dark corners of the Pacific Northwest, and both wear almost exclusively plaid and denim.

I recently read Sampsell’s book, A Common Pornography. The author approaches awkward or disturbing subject matter with wry nuance. I’ve been a casual fan of Vlautin’s band Richmond Fontaine for years.

Sampsell dryly read from A Common Pornography, a memoir, of his adolescent and young adult years in the Tri-Cities area of Washington, and dark family secrets that are revealed upon his father’s death. Sampsell chose passages about his horny-yet-industrious younger self’s well-concealed collection of finely manicured pornography. Funny and revealing stuff, but earlier sections of the book (the dark secret stuff) are quite riveting, and would’ve better inspired the sparse 11 AM crowd to step toward the makeshift Powell’s store in the center of the auditorium. Sampsell closed out his session with bits of a new project; short chapters of Carver-esque voyeurisms of the private moments between lovers. It’ll be worth checking out when it hits the shelves.

I caught Willy Vlautin across the hall from the main stages in a small conference room dubbed the Weiden Kennedy Stage. Before cracking open his buzzed-over book, Lean on Pete, Vlautin discussed how his obsession with horse racing and regular attendance at Portland Meadows had provided the background for the book. He chose an early, defining section of the book. Vlautin’s narrative was natural, easy and personable. It would be a crime if he doesn’t narrate the audio book version of Lean on Pete. His Steinbeckian characters, as one would suspect with a low-level horse track story, are mostly down-and-out, and Vlautin affords them (aside from the innocent 15-year-old protagonist) some sympathy with forgiveness.

When Vlautin closed his copy_ Lean on Pete_, his protagonist was speeding down the highway, with no way to turn back, and his audience planning a trip across the hall to buy copies of Lean on Pete.

Two things you missed:

Despite many other authors’ struggles with finding the right agent, Willy Vlautin met his agent in a bar in London.

According to Vlautin, hangovers are for writing songs and clean living is for writing fiction.

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Tags: Books, Talks, Lecture, Wordstock 2010

Wordstock 2010

Wordstock 2010: Steven Johnson at the Bagdad Theater

A writer finds the source of all good ideas—and offers a few of his own

Posted by: Martin Patail on Oct 12, 2010 at 11:11AM 2 Comments

Steven Johnson’s lecture at the Bagdad Theater on Friday evening struck a critical blow to sensationalism and punditry on behalf of everything that is right and rational. Also, there was beer.

Johnson—a contributing editor for Wired and a frequent writer for the New York Times , Time magazine, and the Wall Street Journal —is the public intellectual we deserve. He neither complicated the story to appear more intelligent than his audience, nor did he dumb down important ideas, ranging freely from 18th century chemistry and Joseph Priestley’s dephlogisticated air to Sputnik and the invention of the GPS.

Johnson’s is not just a great story-teller, he is an incredibly ambitious thinker: 2006’s Everything Bad is Good For You, for one, turned the notion that popular culture makes you stupid on its head, arguing that “passive” experiences like video games might even make you smarter. But with his most recent book, Where Good Ideas Come From: A Natural History of Innovation (2010), Johnson has taken on the biggest idea of them all: the source of big ideas themselves.

Lest I butcher his argument, here it is in his own words… with silly pictures:

Johnson wants everyone to find an open and connected space where ideas can grow by themselves. More ideas come from open environments, he says, than from private, market-driven ones (though the latter, he admits, can be a powerful force in focusing intellectual energy).

As it turns out, one of the best open and connected spaces is one we already have in Portland in spades: Coffee shops.

Here are 5 things you missed:

1. A free, autographed, hardcover copy of his book. Need I say more?

2. Ideas start as hunches. Hunches eventually connect to other hunches, slowly evolving into great ideas. Hunches need time and space to grow.

3. Gutenberg was inspired to invent the printing press while drinking wine in the Alps.

4. The “Eureka moment” is a lie! Even though Darwin had the idea of natural selection fully-formed in his journals, it took him over six months to realize that it was the theory he needed.

5. How do you become a genius? Take notes. You will forget your hunches. Write them down and reread them so that someday they can change the world. (Drinking wine in the Alps can’t hurt, either.)

