7.10.10 — the days passing like nobody's business.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀ We're starting a new thing today. On Friday's, on Instagram, we'll be publishing Post-It art by @clare.e.johnson. Today is the first.

A post shared by The Seattle Review of Books (@seattlereviewof) on Sep 1, 2017 at 12:07pm PDT

Did you know we have an Instagram account? We post pictures around town, libraries, book-related things, and sometimes our Mail Call column, too. But we wanted to do more, so we're partnering with artist Clare Johnson (you've seen her before here) to bring you images from her Post-it Note project every Friday, starting today! Go check them out, but if you don't have an Instgram account, we'll be collecting them here on the last Friday of each month. Here's how Clare describes the project:

Every night before I go to bed I draw on a post-it note, using words and imagery to depict a feeling, thought or memory from the ending day. I see post-its as the epitome of an ordinary effort at remembering, designed to hold on to all the things slipping from your mind. Instead of using them to remember household lists or work deadlines, I make them a visual record of life—acknowledging both the urgency and the ordinariness of my desire to hold on to passing moments. While making these helps me preserve memories, it is also a continual reminder that time passes regardless, and we cannot hold on to everything.

The project currently spans over 10 years, following me through grad school and ex-pat life in England, civil partnership, divorce, and moving back to my native Seattle. At the moment there are over 3,500 drawings, with the number growing nightly.

Post-it Notes may just be the perfect format for Instagram. We're thrilled to have her, and hope you follow us to see the posts in your feed when they come up.

Do you need a book recommendation to send your worst cousin on her birthday? Is it okay to read erotica on public transit? Cienna Madrid can help. Send your Help Desk Questions to advice@seattlereviewofbooks.com.

Dear Cienna,

Oh my goodness I'm in a pickle. I met a guy on this website where you talk about books. I'm super insecure about how well read I am so I kind of lied to him and told him I had a degree in English Lit. We really hit it off and he asks me for book recommendations that I spend hours researching online, and that my friend who actually HAS a degree in English Lit helps me to suggest to him. Thing is, in every other way we get along really great and after a really long time flirting we're going to meet up. He's been pressing to meet and I'm so worried about it! Besides wearing a headphone and having my friend Cyrano my way through dinner, what can I do so that he does't find out I'm a fraud and hate me!?

Corinne, Capitol Hill

Dear Corinne,

No, a pickle is listing a spider as your emergency contact at work and then having a medical emergency. What you're doing is snow-angeling in a shitpile of your own creation.

A lesser advice columnist – the unimaginative type who emotes at weddings and lists human beings as their emergency contacts – would probably advise you to come clean about your lies. But seeing as how you've gustily embraced this lie, and chances are this relationship will end before death takes one or both of you, why kill it prematurely with something as dull as the truth? Here is some food for thought:

1. Your love interest is never going to ask to see your English lit. degree. But if he does, I have one that you are welcome to. It qualifies you to make coffee for people with computer science degrees and comes with a t-shirt that says "Sheeple Read Google, I Read Gogol," and $90,000 in debt.

2. Researching books is in some cases a better use of time than reading the things themselves. I've researched many Hemingway books that I have never read, or only partially read, because blah blah blah icebergs and also how many questions can you read that end in statements without losing your goddamn mind.

Meet up with this guy and if the conversation turns to books, take command by asking lots of questions. Everyone loves to talk about their opinions and they are often so flattered to be asked that they forget to return the favor. If he does ask for your opinion, either respond with "samesies," or "I found the work derivative."

One final note: You could actually read the goddamn books. They don't have expiration dates and I'm assuming your eyeballs aren't painted on. Just read the books.

Kisses,

Cienna

Each week, Christine Larsen creates a portrait of a new author for us. Have any favorites you’d love to see immortalized? Let us know

Tuesday September 5th: George and Lizzie Reading

Beloved Seattle librarian and action figure model Nancy Pearl reads from and discusses her very first novel, George and Lizzie. It’s a book about how two people can be in a marriage for a very long time and ultimately never reach a real understanding of what marriage means to each other.
Seattle Public Library, 1000 4th Ave., 386-4636, http://spl.org. Free. All ages. 7 p.m.

• Village Books cofounder Chuck Robinson, who served as president of both the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association and the American Booksellers Association, now owns a consulting business for businesses and nonprofits. Chuck Robinson Associates will offer the leadership and advice that Robinson put to good use as the head of Village Books for decades. Village Books has repeatedly been recognized nationwide as an example of independent bookselling done right; that's largely due to Robinson's leadership.

