- Literary Arts
Having attended my fair share of lit crawls, I have a sort of youthful and exuberant response to this event and also a cranky old man response to this event, both of which I feel in equal measure. In this post, I’ll cover my cranky side. But first, lemme shoo some kids off my lawn and fetch my glasses and cane.
The packed, two-hour schedule is kind of a raw deal for authors. While it’s enriching and lively and cool that so many authors are headed to town, the overlapping scheduling puts them in the awkward, competitive position of fighting for crowds with other authors. This issue is especially troublesome when you consider that some of the writers are traveling from elsewhere and so have to spend money on travel, lodging, snacks, etc., unless their publishers are footing the bill.
And bars don’t stop being bars just because somebody is squeaking out their brains and hearts and feelings in the corner. So often at lit crawls I have to strain to hear over the clacks of pool balls some whispery poet or monotone prose writer read their work. Most of the time, when the reading starts up, non-literary patrons just keep playing pool or keep talking to their friends, only a little more quietly. Unlike music or movies, an appreciation of writing requires active engagement on the part of the reader. A lit crawl encourages passive engagement, which doesn’t do the form any favors.
If readers aren’t whispery or monotone, the drama of the performance feels intrusive. Part of this event’s mission—and Wordstock’s mission as a whole—is to foster a sense of community, which is likely to happen. A “sense” of community tends to be fostered when people get drunk. That’s why getting drunk is so fun. But the other part of the mission is to raise awareness of the literary scene in the non-lit community, and I’m not sure how fucking up someone’s weekend decompress at the local is going to accomplish that. In my experience, public response to sudden bar readings ranges from warm, parental encouragement to hostile, simmering resentment.
All that said, Lit Crawl Portland is doing it right, smartly dodging a number of these issues. The organizers have elected to center the readings at a space that’s really good for readings, Mother Foucault’s, and inner Southeast bars well-suited to the task. But, so, why is this the two-hour, overstuffed, overlapping time slot extravaganza the model for the largest literary event in Portland? Why not take the week and spread it out a little? For really boring, non-profit bureaucracy reasons, that’s why.
There’s a lot of wonky, bullshit involved in this answer, but here’s the gist. A relatively large literary festival in San Francisco called Litquake owns the rights to the phrase Lit Crawl. Recently I called up Jack Boulware, executive director at Litquake, and asked him why he’d do something that seemed to me to be so proprietary, so unloving, as trademarking a common municipal event.
He told me that trademarking made sense for them because they do a large and popular lit crawl, so authors from other events calling themselves “lit crawls” get confused and send a bunch of e-mails to SF Litquake people, which adds more confusion, etc. He claims his organization invented lit crawls in the first place, so there’s that. He also cited liability issues. If someone gets hammered and does something stupid—or, god forbid, dies—then “Lit Crawl” suddenly has a branding issue that would fall primarily on Litquake’s shoulders.
So, though hardworking and intrepid Portland folk did all the work of putting the event together, Litquake claims the name, helps out with a lot of advertising and programming ideas, and then sits back and gets to call themselves an international literary organization. Good for them. We need more international literary organizations.
Though membership in that particular Lit Crawl community comes with clear benefits (Boulware hears it’s easier to get grants if your literary organization is associated with a larger, internationale organization), it also comes with the drawback of having to advertise and organize with another org from another city breathing down your neck.
Anyway, you can find all of the Lit Crawl Portland events right here.
