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March 29, 2007
Rise Up Little Souls and Join the Doomed Army
I’m talking a bit in the coming weeks, before I disappear for a long time. Typing all this up, you’d think it was Black History Month or something.
Friday, March 30th
NEW YORK CITY
“Branding and Freedom in the Market Economy”
Lolita Bar, 7 p.m.
Maud Newton has put this together. I’m talking with Calvin Baker, author of Dominion and Once Two Heroes. I think this will be rather fun.
Friday, April 6th
PENN STATE
“Community Read Gala Lecture”
Palmer Licton Auditorium, 7 p.m.
This is a symposium about The Intuitionist. Michael Berube will start things off, and then we’ll take it from there. Complete info is here. Pretty neat. April 15th is the 10th anniversary of finishing the book, so expect me to get a little misty.
Thursday, April 12th
LONG ISLAND UNIVERSITY
“Becoming a New York Writer”
6 p.m
Colossus of New York, getting the city in there, the whole megillah.
Friday, April 13th
NEW YORK ROUND TABLE WRITERS CONFERENCE
12:30 p.m.
I’ll be the lunchtime “speaker.”
Thursday, April 19th
MILLERSVILLE UNIVERSITY
7:30 p.m.
Sunday, April 22nd
PHILADELPHIA BOOK FESTIVAL
Skyline Room, 2:30
With Colin Channer, whose new book is Girl With the Golden Shoes.
Tuesday, April 24th
PEN WORLD VOICES FESTIVAL
“Green Thoughts: Writers on the Environment”
Cooper Union, NYC, 7 p.m.
A veritable cavalcade.
And then it’s back to the home dimension for debriefing. Except for this:
July 8th-July15th
TIN HOUSE WRITERS WORKSHOP
Portland
Teaching, taking in the Pacific Northwest air.
Then more debriefing. Smell ya later!
Posted by Colson Whitehead
March 13, 2007
Can't You See Me Dancing Here, I've Got My Back Against the Record Machine
Things have been swell. After a couple of weeks of on and off travel, I’m back home for a stretch, and it is very nice. Warming up outside, the time of year when shut-ins start looking for their clean clothes.
The tour for the paperback of Apex ended up being a fun time. It started in Seattle, with an interview for Nancy Pearl’s "Book Lust," which was filmed in the University of Washington Bookstore. The weird thing was, I’d spent a summer in Seattle living in an apartment building called The Malloy – and my window looked out on the back of the University Bookstore. Spent a lot of hours looking into that alley…Actually, it was as if I’d spent 18 years crossing the alley so that I could look at that apartment from the other side.
It – the tour - ended up in Los Angeles, and I have good friends and a cousin there, so I had a nice time hanging out between gigs. The first half of my stay, I stayed in the Bel Age Hotel, off the Sunset Strip. The cabbie who took me from the airport took the smaller roads, so I was like, I’m in the middle of nowhere, but of course when I went out that night I saw I was across the street from the Whiskey A Go Go, and around the corner from the Viper Room. (Moment of silence.) The carpets of the Bel Age had years of cigarette smoke trapped in them, and the rooms had bees.
I checked into a room on the 8th floor, nice view. Open the balcony door, go to the bathroom, come out again and there’s a bee in my room. Kill the bee with a magazine and it falls between the cushions of the couch. There’s another bee. Kill that one, too, and close the balcony door. I think, there’s a hive out there, I won’t be able to use the balcony while I’m there, fine. Five minutes later, there’s another bee. Kill that one, too. But then there’s 4th bee, and 4 bees is my limit! I call the front desk and tell them I want another room.
On the elevator, there’s a maintenance guy. He says, “How are you?” I say, “I’m fine, except there was a beehive outside my room.”
He says, “Oh, you’re in room 817?”
The 1978 Michael Caine-Henry Fonda-Katharine Ross bee vehicle “The Swarm” was on television last Sunday. I couldn’t decide whether to watch that or “The Towering Inferno.” I went with “The Towering Inferno.” They were both written by Stirling Silliphant.
Make of that what you will.
Posted by Colson Whitehead