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Tags: Books, Talks, Lecture, Wordstock 2010

Wordstock 2010

Wordstock 2010: Jonathan Lethem

The Brooklyn-based bestseller takes us inside an alternate NYC

Posted by: Martin Patail on Oct 11, 2010 at 03:15PM 0 Comments

With slightly mussed hair, glasses, and a dark blazer over a blue Powell’s shirt, Jonathan Lethem almost looked more Portlander than Brooklynite on Saturday afternoon at the center stage. Certainly, Lethem seemed comfortable speaking to the sizeable crowd that filled up the seats in front of the Powell’s Books stage.

As well he should: the author of 8 novels (more than one bestseller and the latest voted the “Best Book of the Year” by the New York Times Book Review), he already has a large cadre of fans and undoubtedly made a few more in the course of his reading.

Intense and nearly frantic in his hilarity, Lethem read from 2009’s Chronic City, which takes place in a somewhat Kafkaesque version of New York City, or as he put it, in a city gone “strange around the edges”—replete with a bloodthirsty tiger running loose on the streets. The novel parallels his own conflicted relationship with the city: he is an exile, an outsider in his own hometown, forever drawn inward in the hopes to discovering its center.

He reads: The narrator, an aging child star coasting through life on his former fame, and his eccentric friends share a joint, desperately trying to figure out how to get rid of a nest of eagles that have made their home on an apartment ledge. (The scene ends with all three chanting “Blame the tiger! Blame the tiger!”) Then, fast-forwarding, the narrator is alone in his apartment, reflecting on his life and on the city, watching the birds on a distant, nameless church spire.

Lethem’s words are like fractals, forever resolving into yet more inexplicable shapes and colors, and I fail to do justice to their ability to enthrall. At one point during the reading, when music from another stage threatened to drown him out, Lethem seemed not to notice and neither did the crowd, both descending further into his mad and beautiful city.

Here are 5 things you missed:
1. Lethem is obsessed with what he calls the “inexpressibility of life”—those moments, things or places that cannot be boiled down to enough words, hard though he may try.

2. Lethem used to think that for fiction to be fiction, everything in it had to be fictitious (i.e. real places and people couldn’t exist in novels). He has long-since abandoned this idea.

3. Lethem saw Stars Wars 22 times in the summer of 1977.

4. Lethem writes very slowly.

5. Art is about intention, after all. Despite the complexity of his metaphors and the depth of his descriptive layering, Lethem is honest about what he means in his writing. He is an explainer, he says, who doesn’t hide behind “I don’t know what I meant there.”

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Tags: Books, Talks, Lecture, Wordstock 2010

Wordstock 2010

Wordstock 2010: Life Lessons from “Mortified” Performers (and the MAYOR)

To make your diary stand out from the pack: “Close every entry with an apt phrase from a Top 40 song”
—Colleen O’Mahony

Posted by: Georgia Perry on Oct 11, 2010 at 02:20PM 2 Comments

Mortified took center stage at the Bagdad Theater last Thursday night as part of the opening nights festivities of the 2010 Wordstock Festival.

The semi-regular event features performers reciting embarrassing diary entries and showing home movies circa 1985 which, as always, was at once hilarious and utterly, utterly…utterly tragic.

In addition to kicking off Wordstock 2010 (woo!) the night also featured Mayor Sam Adams in a one-on-one conversation (in front of the packed house at the Baghdad). Respectfully, the Mortified crew capped their questions at high school embarrassments. They did not ask Adams about a certain Beau, but they did show a photo of him dressed in drag sitting on a motorcycle in his high school parking lot. We’ll take it.

Here, without further adieu, are life lessons from our teenage selves, as told by the performers at Mortified:

How to train for becoming mayor of a major metropolitan city: “In high school I represented Afghanistan in the Model United Nations.”
-Mayor Sam Adams

On heterosexual dating from inside the closet: “I loved double dating.”
-Mayor Sam Adams

What to say in a book report on The Exorcist: “It’s not that scary because when people die, you can’t see it because it is a book.”
-Scott Kravitz

How to successfully talk to a boy on the telephone: “Make a list of topics to discuss if time lapses. When list is out, hang up.”
-Colleen O’Mahony

On higher education: “Was I simply not paying attention in school or did they skip the bit about the clitoris?”
-Sarah Hoopes

Definition of the word bar-mitzvah: “Thirteenth birthday, in Jewish.”
-Aleka Spurgeon-Heinrici

Definition of an awesome day: “Had bomb popsicles.”
-Tynan DeLong

On asking out a pretty girl: “Gain soldiers and develop a phat army to win her.”
-Tynan DeLong

On cutting edge technological advancements: “It is virtually impossible to get your lips to sync up with the lyrics of 80’s power ballads when you are using two VCR’s to edit with.”
-Shaun Parker

Mortified has chapters in a variety of cities, including Chicago, LA, and San Francisco, and features regular stage shows. The next shows in Portland will be Dec. 11 and 12 at the Mission Theater. Visit getmortified.com for more information.