• Fantagraphics cartoonist Matt Furie successfully sued the creator of an alt-right kids' book for using his character Pepe the Frog. According to Matthew Gault at Motherboard, the legal settlement "prevents further sale of the book and [hilariously] forces [the kids' book creator] to donate all profits to a Muslim-American advocacy group." Alt-right jackoffs beware: if you try to make a profit off of Furie's creation, he will sue you into next week, and he will force you to give money to a good cause.

• Speaking of Fantagraphics, they're publishing a beautiful Italian comic strip sequel to Disney's Snow White film created by cartoonist Romano Scarpa. It's the first time these strips will ever be translated into English.

• A hard drive containing Terry Pratchett's unpublished novels have been crushed by a steamroller, reports Michael Schaub at the LA Times. This is exactly what Pratchett wanted to happen to his unpublished writing after his death, and I'm a fan of this decision. Sure, people might argue that Kafka wanted his writing destroyed after his death, too, and the world is better for his books being published against his dying wishes. But there's a real difference here: unlike the unpublished Kafka, Pratchett was widely published — more than 41 books in the Discworld series alone — and he presumably didn't publish the books on that hard drive for a reason. His body of work as it stands is more than impressive enough.

• I missed this news from last week, but it's an absolute fucking nightmare:

Despite the protests of hundreds of angry residents, the Escondido City Council voted 3-2 Wednesday night to begin the process of outsourcing the city’s library service to a private company.

• The rise and fall of Christian bookstores.

• Good to see publishers stepping up and doing their part to help areas ravaged by Hurricane Harvey.

Even when he was getting started as a cartoonist, Seth’s comics were all about nostalgia. As a young man, his autobiographical comics depicted him as a disaffected dandy who yearned for a time before he was born — the art deco years of the 1930s. Seth spent his early middle age building a tribute to the nonexistent past that held his obsession, in the form of a timeless cardboard city called Dominion that he took on exhibition around his native Canada.

But now Seth has grown into the suits he wore as an affect when he was younger. He’s shapeshifted into the character he put on as a kid. Externally, he finally appears to be the older man he always was in his heart. And his comics, as exemplified by the 23rd issue of his one-man anthology series Palookaville, have finally grown into the nostalgia he always carried around with him. Specifically, Seth has finally lived long enough to be nostalgic for his own youth.

The first story in the new issue of Palookaville is a chapter in what appears to be an ongoing memoir about Seth’s relationship with women — or at least his attempts at romantic relationships with women. From a momentary schoolyard crush to a first attempt at making out to the first real passionate connection, Seth lays out what seems to be the beginning of an encyclopediac journey through his love life.

This sounds insufferable. It’s not, though it’s easy to see how the story could have collapsed in the hands of a less-capable writer. (At a large literary event years ago, a semi-famous Seattle literary boor/bore once read a literal kiss and tell essay about all the women he’s kissed. It treaded similar ground as this Seth piece, but it made everyone in the room want to die.) Seth handles his memoir gently and with a great deal of self-awareness. His authorial eye is less interested in the faces and bodies of the young lovers in the story as it is the haunted landscapes where the lovers exist.

With all due respect to Chris Ware, Seth is the best cartoonist in the world when it comes to laying out a sweeping vision in teeny-tiny panels. Most of the pages in Palookaville are festooned with panels the size of postage stamps — many pages have twenty panels on them, arranged in tight little grids — but when taken in aggregate, the tiny panels expand to show high school hallways or suburban towns at twilight, or barren Canadian wilderness. Seth lays the story out frame-by-frame and we examine the world of his youth, inch by inch.

This issue of Palookaville also contains the final episode of Seth’s serialized story Clyde Fans, which ends nearly twenty years after the first episode was published. The final chapter closes out with a bit of a whimper as Seth’s long-running story sheds all the whimsy of earlier episodes — a major character collected penny postcards, and earlier installments were devoted to giant novelty items as tourist traps — and instead features a very similar tone and approach to the first story in the volume: long, lonely shots of landscapes laid out in hundreds of tiny panels, with melancholy narration overlaid. It feels as though the end of one work has been swallowed by the beginning of another, and in some ways, that’s appropriate: Seth’s body of work, more than most cartoonists, feels like one long narrative, whipsawing back and forth through time, shifting from fiction to nonfiction and back again, never happy about the present, always pining for another place and another time.

Wednesday August 30th: An Oral History of the New Orleans Ninth Ward Reading

Twelve years ago, Hurricane Katrina destroyed a major American city while an incompetent president twiddled his thumbs. Newly Seattle-based writer Caroline Gerdes’s non-fiction history of New Orleans’s Ninth Ward recollects some of the important history that was washed away by the hurricane, including remarkable stories from the Civil Rights era. Elliott Bay Book Company, 1521 10th Ave, 624-6600, http://elliottbaybook.com . Free. All ages. 7 p.m.

