Author Event: John Corey Whaley

[renay]

I live in a very small city an hour and a half away from Memphis in northeast Arkansas. When I first moved here to go to college, I was really surprised at the lack of author events that weren't a) crime writers, b) cookbook writers or c) people writing specifically about the delta, especially given the state university. Maybe I shouldn't have been, though: author events are expensive and it's a widely known fact people in Arkansas don't read for fun (okay, maybe I am slightly bitter). All in all, I've come to terms with the lack of literary culture. That's why I was surprised to learn from my local YA librarian (who is, by the way, completely awesome) that John Corey Whaley, whose book was the most recent recepient of the Printz Award, was coming to our library. I was excessively thrilled because it's no secret I have Feelings About the Printz Award and Feelings About Southern Literature and Feelings About How Arkansas is Presented in Culture By People Who Mean Well But Often Screw It Up Oh God My Eyes.

Of course I went! It was like my birthday I was so excited. Of course I managed to make a total mockery of myself immediately.

Backstory: I have been offloading my YA collection to the YA librarian because of space issues, changing interests, and because the books are doing no one any good sitting on my shelf. The night of the event, I grabbed some paperbacks to take with me and got to the library an hour early, thinking I would catch her before the event and hand them off. Well, I did; book delivery success!

But what else did I do? Fail to recognize that she was with the author I was coming to see and bumble my way right into the middle of John Corey Whaley's tour of the library by complete accident, ramble incoherently at him for five seconds, and run off, horrified and embarrassed. I am an Awkward Turtle rockstar. Never let it be said I can't make any library or bookstore event I attend completely embarrassing for myself in some way or another. I'm a classy person with serious talents in the field of awkward and public humiliations; I'm also available for parties! *thumbs up*

(He was really very nice about it. I am sure he has dealt with many, many people like me. But still. Worst impression ever.)

The event itself was fairly short, but we packed in a lot of discussion about the book and his experiences surrounding this story, its promotion and subsequent work that he'll be doing. It opened with a short introduction to how he came to focus on the story he wanted to tell, which was founded in how he grew up in a small Louisiana town, largely cut off from major cities and the culture of the world. He said:

"I just always knew from the time I was about ten, eleven, twelve years old that I wanted to write a book and I realized as I grew up that I kind of wanted to write a book about being from a place like this, from a small Southern town, feeling sort of outcast there, left over, like I didn't belong there. But I couldn't ever seem to get a grasp on how to tell the story, right? How to tell it in an original new way [...]"

In the end, he found his story through the revival of an extinct bird. He was driving home from university and he heard a story about the ivory-billed woodpecker being seen in Brinkley, Arkansas. The story focused on Sufjan Stevens, who had written a song about the event¹. Whaley didn't know anything about the city or the bird, but he was really interested in the song by a favorite artist. With this story, he connected to these people whose lives and city were changing and through them he found a path in to writing about the world he knew. I found this fascinating: a regular person makes art and creates something about a part of the world we never knew existed, and through it we open up windows in our lives we may never have looked through otherwise. What if he didn't like Sufjan Stevens? Would he still have found his way to that moment in his car that changed his life, just because he loved the art another person created? This is so much of what I love about creativity: it's never a dead end and there's no finish line. There is ultimately no "original story" because so much of what we do is informed by the stories we choose to listen to.

The original story about the ivory-billed woodpecker is sad. There's some backstory I found, but the sighting in Brinkley didn't go very well in the end, as discussed in Ivory-billed woodpecker extinct after all? I didn't dig much deeper than that; I have no idea about recent woodpecker events.

After the reading, I badgered Ana for the song so I could obsessively listen to it. It's really gorgeous and sad and implicitly critical of the ways in which we've let industrialization and human impact alter the environment, both for ourselves and the animals that live here, as well. We lose things through greed and progress that can never be replaced or rediscovered.

