I like reading. And drinking. Who’s with me?
Literate drunks, take note that tonight Powell’s is hosting their first (hopefully not last) Indiepensable Happy Hour, featuring authors Paul Harding and Benjamin Parzybok.
The eighth book in the Indiespensable series, Harding’s Tinkers is a beautiful little novel in which the perceptions of a dying man intersperse with those of his father, who worked as a tinker in rural Maine 70 years prior. It’s a ridiculously accomplished debut. The nature scenes in particular are crystal-clear. Here’s a little bit:
There was a small pond through the woods behind the yard. It was a stopping place for two pairs of ducks and a small flock of Canada geese every year. Its depth was no more than five feet at its deepest. Sometimes, George fished there and caught small brook trout, which he cooked over a fire he made at the edge of the water. If it was a Saturday, he fished at sundown, when, during the early summer, there were mayfly and drake hatches that brought the trout up to the surface to feed. At some point, bats would flit from the darkness out over the water to feed on the insects. George would stop fishing then, because the bats struck at his fishing fly and he had terrible notions of a frantic squeaking bat impaled on the barbed hook, trying to free itself and only breaking its own fragile wings in the process. Grabbing the bat and yanking the hook out would be unthinkable, so the only choice seemed as if it would be to run away, leaving the struggling animal on the end of the line, and to return the next morning to collect the rod and hope that a fox had happened along and eaten the bat (and not swallowed the hook along with the bat, so that it, too, now struggled somewhere in the woods, dragging the fishing pole by the taut line that now ran from its gut up through its throat and tore at the side of its mouth). So, when the bats came out, George cooked what fish he had, if he had any, and watched darkness settle and then went home.
Benjamin Parzybok, author of Couch, about a magic couch, will also be in attendance. I franky found Couch kind of boring once the novelty of a couch with an agenda wore off, but my esteemed counterpart Paul Constant at The Stranger thinks it has the “depth and allure of the best modern literary fiction,” which sounds convincing, so you should probably take his word for it.
Powell’s staffers will also be dutifully milling about, completing the literary scene—and as for the event itself, here’s what I’m told to expect: “Paul and Ben will each read for 5-10 minutes, just to give a taste of the books. We’ll probably have a bit of a Q&A. Otherwise, mostly schmoozing.”
6 pm, Someday Lounge