Thursday August 31st: Wonder Woman: Warbringer Reading

Now that Wonder Woman is the money-makingest superhero origin movie in the history of the world, a whole lot of readers are hungry for more good Wonder Woman stories. Leigh Bardugo joins us for a discussion and signing of her new book, a young-reader-friendly novel that tells a story of a very young Wonder Woman. University Book Store, 4326 University Way N.E., 634-3400, http://www2.bookstore.washington.edu/. $18.99. All ages. 7 p.m.

Friday September 1st: Not Quite a Genius Reading

Nate Dern is a writer for the site Funny or Die. His debut collection of humorous essays touches on famous beard-wearers like Walt Whitman and Charles Manson, while also skewering modern masculine touchstones like man buns and man caves and other University Book Store, 4326 University Way N.E., 634-3400, http://www2.bookstore.washington.edu/. Free. All ages. 7 p.m.

Saturday, September 2nd: Bumbershoot

See our Event of the Week column for more details. Seattle Center, http://bumbershoot.org. $129 All ages. 2 p.m.

Sunday, September 3rd: Bumbershoot

See our Event of the Week column for more details. Seattle Center, http://bumbershoot.org. $129 All ages. 2 p.m.

Tuesday September 5th: George and Lizzie Reading

Beloved Seattle librarian and action figure model Nancy Pearl reads from and discusses her very first novel, George and Lizzie. It’s a book about how two people can be in a marriage for a very long time and ultimately never reach a real understanding of what marriage means to each other. Seattle Public Library, 1000 4th Ave., 386-4636, http://spl.org. Free. All ages. 7 p.m.

It's now apparent that John Smelcer is a literary fraud. Smelcer appears to have fabricated a Native heritage and blurbs from any number of now-deceased big-name authors. And now this 2014 story by Smelcer, a supposedly non-fiction essay about a road trip with John Updike to meet J.D. Salinger, is making the rounds online.

Knowing what we know now, the story seems obviously ridiculous. The idea of Smelcer and Updike singing "The Lion Sleeps Tonight" on their way to meet Salinger is pretty funny. But the idea of Updike and Smelcer singing "Teen Angel" in a New Hampshire diner to the applause of total strangers is just, well, unspeakably dumb.

I love how Smelcer fact-checks himself over the most inoccuous part of the story — a CD collecting radio hits from decades ago. At first, Smelcer says it's supposed to be hits from the 1960s, but then he amends his own story with a parenthetical adjustment: "I’ve been reminded recently that some of these songs were first popular in the ’50s but gained chart-topping success as remakes in the early ’60s." Why bother to tell us this? Why not just find a way to work that information into the text?

And then Smelcer adds at the end of the paragraph: "While writing this essay, I looked hard for that CD in my collection, but I couldn’t find it." A cliche about protesting too much comes to mind. Perhaps Smelcer intended the reader to perceive the CD as a magical totem, one which appeared when it was most needed and then disapparated after its purpose was met. But more likely he was just shoveling some bullshit and didn't know when to stop.

Another thing that stands out about the story is how poorly written it is. My God, this line: "Needless to say, I was elated at the prospect of meeting J. D. Salinger." If it's needless to say, don't say it. You bonehead. And then after Updike and Smelcer's much-lauded "Teen Angel" performance, Salinger mentions some historical context about the song. Smelcer writes:

I used to wonder why J. D. Salinger would know that bit of trivia. Not long after, it hit me: Of course he knew that bit of trivia. Salinger was the creator of that quintessentially brash teenage underachiever, Holden Caulfield.

I don't know what the fuck Smelcer is trying to say here. Is he saying that because Salinger wrote a teenage icon, he is also a Keeper of All Teenage-Related Knowledge? Why repeat the bland phrase "know/knew that bit of trivia?" Also the timeline in this paragraph is confusing. Smelcer used to wonder why Salinger knew the trivia, but not long after the meeting with Salinger he realized why Salinger knew the trivia? When did he wonder and when did he know? Did nobody edit this shit?

This is the first piece of Smelcer's writing I've ever read from start to finish. I was not prepared for the wretchedness of the prose. And I was alarmed to see how blatantly Smelcer rips off the voice of the most famous Native American writer alive — Seattle's own Sherman Alexie.

There are two inflection points in the piece when Smelcer attempts to achieve maximum Alexie-ness. The first is in this passage:

I have a habit of singing aloud in the car. Some people say I have a good voice. My uncle Herbert would have disagreed. He always hated that I’d sing whenever we’d go anywhere together, moose or caribou hunting or salmon fishing at the headwaters of the Klutina River.