After someone asked a spoiler-ridden question, there was a short discussion about how some people think all the characters in the book are angels. He assured the crowd that the characters were not angels. At the time, I sort of smirked (the author is dead! DEAD.) and was tempted, as I always am when authors tell me how to interpret a book, to write fanfic where the characters are angels. But it would be terrible and have way too many metaphors about looking for Jesus in all the wrong places. Also, there would be a smartass talking woodpecker, because I just kept waiting for Cullen to have an imaginary woodpecker friend with a name throughout this entire book.

(Spoiler: if that is your desire, this is not the talking woodpecker book you're searching for.)

The bulk of the discussion mid-way through the event dealt with the construction of the book and why he had made the authorial choices he did. I haven't decided if I like knowing all these things, or if they change how I approach the book. Whaley's reading of his own narrative seemed to me to be about impossibilities and feeling trapped and ineffectual (spoiler: this doesn't change after you're a teenager, News at 11 for all Young Adults), but by the end of one character's arc for me it became about things that are lost and the struggles we go through trying to find them, whether it's hope or people or things or spiritual guidance.

I asked him about the Printz Award and how it changed his life, because I am obsessed with celebrity, notoriety, and how publicity works in book culture (and as noted I have Feelings About the Printz, which was part of my gateway drug back into YA fiction and reading in general). His answer was that it changed a lot (obviously), but the most interesting part of his answer is where he discussed Barnes & Noble.

Apparently when the hardcover released, Barnes & Noble refused to carry it because of the cover (which is here for the curious). Of course, I make choices about what to read based on book covers, but I know for a fact I would not have touched this book. I saw this title on some blog in 2011 and glazed right over it. I want to make clear it's not a bad design, I just find it inappropriate for the story it's marketing. I have feelings about book design. Anyway, I am an individual reader and can be as shallow as I want about covers I dislike (who made her friends in England send her a copy of The Name of the Star because the American cover was a Photoshop disaster? THIS LADY.) I do think it's disappointing that Barnes & Noble refused to carry the book because one person/department in the entire country disliked it, and that there's not some oversight to prevent preferences like that from keeping good books off their shelves, but I also think the designer of the cover should take note that, uhhhh making a contemporary novel look like it's telling a historical story is not the way to get people to pick it up.

When I saw this book referenced a few times before the Printz without knowing the title, the story, or the author, I assumed it was a historical novel set in the South. I live in the South and I have a minor in history. I'm full up on Southern history, thanks. Covers send a particular message and the control of that message is absolutely in the hands of the people who design covers. Not to break into a hardcore rant on semiotics (ugh, too late), but....in my degree work, we discussed signs: "we find our meanings through our creation and interpretation of 'signs'." The texture of the cover, the colors, the centerpiece around the bird are all signs. Obviously I read a historical meaning into them because those signs and their signifiers and signifieds are playing merry hell with what that book is about. Maybe Barnes & Noble people had the same problems I did. I sort of feel for them a little. Thematically discordant covers can be like trying to ski on rocks. Solidarity, person. *fistbump*

Anyway, the paperback version is much better; it's dynamic and contemporary, it moves, it's not static (and the book is about, in lots of ways, the frustrations of the static, so why this choice was made for the hardcover I will never understand) and it's, among other things both cliché and predictable, uplifting, which is a theme surrounding the bird throughout the story.

Include disclaimers about how I am not a book designer and have zero experience in marketing, etc., here. I guess in the end my feelings don't amount to much because I still bought all the copies. I bought the hardcover design in ebook format to read, and then the paperback design in hardcopy for the event itself. I'm a sucker.

Not so surprise twist! After Where Things Come Back won the Printz Award, Barnes & Noble ordered 4,000 copies of the book despite its cover art with dueling meanings because hot damn, there was a Printz sticker on it now. EVERYONE CALM DOWN, LIBRARIANS HAVE ASSURED US IT DOESN'T SUCK AND WE CAN DISTRACT FROM THE COVER WITH A PRINTZ STICKER, PLACE ALL ORDERS NOW. Ah, librarians! You are powerful purveyors of literature and drivers of capitalist dreams!

