I read from my work in a bookstore last week. First “in-person” event since pre-pandemic times.
Eleven people in the audience. Five really, once you subtract the bookstore clerk
(who was wonderful!), the two friends who came with us, two little kids who were soon let loose,
and my wife. So, five.
When I taught composition courses one of the guiding principles we were supposed to imprint on our students was the importance of audience. As in, knowing who your audience was so that you could convince them of whatever it was you were trying to convince them of.
I don’t think very much, not at all really, about who my audience is, who might be reading whatever it is I’m writing, or what I’m trying to convince them of, beyond continuing to read. I follow my nose.
The one novel I wrote took more years to write than can accurately be counted. Maybe twenty years between when I started and finished. My son Macklin read it. For many years he was the only one who read it and I considered him my best, and only, reader. Possibly some of the editors sent I it to read some of it, but it was hard to tell. Ten years after I finished it, it was published. Not many people have read it.
One anecdote I always take comfort in comes from Terry Tempest Williams. She told about the time she had a reading in New York City (if I am remembering this correctly) and not one single person showed up. As she was walking out, down a grand staircase, a man appeared for the reading. Possibly he was homeless. But he had come for the reading. She sat down and read to him.
Once my climbing partner and I climbed Longs Peak in Colorado but were to descend by a different route, on the trail which we had never been up. A guy we met near the top told us that there were little spots of paint that looked like fried eggs that marked the trail. Or not, he said, just follow your nose.
Aside: when my wife read my novel, she asked, “Who wrote this?” Which I took as a compliment.
Another aside: The difference between teaching composition and teaching creative writing is that no students want to be in a composition course. In a creative writing class all the students want to be there.
Once Macklin told to me not to worry, that after I died, he would take good care of my library of mountaineering books. Predeceased. What a shitty word that is.
I suppose my ideal audience is someone who shares my interests, but is actually a little smarter than I am. That way I can aim higher.
But a triumph in writing is when you win over the reader with whom you have absolutely nothing in common with. I don’t know anything about playing video games, much less designing them. Yet, I absolutely loved Gabrielle Zevin’s Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow. The bottom line is that it was about humans.
I have friend who was inviting “friends” on social media to ask, just ask, for a free copy of his recent book. Which is a really, really fine book. Wonderless, by Shelby Raebeck.
One time I agreed to do a reading at The Eagle River Nature Center. The day of the reading there was a heavy snow. The center requires a twelve-mile drive down a two-lane that wouldn’t be plowed. I drove out there, a fool’s errand. My friends Andrea and Ben and their infant child, Uly, showed up, and I read to them, and only them. After the reading was over it was almost dark–afternoon in Alaska in the winter–and still snowing, but I skied out to the bench that commemorates Macklin and shared some quiet moments with him.
Steve Almond once wrote an essay, “Camoin Among the Savages,” about one of my mentors François Camoin, who was giving away his books out of a cardboard box in the trunk of his car.
After he died I went to his apartment to retrieve some of his things. I found three of my books there: Physics and Philosophy by Werner Heisenberg, Cuchama and Sacred Mountains by Evans-Wentz, and Already Deadby Denis Johnson. The Johnson book gnawed on by some dog or other.
One of the very best literary events I ever attended was a reading by Terry Tempest Williams at the Capitol Theatre in Salt Lake City upon the publication of her masterpiece, Refuge: an Unnatural History of Family and Place. The Theatre is elegant and historic and seats 1,800. That night overflowing with adoring fans. There was feeling of shared exhilaration and celebration. I was happy for her. I was happy for art.
We lost my friend Ben this summer. I have read three of his novels, all unpublished. One was contracted to be published, but the publisher folded before it could happen; one was just too bleak. The last one just too crazy, although may be his best.
Steve, we’re all among the savages. Steve! We are the savages.
Last week I read a great essay about returning to old work. The author had written a novel and he couldn’t get it published; eventually he salvaged a part of it as a short story. The rest he abandoned and the essay was about living with this choice. I looked up the short story collection in which the salvaged story ended up. The collection was published in 2015. It had exactly zero Amazon reviews/star ratings. I wanted to weep. I ordered the book immediately.
Following your nose only works if you already pretty much know what you’re doing. In mountaineering and writing.
So, I had a very close friend in grad school who I inexplicably lost track of. Completely. No one we might have known in common had any idea where he was. In the acknowledgments at the end of my first book, I thanked him and parenthetically pleaded, Where are you, man? I was fairly sure he had given up both academia and writing. Like me, he has generic whitebread name. I googled him twice a year. For thirty years. He has zero on-line presence. Two weeks ago I got a snail mail letter from him. It may as well have come from outer space. We are reunited after thirty years.
How did you find me? I asked.
Instead of just entering your name, he said, I added the word “writer,” and there you were.
I’m admitting to you now how happy this made me.
And those five people who came to my reading? They were lovely. I am so grateful for them.