But then an unexpected miracle happened.

John started singing with me.

Anyone who has read a lot of Alexie's writing can immediately spot the faux-lexie-ness of this passage: Alexie often uses those short single-sentence paragraphs as emotional breaking points. They rhythmically amp up the piece. In musical terms, they're a minimalist spray of bass licks, or a rumbling pulse of drums. You can find these kinds of moments throughout Alexie's new memoir You Don't Have to Say You Love Me.

But in Smelcer's phrasing, these breaks are pure melodrama. He's using them wrong. Alexie would have savored the moment and urged the reader to find their own catharsis in his words. Smelcer just punches the reader between the eyes with his own supposed sense of wonder. (Also, Alexie never would have published a hackneyed phrase like "unexpected miracle." How many fucking miracles are expected, anyway?)

And then, in a heartbreakingly imbecilic move, Smelcer ends the piece with another short standalone paragraph intended to recall the moment in the car when Updike and Smelcer sang together:

a-wimoweh-a-wimoweh, a-wimoweh-a-wimoweh

This is just painful. The Tokens should sue him for musical malpractice. Alexie uses music references and lyrics in his poetry all the time, but only as accents — as reinforcements for emotional work that he's already done in the writing. Smelcer's phony cinematic bullshit is the literary equivalent of a Hallmark card. He expects the song to carry the emotional heft of the piece, most likely because the piece has no authentic emotional heft of its own.

It would make sense that Smelcer, in a quest to fabricate his own Native authenticity, would read a bestselling Native American author. But this piece indicates that those readings of Alexie might have been superficial misreadings. Smelcer seems to ape Alexie's style but not his substance.

This is more than just an off-key rendition of literary karaoke: this is Smelcer breaking into Alexie's house and trying on all his clothes. This is a little boy gallumphing around in shoes ten times his size. This is a clown in oversized pants who believes everyone is taking him seriously.

Once upon a time, Bumbershoot used to draw nationally recognized authors to read to enormous audiences. Jim Carroll headlined Bumbershoot in 2000, and a slate of young McSweeney’s authors followed a few years after that. Allie Brosh and Harvey Pekar both read to packed houses. Touring groups of writers like Sister Spit were showcased. Terry McMillan read the same year that UB40 played. Hell, Larry McMurtry was a big-name headliner in 1977. Ursula K. LeGuin was a draw in 1998.

All that, of course, was a long time ago.

You can’t point to any one reason why Bumbershoot is no longer a high point in Seattle’s literary calendar year. We have a lot of reading series in Seattle nowadays, and so it’s less special to have a nationally prominent author appear in the city. A few years ago, Bumbershoot transformed its literary stage into a more general “Words and Ideas” format that de-emphasized books in exchange for more pop-cultural phenomena (writers for The Onion, Parks and Recreation, and Transparent have spoken at Bumbershoot in the past few years.) And the Bumbershoot audience has changed and grown more music-focused: people stopped showing up for literary events.

All of which is a long and whiny way of saying that you won’t find any Stephen Kings or George R.R. Martins at this year’s Bumbershoot. Instead, they’re turning the focus on local literary causes that deserve a wider audience.

On Sunday, September 3rd, Fremont Abbey’s popular Abbey Arts in the Round talent showcase brings its multidisciplinary lineup to Bumbershoot with musician Led to Sea and spoken word poet Sienna Burnett. Additionally, the festival continues its longstanding commitment to the spoken word scene with the Battle of the Word slam series, bringing the thrill of competitive reading to audiences who are eager for some drama.

Bumbershoot is also hosting a reprise of the Ghost of Seattle Past project. Ghosts, a gorgeous book published by local press Chin Music, is an anthology of pieces devoted to Seattle-area locations that have been demolished or that have changed ownership or that just feel different now that we’ve apparently fully committed to being Amazonville. Editor and curator Jaimee Garbacik will join Ghosts contributors in conversations about what it means to document the city in transition, and the audience will be invited to participate with their own memories of places that no longer exist.

But for my money, the biggest and most promising literary event at Bumbershoot is a special edition of the Bushwick Book Club, the ongoing music-and-books event which charges local musicians to read and respond to a selected text. The special Bumbershoot edition of the Club will feature all-new music written in response to Ernest Cline’s unbelievably popular nerdgasm of a sci-fi novel, Ready Player One. The book, which is being adapted into a film by Steven Spielberg, has attracted an array of passionate fans and some venomous criticism from critics of the book’s adoring fanwankery. Bushwick is perfect for Bumbershoot’s multidisciplinary creative spirit — a project that takes literature and moves it to an unfamiliar stage, just for the fun of seeing what might happen.