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Tags: performance, Books, Talks, Lecture, Wordstock 2010

Wordstock 2010

Wordstock 2010: Philip Margolin

A former defense attorney talks bestsellers, Perry Mason, and serial-killer presidents

Posted by: Martin Patail on Oct 11, 2010 at 12:54PM 0 Comments

Philip Margolin has never been a starving artist. Philip Margolin has never suffered years of rejection from publishers and agents. Philip Margolin does not doubt himself. Philip Margolin does not have writer’s block. Philip Margolin is the Chuck Norris of books.

Indeed, while other writers recounted their long and agonizing trek to the top of the literary world, Margolin’s easy-going talk on Saturday on the Wieden + Kennedy stage was all about royalty checks and midday phone calls with Whoopi Goldberg. His career began as easily as this: he wrote a book and gave it to an agent friend of his. Published!

Margolin, 66, is excited, funny and extremely likable, frequently joking about his career and his uncanny success. Before devoting himself full-time to writing in 1995, Margolin was a criminal defense attorney who even once argued a case in front of the U.S. Supreme Court. Now, in the great tradition of Scott Turow and John Grisham, Margolin writes legal thrillers—the kind that invariably appear on the New York Times bestseller list and in airport gift shops.

His 15th and most recent book, Supreme Justice (2010), is the second part of a trilogy based on the following premise: What if the President were a serial killer?

What if, indeed.

Here are 5 things you missed:

1. Margolin’s career as a defense attorney was “pretty much exactly like Perry Mason’s. Except that all of Perry Mason’s clients were innocent.”

2. His ambition to be a writer started by trying to solve the perennial question, “How do you fill up 500 pages with words?”

3. The ending is the most important part of the story and Margolin will not write a single word until he knows what it is.

4. Margolin will not answer questions concerning “the rumors about me and Lindsay Lohan.”

5. Margolin once wrote a murder mystery that began with the words, “It was a dark and stormy night.” The Shyamalan twist? The butler did it.

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Tags: Books, Talks, Lecture, Wordstock 2010

Wordstock 2010

Wordstock 2010: The Book Fair

Culturephile Guest Blogger Geoff Earl looks at books, bags some schwag, and gets writing advice at the Oregon Convention Center.

Posted by: Geoff Earl on Oct 11, 2010 at 11:32AM 0 Comments

This weekend, the enormous the Oregon Convention Center hosted the literary set at the Wordstock 2010 book fair. Wordstock played out over three rock-star sized stages for readings, a Powell’s book spread for signings, and throngs of booths and tables, with occupants hawking literary journals, wildlife, children’s and cook books, MFA programs and gadgets to alleviate writer’s block (apparently a wooden block with letters carved into it will do the trick—for $17), literacy, libraries, and bibliophilia of all sorts.

I looked around the high-ceilinged room and panicked, realizing that I’d forgotten to finish my novel.

Like most other Wordstalkers, I was just another aspirant to the writing life. We were on our search to see what kind of magic successful authors employ to make a book with one’s name on it appear on enough bookstore shelves to enable the struggling writer quit his or her day job and introduce oneself as “an author,” and to see what real authors looked, acted and sounded like when reading their own work. There were also nuts-and-bolts panels on artist representation, long-form journalism, short story writing, writing the supernatural and selling the movie rights.

Things I gleaned from a panel: Investigative journalism is dead (from a very cynical Ted Rall), we all need editors and agents (Larry Colton and his agent and editor) and the more time I spend sitting in a chair and typing, the better I’ll get (everyone). I decided to attend the movie rights discussion next year.