During the event I said nothing to this idle charge not to give Barnes & Noble money, because I was sort of silently flailing? Okay, I get upset when people who probably have access to local, independent bookstores come in and say "don't shop at Barnes & Noble! They don't need your money!" and then advocate for indies in a city that has no indie bookstores. At this moment in my city, we have Barnes & Noble, Hastings, and the Friends of the Library bookshop (also chain retailers like Target and Walmart, but wow, no). Our used bookstore has closed, I believe, and the nearest indie bookstore is an hour away from me (unless there is an indie hiding? Is there?) I choose Barnes & Noble because my options are another chain that is focused on entertainment in general rather than books in particular or shopping with Amazon. My opinions on Amazon and their book sales hover somewhere between "extreme disdain" and "apathy". It upgrades to "seething rage" when they do something dumb (and to be frank, they do something really dumb and abusive to book culture/authors about once or twice a year these days). And I'm not ignorant; Barnes & Noble is a company just like Amazon, with an eye on their bottom line. But ultimately I have to make a choice between them and I've sided with the company I have decided is less evil. Luckily, I, and many other people, don't get our book news (or our books) from just one source. We're too data rich a society for that to be a problem any longer.

Indie bookstores are rare in rural areas now. I wish I had one to support, but I don't. One day I will, and will be happy to do so. The reality of the economy means I choose a chain right now. And that's okay.

At the end of the event I talked to the PR rep for the library who was super excited about the turnout. I think the library does a great job advertising its events, but when I asked if they ever partnered with ASU on author or other literary events, I was told no, which is disappointing. Not sure why — if it's money, interest, or if there's a terrible rift between the Dean B. Ellis and public library (I feel anthropomorphic library hateshipping fanfic teetering at the brink of reality as I write this!!). It makes me daydream of a partnership, a weeklong author event extravaganza that's a celebration of literature and reading and the intersections of reading and the rest of our lives. I should have gotten a degree in marketing and publicity, clearly, because reasons. Someone cue up the Avenue Q track. Damn you, English degree!

I had a great time and am really excited about John Corey Whaley's next novel that's a secret. I hate secrets. Maybe I should have bribed him with my email address and some money, because I had pretty much jettisoned all semblance of respectful behavior before the event even started, so what's a little bribery on the side in the face of that? This probably isn't a whopping surprise, but I really enjoyed the novel, which hopefully I will co-review with Ana when she has more time for reading and writing an inevitable 4,000+ word review/discussion with me. :)

(I just like words, okay.)

Notable quotes from the event

If it tells you anything about how I did not want to be a teacher anymore, I wrote this whole book in five weeks that summer. I was ready to change careers. I was ready to change my life.

Did I see a hand over here? That's the power of suggestion; I just wanted you to ask a question. I knew there wasn't a hand over here.

I tried to send an email to my one of my publicists [...]. On gmail when you type in someone's first name it fills in the blank for you. Apparently I didn't do something right and it sent it to some other guy. Well, he was an agent I had queried who I had tried to get my book published with years before. The whole email was about some great thing that had happened with my book. So the guy emails me back and he's like, "Um, I think you didn't mean to send this to me, but wow, congratulations on all your success!"

You know, the awards, the year of traveling, the year of book touring, the year of people telling you, "Oh, you're so good at writing stories!" totally made me crumble under the pressure.

Noted because this is me after every single piece of fanfic I finish since I started writing outside Final Fantasy. ;___;

I have no good scheduling abilities. I know so many writers who get up and write from nine to four or nine of five and they take a lunch break and I'm like, "I didn't become a writer to do that! I became a writer to stay up late, go see movies, write when I feel like it and sleep in!"

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¹ My play count for Sufjan's Stevens's song The Lord God Bird is, as of this post, sitting at 117. #winning