Ten days ago, I was in Oceanside, CA for the North San Diego Latino Book and Family Festival. I took part in a fiction panel and also spent several hours at the author's booth, copies of Hola and Goodbye in front of me. I’m a terrible salesperson, but I managed to sell a few, and I thrilled at putting my book about a Mexican-American family into the hands of other Latinos. There was a spirit of community that was comfy and nourishing.

That spirit of community permeated Washington Hall last Saturday afternoon at the Seattle Urban Book Expo (SUBE). It was exhilarating walking into that hall and seeing a roomful of writers of color displaying their books, since such events seem to occur with eclipse-like rarity. Twenty tables of authors, representing a range of genres — romance, self-help, inspirational, poetry, fiction, and children’s books — lined the hall. Some were first-time authors. Others had multiple books to their name. All were eager to engage with browsers and talk about their books.

For a number of these authors, their writing grew out of a desire to share a personal experience, to inspire their community, and to potentially offer support to others in similar situations or crises. Sharon Blake, who blogs for the Huffington Post, has written several books about overcoming pain, addiction, and low self-esteem. Her bio includes this statement: Sharon herself has overcome some major barriers in her life, she has been homeless and is an ex- addict, ex-prostitute and a domestic violence survivor. The bio also includes the fact that Sharon facilitates support groups at two local emergency shelters. She doesn’t just write about dealing with adversity, she actively works to ease it for others.

Social justice was a common thread in the works of many of the writers. Omari Amili’s book Transforming Society’s Failure, is his story of obtaining a Master’s degree after being kicked out of the Seattle public schools in the sixth grade, running the streets, and eventually spending time in prison on thirty felony convictions. Amili confronts the school-to-prison pipeline that is the shame of our institutions.

Though the title feels a bit academic, the writing is clear and straightforward, and absolutely riveting for its content. Amili teaches at South Seattle College and gives copies of his book to his students. Sales of his book are necessary to help him offset the cost of this practice. Hint, hint. You can buy the book here.

It isn’t possible to go to a book expo and not buy a book, is it? It shouldn’t be. Amili’s book is one of the five books I bought on Saturday. Among the items for sale at Emily Imani Rose Quartz’s table were a few copies of Passionate Lives, an anthology of poems published in 1998. I bought a copy when I saw that it includes work by Syracuse poet Jackie Warren-Moore. Here are the first two lines from her poem “Riot” that resonates today.

We need another riot.
Like a fire under the country’s ass

Her poem “Sizes” is about “living LARGE in a regular world.”

The sheer size of my butt before you could blot out the sun.
Size of my mind has brought men to their knees,
made them look up
to see eye to eye with me.

The poem is about courage and persistence in a world that fails to see past stereotypes.

My other purchases were children’s books, including two by Tash Creates, the pen name of Natasha Rivers whose day job is as a demographer for the Seattle school district. The other was Jeffrey (J.L) Cheatham’s book written for his daughter. All three books are wonderfully illustrated by Ebony Glenn. Both Rivers and Cheatham wrote the books to address the need for children of color to see themselves in stories.

I asked Cheatham, the expo organizer, how he gathered the participating writers. He said that he used the “if you build it, they will come” method. He posted his intention on FaceBook and authors responded. All were Black, except for Seattle Escribe whose members are Latinos writing in Spanish. He’s hoping for a greater diversity of writers of color next year.

Cheatham suggested that there was something in the works regarding a future collaboration between SUBE and the Seattle Public Library, which had a table at the expo staffed by Stesha Brandon. Such a collaboration could increase exposure and participation for SUBE and elevate its profile. Fittingly, SUBE in Spanish means rise.

There was one thing missing for me at the event. I was at the expo for an hour and a half. I think I counted two white people among the visitors during that time. That was similar to my experience at the North San Diego Latino Book and Family Festival. As I sat behind my books feeling a connection to the community around me, I also wished that non-Latinos had come to enjoy the festival and at least see the books we had written. Books by Latinos are not just for Latino readers. Books by Asian-American writers are not just for Asian-American readers. Books like Omari Amili’s Transforming Society’s Failure are not just for Black youths and their families. This expo is not just for Seattle’s communities of color.

Literary events too often center white writers. It happens in Seattle as it does elsewhere. Take for instance, the San Diego Festival of Books which also occurred last Saturday. Read Aaryn Belfer’s #bookfestivalsowhite. When a literary event centers writers of color, it’s an opportunity for white writers and readers to educate themselves about the lives and stories of black and brown people — an imperative in today’s racially charged climate.

