It's not too early to order Literary Cash : Writings Inspired by the Legendary Johnny Cash, arriving in January 2007 from BenBella Books. Featuring Cash-inspired stories by Russell Rowland (In Open Spaces), Gayle Brandeis (The Book of Dead Birds), and Gretchen Moran Laskas (The Midwife's Tale), plus PC's own "Field of Diamonds," it's sure to delight anyone with an appreciation for basic black.VISITS WITH OLD FRIENDS DEPT....and no, I do NOT consider the stomach flu bug that visited us on Sunday a "friend," let alone an old one. But its arrival does somewhat explain the delay in my getting back to this journal.
Where to start? How about Friday night--actually Friday the 12th--when I was treated to the sight of
Celia Schaefer appearing on NBC's
Convictions. Celia and I have known each other since 1979, when we appeared in Chapel Hill High's production of
Fiddler on the Roof together, and I was out-acted by her in that and about a dozen other productions over the next few years, including a memorable ArtsCenter production of Joe Orton's
What the Butler Saw, which ended with five of the six cast members onstage in their underwear. (I had on a Speedo-sized pair of pale blue briefs, Celia a pink camisole, and no one in the audience would deny that she came out looking a hell of a lot better than I.) Celia's been working in NYC ever since she graduated from the NC School of the Arts, which has unfortunately meant that I haven't gotten to see her perform in about two decades--a horrible artistic waste. Luckily, she tore up the screen on
Convictions, playing a woman whose husband faked his own death and disappeared five years before. She got a lot of "off the lines" work, as she called it--time to let her face and body do the acting, rather than her voice--which will, I hope, give some casting agent somewhere realize what she can do.
(And yes, others in my old CHHS crowd are making news on the small screen;
Clark Gregg plays Julia Louis-Dreyfus's ex-husband in her new series, The New Adventures of Old Christine, and
Peter Spruyt appeared in a recent episode of My Name Is Earl.)
More recently, Kelly & I got to go to D.C. to catch up with some of our pals from Readerville.com. These gatherings almost inevitably wind up being notable for three factors. First, the food is ridiculously good; perhaps it's the taste in restaurants, perhaps it's the culinary skills of the hosts, but we always eat like kings at these things. Is there a correlation between literary taste and the more literal kind? I must investigate someday...) This time we met at Cafe Atlantico and slurped up what the menu calls "Latin dim sum," small portions of food of various delectable sorts. I am a philistine where guacamole is concerned, but it was fun watching the waiters prepare it at our table using rough stone bowls and fresh ingredients. I much enjoyed the sopa del dia, an tasty almond-and-garlic blend served cold, though it came in a wine glass, which was a bit off-putting. I kept wanting to say "A heady aromatic nose with crunchy bits" or something every time I took a sip. The shrimp with vanilla oil and "lime air" was also a bit weird, as the "air" consisted of suds--yes, a small pile of bubbles in a whitish liquid that looked not unlike the sea foam you might find a dead shrimp resting in somewhere on teh beach. Tasty as all get out, but puzzling. The one item on the menu no one ordered: "Conch fritters with a liquid heart." Sounded too much like that "cum-gum" that was so popular in junior high, and that's not something I
ever want to associate with seafood.
Second, the conversation is delightful. This was the first time Kelly and I had both been able to meet Rville's proprietor, the lovely and talented Ms. Karen Templer, though we'd met her on separate occasions; now at least she knows we're really married and not just photoshopped together in group pictures. Karen's sister Karla was also along, giving me the chance to see her for the first time since she and her husband put me up in Cali back in '03. Sarah R and husband Arthur came down from Baltimore, Christina P from Ohio, Caryn from Minneapolis (!), and brand-new Rvillean Jason Roberts (author of
A Sense of the World: How a Blind Man Became History's Greatest Traveler) arrived as well. I was perhaps happiest to see David Abrams, however, since he is not only a writer of great skill, but one who has spent much of the last two years in Iraq, where he was stationed in his role as an Army P.R. official. I got to read occasional reports of how things were going there, but you can do so yourself by clicking
right here to see some of David's writing from the Emerging Writers Network. I'm glad he's back safe--and selfishly, I'm hoping to see more of his take on the Iraq experience.