I left Wordstock with the following items: an information packet for the MFA program at Pacific University, a pencil with typetrigger.com on it, a C-SPAN tote bag (cool until I realized it said Comcast on the other side), submission guidelines for The Grove Review and more bookmarks than I will ever need. I successfully resisted temptation at the McSweeney’s table, but fell victim at the Tin House booth. How could I pass up a $20 subscription?

Overall, the $10 admission fee was well spent. I don’t think I sat through a bad reading. Some were well-rehearsed performances, while others were more like conversations about subjects I didn’t know I cared so much about. I exited Wordstock with a list of must-reads: Lean on Pete (Willy Vlautin); Kevin Sampsell’s yet-unnamed project; Half Empty (David Rakoff); Rock & Roll Will Save Your Life (Steve Almond); Bordersongs (Jim Lynch), War Is Boring (Matt Bors).

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Tags: Books, Talks, Lecture, Wordstock 2010

Wordstock 2010

Wordstock 2010: Timothy Egan

Timothy Egan talks conservation, the Dust Bowl, and “history at the margins.”

Posted by: Martin Patail on Oct 11, 2010 at 04:48AM 0 Comments

Timothy Egan, who appeared on Sunday before an eager crowd at the Powell’s Books stage, is the author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning How Race Is Lived in America: Pulling Together, Pulling Apart (2002) and The Worst Hard Time: The Untold Story of Those Who Survived the Great American Dust Bowl (2005). Big subjects with big characters, to be sure. But Egan’s interest is not in the towering hero, but in the unassuming men and women backstage, whose bravery too often goes untold.

An articulate and passionate speaker, Egan is, in his own words, an “accidental historian.” A journalist by training, Egan backed into the stories when he became interested in “history at the margins.” This marginal history moves center stage, and Egan delights in showing how small groups of people and individuals can change the course of history for all.

And not without effect. During the question and answer period, one woman stood up to thank him for writing The Worst Hard Time: her father had been an Oki, a Dust Bowl refugee in Oregon, who had never been willing to talk about the hardship and suffering he had endured. Only when his family read Egan’s descriptions of horrifying dust storms, death, and mass starvation (based on dozens of extensive interviews with survivors) did they begin to understand why.

Egan spent the bulk of his time talking about the subject of his most recent book, The Big Burn: Teddy Roosevelt and the Fire That Saved America, which recounts the creation—and salvation—of our national public forest system. It was not only the formidable power and influence of Teddy Roosevelt and Gifford Pinchot that preserved these lands for the public, but a small group of men in a massive Idaho forest fire whose heroism massed public support behind the idea of conservation.

Here are 5 things you missed:

1. “Dust lunacy trials” were held in the Dust Bowl for parents who felt they could no longer take care of their children because of the constant misery and starvation.

2. Gifford Pinchot, pioneer conservationist and first Chief of the Forest Service, once wrestled Teddy Roosevelt naked. He remarked later, “I had the distinct pleasure of knocking the future president on his ass.”

3. For years after his lover’s died, Pinchot held séances and communed nightly with her spirit, even confessing to his mother that he had married her ghost at one point.

4. While covering the Yellowstone fire for the New York Times in 1988, Egan had a very close call with an explosive blaze that swept into camp.

5. Egan on the wisdom of fighting wildfires in certain areas: “I don’t think anyone should have to do saving someone’s summer home.”

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Tags: Books, Talks, Lecture, Wordstock 2010

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Wordstock 2010

Culturephile picks a few can’t-misses.

Posted by: The Culturegang on Oct 08, 2010 at 12:30PM 0 Comments

Wordstock 2010 actually began on Monday, when, with minimal fanfare and maximum wit, playwright Lee Blessing settled into a chair on Reed College’s Mainstage Theater, and read his entire lighthearted monologue masterpiece, Chesapeake. This weekend, the word-slinging continues, with an assortment of events, guest authors, and undoubtedly, new books to browse, buy, and get signed. As cloudy weather closes in, you know you’ll be looking for something to snuggle up and read. Might as well let this weekend’s Wordstock whet your appetite.

FRIDAY

Literary Feast

Finally, your chance to rub erudite elbows and exchange ink-stained handshakes with Portland’s literati! You never know whom you might see! That said, please schmooze responsibly. Resist the urge to slip someone a mickey and pitch your manuscript.