Poet Jackie Warren-Moore writes, “It is only open hearts, open hands and communication that will connect and save us all.”

It’s what I felt at the SUBE last Saturday. Open hearts and open hands. White Seattle, come with yours next year. Remember it. Rise with it.

If you would like to attend a public appearance of Hillary Clinton reading from What Happened, her memoir about the 2016 presidential campaign, you can sign up here. Clinton will be reading at the Paramount on December 11th. Tickets will go on sale on September 6th, and they will presumably not be cheap.

It's not very often we post about celebrities here, but BuzzFeed editor Chris Geidner is on vacation in Seattle and he made a Very Important Celebrity Discovery at the central branch of the Seattle Public Library:

tl;dr: I believe I just saw Cate Blanchett filming WHERE'D YOU GO, BERNADETTE, so I'd say the trip is going well. pic.twitter.com/QMDTLkPN3G

— Chris Geidner (@chrisgeidner) August 28, 2017

Librarian Hayden Bass confirmed the sighting on her own feed:

Not much, just hanging out with Cate Blanchett. You?#librarylife pic.twitter.com/U7f0oJMTF5

— Hayden Bass (@librarianista) August 28, 2017

Cate Blanchett is amazing. The downtown library is amazing. Seattle is amazing. That is all.

This week's sponsor, Linda Joy Myers, joins us with a chapter from her recently published memoir, Song of the Plains — a tale as vast as the Great Plains on which it's set, spanning the lives of three generations of Oklahoma women: grandmother, mother, daughter. It's a tale of history, family, and transformation, of "secret stories" brought into the great wide open through forty years of painstaking research.

And Linda Joy Myers knows memoir: she's president of the National Association of Memoir Writers, a memoir coach and teacher, and the author of multiple books on the craft. She thought she was done with her own story, until this book started whispering too loudly to ignore. Preview the first chapter and get a taste of the "wild and reckless country" where her family's history takes place.

Sponsors like Seattle Arts & Lectures make the Seattle Review of Books possible. Did you know you could sponsor us, as well? Get your stories, or novel, or event in front of our passionate audience. Take a glance at our sponsorship information page for dates and details.

Each week, the Sunday Post highlights a few articles good for slow consumption over a cup of coffee (or tea, if that's your pleasure). Settle in for a while; we saved you a seat. You can also look through the archives.

The President of Blank Sucking Nullity

David Roth won the internet’s heart this week by boiling our nightmare national politics down a simple and compelling assertion: Donald Trump is an asshole. We’ve let the Confounder in Chief tie us in knots, and we’ve knotted ourselves up just as much, trying to make sense of it all. Roth’s Gordian solution — “stop trying” — is a bit of a relief all around.

There is no room for other people in the world that Trump has made for himself, and this is fundamental to the anxiety of watching him impose his claustrophobic and airless interior world on our own. Is Trump a racist? Yes, because that’s a default setting for stupid people; also, he transparently has no regard for other people at all. Does Trump care about the cheap-looking statue of Stonewall Jackson that some forgotten Dixiecrat placed in a shithole park somewhere he will never visit? Not really, but he so resents the fact that other people expect him to care that he develops a passionate contrary opinion out of spite. Does he even know about . . . Let me stop you there. The answer is no.

I Want to Persuade You to Care About Other People

In an essay that's pretty much the antithesis of asshole (see above), Danielle Tcholakian talks about becoming a journalist in the era of fake news, and what it takes to keep an open heart — and an open ear — with people who have fundamentally different beliefs. May we all maintain the same equanimity in the face of conflict, and the same willingness to take a punch if it means a handshake at the end of the round.

Maybe it will be exhausting and frustrating. But I want to try, both in-person and online, with people who have thousands of followers and people who have a handful. Because it’s my job and I love my job, because they are colleagues and neighbors and voters, and because we all have to live here on this Earth together, and if we’re not communicating, what the hell are we doing?

The princess myth: Hilary Mantel on Diana

Maybe you’re refusing to read any of the buzz around the anniversary of Princess Diana’s death; it’s an entirely defensible position, and I was like you until The Guardian pushed this piece by Hilary Mantel. Gretel, princess bride, Joan of Arc, White Goddess — Mantel applies her signature talent for pulling story out of history to the question of why we can’t stop talking about Diana Spencer.

Myth does not reject any material. It only asks for a heart of wax. Then it works subtly to shape its subject, mould her to be fit for fate. When people described Diana as a “fairytale princess”, were they thinking of the cleaned-up versions? Fairytales are not about gauzy frocks and ego gratification. They are about child murder, cannibalism, starvation, deformity, desperate human creatures cast into the form of beasts, or chained by spells, or immured alive in thorns. The caged child is milk-fed, finger felt for plumpness by the witch, and if there is a happy-ever-after, it is usually written on someone’s skin.

