THURSDAY 1/2

Where the hell'd that pork roast come from, anyway?
FRIDAY 1/3



JOHN B. WRIGHT

Physician and poet Wright presents his most recent collection, As Through Praying, his testament to the passions of sheep farming. Yes, I'm serious--and no, because that's just too easy. Elliott Bay Book Company, 101 S Main St, 624-6600, 7:30 pm, free.
SUNDAY 1/5



STAN BURRISS

Real Change presents the premiere reading by the recently published Burriss, a chapbook of street-level poems from this Seattle outsider. Elliott Bay Book Company, 624-6600, 4 pm, free.

MONDAY 1/6



DONNA ANDERS, ANN RULE

A double dose of mass-market paperback tripe, readily available at fine grocery store checkout lines everywhere. Be the first to get your $6.99 copy of the latest from either member of this gruesome twosome today at Third Place. Third Place Books, 17171 Bothell Way NE, 366-3333, 7 pm, free.

SUSAN POWTER

She's still getting published. Forgive me this, but for the love of god, STOP THE INSANITY. Elliott Bay Book Company, 624-6600, 7:30 pm, free.

TUESDAY 1/7



ROBIN HOBB

A rising star in the world of fantasy, Robin Hobb (AKA Megan Lindholm) presents her newest, the latest in the Farseer Trilogy. Your bespectacled, maladjusted dorm-mate is totally stoked. University Bookstore, 4326 University Way, 634-3400, 2 pm, free.

JERRY MADER

Local photographer Mader transfers his vision to typewriter ribbon with The Road to Lame Deer, his uplifting account of just how miserable life in the Native American community can be. Elliott Bay Book Company, 624-6600, 7:30 pm, free.

WEDNESDAY 1/8



MONICA NOLAN

Book most likely to be mistakenly stumbled across in desperate Google searches: Nolan signs The Big Book of Lesbian Horse Stories, her tongue-in-cheek, pulp nostalgia yarn, with a conspicuous absence of the term "engorged." Elliott Bay Book Company, 624-6600, 7:30 pm, free.

POETRY/OPEN MIC
HOMELAND--Words. So many words. Tuesdays at 7 pm. Caffe Vita, 1005 E Pike, 709-4440, free.

OUT OF TUNE--Poetry and music free-for-all hosted by Jon Hogan. Thursdays at 8:30 pm, signup at 8 pm. The 15th, 7515 15th Ave NW, 706-4973, free.

POETSWEST--Featuring Priscilla Long and Laura L. Snyder. Sun Jan 5 at 7 pm. Penny Cafe, 1707 NW Market St, 682-1268, free.

ReBIRTH--All-ages open-mic brouhaha. Sundays at 7 pm. French and European Artistic and Cultural Center, 623 Broadway E, 726-4843, free.

RED SKY POETRY--Featuring readings from the Globe staff. Sun Jan 5 at 7:30 pm. Globe Cafe, 1531 14th Ave, 547-4585, free.

SCRATCHING POST--Poetry open mic, all ages. Thursdays at 8 pm, signup at 7:30 pm. Mr. Spot's Chai House, 5463 Leary Ave NW, 297-2424, free.

SEATTLE POETRY SLAM--Open mic and slam with Karen Finneyfrock. Wednesdays at 8 pm. Sit & Spin, 2219 Fourth Ave, 441-9484, $4.

TAKE A POEM INTO YOUR HEART--Featuring Curt Colbert, Phil Randolph, and more. Thurs Jan 2 at 7 pm. Lottie Motts, 4900 Rainier Ave S, 725-8199, $2.



Ed. note: Stranger books editor Charles Mudede, armed with paper clips, mechanical pencils, and rubber bands, staged a brutal Marxist coup this week that seized a healthy portion of my editorial space right smack dab in the middle of the readings calendar. Under penalty of death, I invite you to enjoy Mr. Mudede's year-end space filler, some bullshit that got bumped over three months ago.

