maria and dave

It’s been a fun week.  On Wednes­day night, our good friend Maria Sem­ple orga­nized an 826 ben­e­fit at Town Hall with Dave Eggers, and invit­ed me onstage to do the read­ing with them and answer ques­tions.  Maria read from Bernadette’s let­ter to her men­tor (both fun­ny and quite beau­ti­ful), and the three of us did an omi­nous tri­a­logue from The Cir­cle– me as bad guy, obvi­ous­ly–

Dave and Maria have entire­ly dif­fer­ent approach­es to writ­ing, and were a vivid con­trast. Notes vs. no notes, com­posed in scenes vs. start to end, per­son­al vs. jour­nal­is­tic (with the excep­tion of A Heart­break­ing Work of Stag­ger­ing Genius), par­al­lel vs. ser­i­al pro­duc­tion. There was a healthy dose of mutu­al respect, and a cer­tain amount of rib­bing (I now know an alter­nate def­i­n­i­tion of “under­writ­ten”, an adjec­tive applied, retract­ed, and then on provo­ca­tion re-applied by Maria in a very Bernadet­teish moment).

Under­writ­ten or not, Dav­e’s spon­ta­neous McSweeney’s-style sketch­es are impres­sive:

Feel­ing pret­ty hap­py about our life and friends in Seat­tle.