But in case you just can’t stomach or just don’t care (still very defensible), here’s another excellent long read from The Guardian: a look back at the tsunami that followed the monstrous 2011 earthquake in Japan, and how hard it is to make the right decision when the water comes over the wall.

I Don’t Read to Like

“What do you like to read” is a very personal question; Amy Reading breaks down why. A little romantic — or, less generously, pretentious — this essay works best as a personal reflection and less well as an anatomy. Most readers will recognize themselves at least once or twice, then enjoy arguing when they don’t.

Part of the problem is in the word “like,” that little heart we tap ten thousand times a day. I like lots of things, so many things, but I am not guided by what I like. I regularly read books that I know I’ll dislike, not to hate-read, but because I’m just plain curious — because there is something in there I need that is not pleasure.

What Cities Lose When an Alt-Weekly Dies

On a recent visit to the US Post Office, a postal employee offered some practical advice: need packing material? Grab a few copies of the The Stranger from the box at the door. Leaves you wondering: with the Village Voice gone digital, what the heck are New Yorkers using to wrap fish?

David Dudley’s mostly unsentimental comment on the shuttering of the Village Voice’s print edition does a good job on why alt-weeklies matter, and why print matters in particular for the free weekly newspaper. It’s not just the writing — though alt-weeklies can offer a specific and unique way of experiencing a city — it’s how print gets in your space, welcome or not, and stays there.

The thing the Voice and its descendants gave readers was something more important than the occasional scoop: They served as critical conveyors of regional lore and scuttlebutt and intel. Dailies may have told you what was going on; alt-weeklies helped make people locals, a cranky cohort united by common enthusiasms and grievances. The alternative media was the informal archive of the city’s id, a catalog of fandom and contempt that limned the contours of the populace. And this part of their role, as it turns out, is a lot harder to replace in the digital era.

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That pink box with the blue stamp on top. How many children in Seattle have seen that box in the fridge, knowing that inside is their dream cake, the one their parents ordered for their birthday, just biding its time until the party started? How many weddings have peaked with faces smeared by frosting that came all neat and delicious, inside that same pink box?

Mario Borracchini started the bakery, then called the International French Bakery (which should give you an idea of how Americans viewed Italians back then) in 1922, or thereabouts. The bakery changed its name to the Ginger Bell Bakery and moved into its current location in 1939 — a Seattle neighborhood colloquially called Garlic Gulch, because it used to be full of Italian businesses.

Brothers Dino, Angelo, and Remo ran the place until Remo took over in 1965. The building is a historical site in Seattle.

A fair share of stories have taken place there. A tragedy from this year: a teenage girl shot and killed in her mother's car when they pulled up to pick up a cake. A labor dispute from a clerk who was rude to customers inspired an apparently naive, but well-meaning, toothless protest (the woman fired claimed she never received breaks, but the owners of Borracchini's were able to produce videotape of her taking breaks).

But bad stories are few when you feed sweet goodness to Seattle for so long. According to one headline and interview from 1993, on one day "13,780 people were eating our wedding cakes."

That's what I like to think about. All of those cakes out in the world. All of those cakes at all of those parties. All of those pink boxes, and all of those unskilled cake decorators who were hired by the Borracchinis, and left with that ability under their belt.

And so, maybe we should take a look at where some of those cakes might end up.

Today's prompts

1. It was her fifth birthday cake, and her mother had ordered the wrong character. It was supposed to be Elsa, but an image search went wrong produced Anna, and now the whole party was potentially heading for ruin. What would she say, when they opened the box? How could they explain that there wasn't time to change it? They decided to play it straight, see if they could pass it off. So, after a rousing chorus of "Let It Go", they broke into "Happy Birthday," watching her face as they approached with the incorrect cake.

2. "It's a fucking scene from a bad movie," Georgia said. "I will not be in a bad movie." Sarah agreed, nodding, "No, you are not. But you know, those movies are bad because they are cliched, and cliches come from somewhere. For example, the feeling of needing to move on. Sometimes symbolism works. Sometimes taking action works. Sometimes being cliched works." Sarah opened the box, and there it was, the wedding cake that would never be served. "It does look good," Georgia said. "You haven't eaten since last night," Sarah said, handing over a fork. "One thing first," Georgia said. She took the male cake topper, and threw him out the window. "Okay. Let's eat."