SATURDAY

Kristin Hersh

Hey. Songwriting is writing, too. Lest you have any doubt, I submit the ragged vocals and cryptic phrases of Ms. Hersh, formerly of Throwing Muses. We’re uncertain whether she’ll be singing or speaking, but regardless, the presentation should provide a compelling sample of her style.

David Rakoff

David Rakoff’s exceptional wit and deft storytelling have graced the pages of Vogue, Salon, Wired and GQ (writer-at-large, even), and likely wafted from your speakers as you listen to This American Life. He’s won the Lambda Book Award for Humor—twice. Rakoff also played a key role in the production of The New Tenants, which won the 2010 Oscar for Best Live Action Short Film. But through it all, Rakoff perseveres, his signature cynicism intact. As the first like of Rakoff’s newest collection of essays, Half-Empty, attests, “We were so happy. It was miserable.”

www.thedailyshow.com

SUNDAY

The Long Story

PoMo writer Zach Dundas sits in for editor Randy Gragg to discuss the many considerations that go into long-form narrative journalism with Joel Lovell, senior editor at GQ.

Emily Chenoweth

In May of 2009, a mere year after filing this lovely garden feature with PoMo, Emily Chenoweth released her debut novel, Hello Goodbye, on Random House. The story of a terminally ill mother bidding farewell to her college-age children at a summer resort purportedly strums the proverbial heartstrings like a ukelele.

Willy Vlautin

As the leader and songwriter of Portland’s Richmond Fontaine, Willy Vlautin has produced nine albums of stories set to an Americana soundtrack. Since the release of The Motel Life in 2006, Vlautin has been equally effective as a novelist. Since then he’s produced two more books, Northline (20008) and his latest, Lean on Pete.

Vlautin employs plainspoken prose and sentimental treatment of down-and-out survivors struggling to eke out a life in the decaying and forgotten corners of the American West. His work has inspired critics to call him “the secret love child of Raymond Carver and Flannery O’Connor” and suggest that if “McMurtry, Johnson, McGuane, and Carver need a fifth to make up a literary five-a-side team, they need look no further than Willy Vlautin.” Did we mention the comparisons to Steinbeck?

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Tags: Books, Talks, Lecture, Wordstock 2010

Wordstock ’10:
Select Quotes from Lee Blessing

The Minnesota playwright shows his gift for witty asides.

Posted by: Anne Adams on Oct 05, 2010 at 10:00AM 0 Comments

Last night at Reed College, playwright Lee Blessing delivered a live reading of his one-man play, Chesapeake, providing a tie-in to Profile Theater’s season, which features 12 Blessing works, and a kickoff to Wordstock 2010.

Chesapeake, an absurd-yet-poignant play in which a performance artist, bedeviled by a senator who wants to cut his funding, dies and is reincarnated as his arch-enemy’s dog. From his new canine vantage point, the artist is able to observe his enemy’s humanity, cut the guy a break, and ultimately save his life. All the while, the narrator keeps the material lively via voice impressions and witty quips. It’s a tall order to ask of an actor, but Blessing defended his right to do so last night, bursting with as many witty quips and asides between scenes, as within them.

By way of introduction: “This is something halfway between a performance and a reading—a perfreaming?”

At intermission: “Smoke ’em if you got ’em.”

About Acting: “I did acting in college, so maybe I thought I wanted to be an actor for about a nanosecond.”

Regarding his body of work: “You know, like any playwright, I like them ALL!”

On Chesapeake: “I thought it would be very interesting, if somebody came back to life as the dog of their worst enemy. I got very excited when I realized I could kill my protagonist at the act break.”

On Fortinbras: “No play that’s ever been written, needs more help than Hamlet. Fortinbras is this very ignorant man of action. I wrote this during the Bush era.”

On Performance Art: “You know, it’s like downhill skiing: I admire it from afar, but I’d be terrified to try it.”

About pets: “Philosophically, I can accept the concept of cats….”

On his craft: “I mostly just write plays to make people feel better.”

Profile Theater, which devotes each of its seasons to a single prolific playwright, is currently hosting Great Falls, with several other productions to follow. For a complete schedule, visit the Profile Theater website. Or for a more comprehensive list of upcoming events, visit the Arts & Entertainment Calendar anytime!

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Tags: Books, Talks, Lecture, Wordstock 2010