4 aprilie 2008 - Part I

4 abril, 2008

A CAGE WENT IN SEARCH OF A BIRD, A CAR WENT IN SEARCH OF A SEATTLE BOOKSTORE: NORTHBOUND ON I-5

PART I

We had done one CURSE-&-BERATE bookstore event, on 7 february, 2008, with Looking Glass Books.

Looking Glass Books is a venerable 30+ years old bookstore which had moved from its downtown location due to ridiculous rent increases and the never-ending tearing up of streets for public transport strangling small retail businesses in central downtown Portland … essentially s. w.

We have history with Looking Glass Books.

We launched Gobshite Quarterly, back in February 2002, and have done many other events there, including two with Luisa Valenzuela…one by long-distance speaker-phone, PDX to Buenos Aires, and another in the flesh.

It was a tough night, raining like hell, still winter.

We were completing against two other events, and one of the local hipster weeklies (Portland Mercury) had not run us in the events calendar.

And the turn-out was small.

Still the event had gone well.

I had considered setting up a font of holy water to see if it would boil over during the reading, but with all the preparations I simply did not have the time to “borrow” some holy water from a local Catholic Church.

I did a brief reading from my intro, and Channing did a brief reading from his. And then we did an orchestrated selection of words & phrases.

I essentially conducted, as well as reading the Spanish & the German & Croatian.

Channing handled the Japanese & the Portuguese & the Scots & Irish Gaelic...

Sarah Barrett did the Russian & Yiddish & Italian…& Polish, too, I think.

Moira handled the French & the Icelandic.

I forget who handled the delicate & indelicate Latin, somebody did…

I called out a page number & the language & someone read the entry & then I read the English translation, & then on to the next language, the next translation, the next page.

We did a Q & A, & signed a stack of books.

We all went back to our various quotidian shuffles. Channing to teaching & semi-finals for his Masters in Applied Linguistics… Sarah to finals at Reed College… & Moira & I to the various GobQ projects…

We were setting up other CURSE+BERATE events in Seattle to the north, & Eugene, Bend, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, & Venice to the south, but due to various factors (including the price of gasoline) we had only one other event on the calendar.

Elliott Bay Book Co. were enthusiastic, as the book had been a staff pick since its (informal) (pre-publication-publication?) publication in January, and the book was (& still is) prominently displayed near the front cash register.




[cont’d...]