3. It was his fifth year doing it. He'd order the smallest sheet cake he could, have a little celebration after dinner. Light a candle for himself and have a piece. It reminded him of home, that sweet sponge, that sugary frosting. Just because he was a cranky old man nobody liked didn't mean he shouldn't take a few minutes to enjoy himself. And so, he lit the candle. He just didn't expect the knock on the door to happen right then.

4. She had asked for the same cake every year since she was a little girl, almost thirty years — the one thing that was constant in her life. Vanilla frosting. White cake. Raspberry filling. No writing on top — she wanted it plain, austere, a field of frosting. So when he showed up on her birthday with the pink box, and he had that look on his face, she knew he had messed it up. "Baby, I'm sorry," he said. "I had to get some writing on it." She took a breath. Pursed her lips. "And what does this text say?" He grasped the box tighter. "You need to promise you'll forgive me." She shook her head. "Show me." He sighed. Closed his eyes, then after a minute opened them again. He down on one knee, and cracked the box open.

5. They got about forty of them around the cake, a full sheet cake with chocolate buttercream frosting. It was huge. Bunny handed out the forks, and even tried to give one to a cop, but he didn't budge, didn't look, didn't lower his baton. Didn't break formation. So, they counted down, over the chants of people behind them, and then forty forks dove for that cake. Pulling it apart, decimating it, pulling at the giant yellow words on top: RESIST! The whole thing was gone in less than four minutes.

• Friends, I messed up. I failed to mention in this week's reading calendar that the Seattle Anarchist Book Fair is tomorrow, August 26th, from 10 am to 5 pm at the Vera Project in Seattle Center. It features all kinds of neat organizations including Books to Prisoners, Left Bank Books, and the Social Justice Film Festival, and it's absolutely free. Go check it out, please.

• You should definitely read this Seattle Times story about how Seattle is now the country's biggest company town:

Amazon now occupies a mind-boggling 19 percent of all prime office space in the city, the most for any employer in a major U.S. city, according to a new analysis conducted for The Seattle Times.

Amazon’s footprint in Seattle is more than twice as large as any other company in any other big U.S. city, and the e-commerce giant’s expansion here is just getting started.

• Here's the thing about company towns: They always flourish until, suddenly, they stop flourishing.

• Seattle publisher Fantagraphics announced this week that they'll be publishing a comic called Dull Margaret written by the great actor Jim Broadbent.

• I don't agree with the assessment that Joan Didion is "the Original Millennial White Girl," but I can tell you that the movie that inspired this observation, Ingrid Goes West, is a decent (if not great) comedy with a bad ending.

• Speaking of Didion, there's a Netflix documentary about her coming out later this year, along with a documentary about Gay Talese.

• Neil Gaiman wrote a short-but-touching remembrance of sci-fi author Brian Aldiss at The Guardian.

Do you need a book recommendation to send your worst cousin on her birthday? Is it okay to read erotica on public transit? Cienna Madrid can help. Send your Help Desk Questions to advice@seattlereviewofbooks.com.

Dear Cienna,

My friend wants to apply for a job at my bookstore and he keeps asking me to talk him up to the managers. My friend is kind of a mess — he does a lot of drugs and he’s a little handsy when he’s drunk. But I don’t want to shit talk him to my bosses, because that seems low, and it might get back to me somehow. Is it worse to flag his application as a no-go, or should I accidentally “lose” his application? Or should I just hope his uncouthness comes through in an interview?

Dean, Renton

Dear Dean,

I have a friend who, when drunk, routinely asks people questions from the New York Times’s 36 questions to fall in love to see if he can trick someone into loving him. Does that make him a bad person? Maybe! Does it make him unfit to execute his job as a seasoned mid-level government employee whose lust for life incrementally diminishes with each passing day? Nope! And who doesn’t like drugs? Did you know that fish antibiotics are virtually indistinguishable from human antibiotics once you adjust the dose by about 1,000 percent?

Perhaps your concerns about your friend are legitimate or perhaps you are being a fussy square. Here’s how you tell for sure: If your friend is a mess at his current job — if he consistently misses work or gets drunk or high on the job — tell him, “It would be cool to work with you but I love my job and can’t recommend you until you get your shit together.”

If your friend is an off-duty mess but publicly pulls himself together — what I call a bolo’d shit show — then it’s mostly none of your business how he spends his free time*. Leave his application alone and if your boss asks about him, answer honestly about his skills and personality (he is your friend) and let him earn the job on his own merits.

*Cute euphemisms aside, if your “handsy” friend is routinely crossing people’s personal boundaries with “good natured” assaults, it’s your duty to speak up and tell him to knock it off.

Kisses,

Cienna