Anyway, with a group of people this interesting, the conversation bounced around from the celebrity sightings at BookExpo America (Jim Belushi! Dr. Ruth!) to Sarah & Arthur's daughter and her college plans to Jason's cover (the same painting was used for John Crowley's
Lord Byron's Novel, it turns out). A few Advance Review Copies were passed around--the upcoming Bill Bryson memoir, for example--and everyone oohed and aahed over them.
Third, as with every Readerville gathering, the damn thing was too short. People had appointments, meetings with other friends in the D.C. area, etc., so we scattered after a bare two hours. My own appointment was a command performance: I had gotten a pass to the BookExpo America floor, where I was told my presence was required by Paul Dry--yes, the one who published The Verb 'To Bird'.
Christina, Caryn, Kelly and I walked the few blocks to the new D.C Convention Center, which was awash in people carrying tote bags full of swag: every shoulder had a canvas container full of ARCs, or so it seemed. Inside, Kelly and I said goodbye to C&C and made our way to the floor, but at that point the security detail got tighter, and the pass-less Kelly was forced to wait in the causeway. (Luckily, she had a book--my copy of Amanda Davis's
Wonder When You'll Miss Me, which I take to all Rville gatherings; Amanda I knew each other through Readerville and I was looking forward to meeting her and getting her to sign the book. Her plane crashed a few days before we were to meet. Since I couldn't get her to sign it, I've tried to have all my other Rville friends sign it as a sort of memorial.)
Anyway, I went inside, made my way through the labyrinth of stalls and shelves, dodging the occasional costumed character--a startling number of people seem to show up for BEA wearing big foam feet and giant foam heads--until I reached the Paul Dry booth, where both Paul and my eagle-eyed editor, John Corenswet, were hanging out. We visited for a bit, but before long I was feeling guilty for leaving Kelly, so I begged their pardon and trotted back across the enormous display space and up the escalator to the causeway.
Kelly was happily reading, and moreover had been given a pass of her own by a friendly conventioneer who shall remain here anonymous. I persuaded her to come say hi to Paul and maybe look at a knitting book or two; also, I wanted to show her that the giant foam-head people were real and not just something I'd made up. We were briefly distracted by the DC Comics booth, where an hour-long line of people had formed for purposes of meeting Brad Meltzer, writer of the excellent Identity Crisis mini-series, but we soon made our way to the PDB booth.
Paul, surprised, was nonetheless alert enough to cry out, "Peter! You're back! Ida was just here!"
I haven't known many Idas, but one of them was my brother's girlfriend in high school--and sure enough, to my complete astonishment, there she was. I hadn't seen her in twenty-odd years, but it was her. She's worked for the Nature Conservancy but is now working for a publishing company in North Carolina, and has co-authored
North Carolina Afield: A Guide to Nature Conservancy Projects in North Carolina . Kelly had never met Ida, knowing of her only because of family stories, and was probably as delighted as I, though perhaps not quite so astonished. We chatted about David's recent activities, Ida's job, and a few other matters before saying goodbye, but my overall feeling was that my mother's old saying has been proven right again: "There are only 400 people in the world--the rest are just extras."
But man, those extras work hard! After all, without Readerville, we'd not have been in D.C. Without the pass I'd gotten, I'd never have gone to see Paul, and had Kelly not gotten a SEPARATE pass at a LATER time, we'd have been too early to run across Ida.
And thinking back, I recall that David and Ida once shared the stage the same way Celia and I did--they were the leads in
Over Your Dead Body in 1983, the year after Celia graduated. Both were fully clad.
Y'know, in a universe with this much synchronicity, saying "Keep in touch!" seems almost unnecessary.
7:57 PM
