Every year, The Stranger publishes this inexplicably popular
Bumbershoot guide and all the wafting marijuana smoke and
deep-fat-fried Twinkies cause ordinarily decent, law-abiding
Seattleites to turn to the preferred resource of criminally minded sex
addicts. No wonder Bumbershoot organizers typically invite
Stranger hacks to host events: It is evidently extortion,
probably delivered via threatening e-mail missives that say things like
“PUT US ONSTAYGE OR WE RITE BAD STUF BOUT YU HA-HA.”
However, this particular literary/artistic/musical event is too
egregious a conflict of interest for me to ignore. It’s true enough
that as part of this program the author Sherman Alexie will be reading
(with musical accompaniment) “What You Pawn I Will Redeem,” a marvelous
short story that originally appeared in the New Yorker. Alexie
is an exemplar of Seattle’s first-rate literary community, though why
he continues to associate himself with gutter filth like The
Stranger is beyond me. The Stranger-associated felons and
deviants who round out the program include the paper’s most famous
comic artist, Ellen Forney;
former associate editor Sean Nelson
(who is also a well-known musician); Stranger contributor Trisha
Ready; and The Stranger‘s editor-in-chief, Christopher
Frizzelle.
Apparently, Ready, when not constructing incomprehensible essays
about her feelings, is part of a country and western band called the
West Marginals, and they will perform some sort of honky-tonk paean to
the works of Annie Dillard and Pablo Neruda. Just as the audience
recovers from that cacophony, Forney, Nelson, and Frizzelle will hold
forth on their not-at-all-interesting love for the work of the American
hit-makers Hall & Oates. Rumor has it Nelson may even caterwaul an
approximation of their songs. Then Alexie will read.
One can only hope that Alexie has a secret plan in mind for this
occasion. Maybe he has waited, patiently, to earn the trust of this
band of self-abusers so as to all the more spectacularly and at long
last publicly humiliate them, revealing them for the frauds that they
are. I will be there, in the front row, ready to lead the taunts.
