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Saturday I continued conducting top secret activities for the College Board. I’ve found the snack bar for readers that runs 7-11 pm and has unlimited chips, guac, soda, and coffee. I’m also told that the hotel I’m staying in, Galt House, was occupied by the great Charles Dickens at one point. I did not go to Churchill Downs for the big race, which I hear was filled with beautiful drunk people with lots of money to burn. South Carolina had gamecocks. This place has horses. I almost hit someone who cut me in the coffee line this morning.

Helena Maria Viramontes will read for English teachers tomorrow night. My first major presentation in college was on this writer. I did a mediocre job with Under the Feet of Jesus. Maybe I can redeem myself by going and taking good notes.

After this performance of Ibsen’s “Ghosts,” sunrises will probably look a good deal more threatening and conflicted than they should. What a show! Having never sat in gallery seats before, I was struck by the odd feeling you get looking down on these characters from abnormal angles – like a god almost, eye-level with the stage lights. It’s funny watching characters speak with their backs to you sometimes. It gave the performance a disturbing verisimilitude. The only thing that bothered me: cheesy thunder sound affects, cued any time the father’s malevolent presence is felt. (If they’d just turned the volume down a little…)

But even creepier: So “Ghosts” is about, among other things, a talented young artist who finds himself haunted by the ghost of his mentally deranged father and ultimately pays a heavy price for the discovery of some dark truths about his family.

Um, Through the Pale Door is about, among other things, a talented young artist who finds herself haunted by the ghost of her mentally deranged mother and ultimately pays a heavy price for the discovery of some dark truths about her family.

Proof from the jacket description: “Sarah finds her own artistic endeavors haunted by grim yet compelling memories of growing up under the rule of an inexplicably deranged artist on one side and an oddly aloof, workaholic entrepreneur on the other.” She “will face a great challenge: domesticating her own emerging inner demons…”

Cue the cheesy thunder.

The SC Book Festival was great fun this year despite cold rain and recession. Not too often can you catch so many writers in one place and spend all day browsing books.

Not that I want to turn this into a post just for aspiring writers, but the keynote speaker, Scott Turow, gave some great advice: You become a writer by writing–not by thinking about it, or talking about it in cafes and bars. His address hit all the right notes: funny, inspiring, informative. In his stories, professors whacked their students with pencils and famous right fielders chased down authors for autographs.

The festival took place only a short time after the NEH released its sobering report on reading in the U.S. The report shows that only 22 percent of 17-year-olds and 43 percent of those 18-24 read for fun or read literature. Here’s a link to a story about the report in the AWP Chronicle: http://www.awpwriter.org/magazine/writers/mburriesci01.htm

You might think popular books like Harry Potter and the Twilight Series work against these trends, but studies have shown these books don’t necessarily push their fans to read beyond the series. Personally, I think we should do all we can to promote reading in all genres – literature or popular fiction. We should resist the pessimism that often comes with these kinds of reports. I’ll echo what’s been said in the NY Times and elsewhere: we have to work harder to justify reading and what people can get out of it. Gone are the days when the intrinsic values of reading and writing were self-apparent and obvious. In fact, a close look at history might say those values were never all that obvious in the first place.