I’m writing this from Charlottesville, VA, site of the annual Virginia Festival of the Book. What an impressive event! The kind that does give one hope for the future of reading and writing.
Charlottesville has been hospitable to writers for many years. (In the spirit of full disclosure, I came here many years ago to work with Peter Taylor, one of the great story writers of the 20th century.) But in recent years that congeniality has created quite a remarkable community of writers of every description. And the Festival of the Book now involves hundreds of authors, and many, many readings, panels, book sales, etc.
It’s true that most of the crowds I’ve seen milling through the various bookstores, hotels, and other venues are people in their 30s and up. Very few younger people are in evidence. And of course this is my great and abiding worry: that the coming generations are so distracted by the temptations of videos, ipods, text messaging, and so on, that they don’t learn the skill (and joy) of quiet contemplation, of settling down with a book or journal for a long spell of imaginative engagement.
If you’ve read this far, however, it’s probably not to hear me bewail another aspect of cultural despair, but to find out where “childhood fantasies” comes into it. Sorry–it’s pretty tame. At the reading I gave yesterday from my book of stories, Year of Fire, Mitzi asked whether there was anything “more interesting” she could say by way of introduction than the standard bio I’d supplied. Meaning, naturally enough, that my life is singularly un-so.
I replied that, since this was a fiction reading, she might mention that I’d once played right field for the Detroit Tigers. She looked at me rather strangely. But bless her, she did it, more or less straight. Well, giggling a bit.
Ah, virtual reality. This is a close as I’ll ever come to fulfilling the dream of following in the cleats of Al Kaline. It’ll have to be close enough.