The Best Readings of the Year 2002

by Charles Mudede

The award for Best Reading of the Year 2002 goes to none other than Salman Rushdie, who performed at Town Hall on September 24. As always, his reading was lively and intelligent. A close second is Zadie Smith's reading, which took place in Benaroya Hall on November 12. The Stranger's Readings Calendar was impressed not with young Smith's actual reading, but the sheer (and even vulgar) fact that she packed the house--also, everyone loved her mode of being: her style of clothes, her posh accent, the way she walked, and so on. Third place goes to Peter Quartermain's reading, which took place at Richard Hugo House on November 6 as part of its Subtext Reading Series, certainly the best reading series of the year. Though Quartermain didn't pack the house, he stunned the few of us who were there with the beauty of his prose. Here is an interview with this year's best reader.

Thus far, Salman Rushdie's residency in New York City (which began at the turn of the century) has not been ordinary. On the one hand, there are the celebrity circles he moves in--dinners with Thomas Pynchon, baseball games with Don DeLillo, love affairs with supermodels. And then there's his first New York novel, Fury, which was released on September 11, 2001. The day that it arrived, it instantly became a historical document--a book about a world that had suddenly expired.

This is the kind of life that I, as a writer, envy, in the Yuri Olesha sense. This is why, as I sit across from Salman Rushdie, I'm thinking that this is who I want to be. The fatwa was a bad thing, but obviously not that bad; judging from Rushdie's relaxed air, one might forget that until recently, his life was wanted by the most dedicated fanatics.

But I'm not here to talk about l'affaire Rushdie; I want to talk to him about the New York publishing world, and "In Defense of the Novel, Yet Again," an essay from his new collection, Step Across This Line. The essay argues that the novel is alive and well, especially in America. "From where I sit [New York City]," Rushdie writes, "American literature looks to be in great shape."

Later in the essay, he tells us that the problem with the American novel is not a matter of too little, but too much: "In America, in 1999, over five thousand new novels were published. Five thousand!" He is not entirely happy with the glut, which he believes was caused by recent developments in the American publishing industry.

"You are a book critic," Rushdie says to me, leaning back into an ample and accommodating sofa. "There is a flood of books arriving every month at your desk."

"Nonstop," I say in agreement.

"And then in bookstores, it's simply amazing. Novels after novels...."

He continues. "When I started publishing books, there was no question that the most important relationship for a novelist was with the editor. In England, I had an incredibly creative relationship with my editor--I trusted her judgment, and she would say things about this passage or that, and I would listen very carefully. And many writers will tell you similar stories. Then the conglomerate problem began: Every big publisher kept buying other publishers, and suddenly you have these giant corporations using corporate philosophy rather than the individual relationship with the writer and the editor as the driving mechanism for the company.

"Meanwhile, all the creative people in the publishing companies were being forced out. I know a lot of people who now use freelance editors because they can't actually get good editorial advice inside their own publishers. They'll actually pay for them, because so many people who used to be in publishing are now outside publishing."

After discussing the publishing world at length, I ask Rushdie if he knows Jonathan Raban, who is to Seattle what Rushdie is now to New York: the city's most famous literary expat. He tells me that he does.

"Raban," I explain, "has just completed what could be called a Seattle novel. It captures a Seattle at its peak, a Seattle before WTO. Your novel Fury does something similar: It captures a New York before WTC."

"Yes, and as you know it came out on September 11. In Fury I tried to capture a kind of sense that [New York's prosperity] was not going to last forever. That's why the book has this strange mood of an ending. Because I thought these moments, these golden moments, they're always rather brief in duration, and I wanted to capture it before it went away."

I ask, "Was Fury meant to be a Great American Novel?"

"No," he responds. "I feel there is a particular point of entry into life in America that I have which is clearly not the same as someone who was born and raised in America. You need an American childhood to write an American novel."