Harrisburg, PA 56°F
Reading and writing are superficially solitary activities, but loving something is only intensified by enjoying that love communally. People who love reading and writing so much might even love it enough to assemble and party over it, and Harrisburg is fortunate enough to be home to the Midtown Scholar, who does this every day. The Book Fair, which took place from the 11th to the 14th and was the second such instance since last year's inaugural fair, was just a matter of turning up the volume on that party.
To generate my own apocrypha: the first time I visited the Scholar, I had a 1925 Remington portable with me. It was joining me on my hunt for works by the great Carole Maso, and there we found and read Maso's the Room Lit by Roses in one sitting, and I cried with joy into its busted carriage. At one point I might have found one of Maso's books at Borders - Borders used to carry more obscurities (I bought Dennis Cooper's George Miles Cycle in Camp Hill - go on, Google it), even when Barnes & Noble was more comprehensive - but it has been years since I went into a bookstore thinking maybe I'll find what I want. But I always find what I want at the Scholar, even if I don't know it until I see it and it seizes me by the mind-loins. They are right to hide the massive scholarly libraries in the basement. People get all frothing and a-throb down there with the piles and piles of peer-reviewed booty (like treasure! Like treasure!) - where else can somebody go with an unquenchable penchant for gender studies or the history of France to enjoy rows upon rows of texts new, old, and seemingly imaginary? Yeah, I can order and assemble a mass of texts that live up to my impossible standards of the perfect library. I have just about every book by Carole Maso now - and books by Kate Zambreno, Joanna Ruocco, Jac Jemc and Bhanu Kapil I've never seen in a bookstore in Central PA. But there is something very important about seeing a book in a bookstore in my own community that gives me a sense of context, relevance, excitement and comfort that I don't get otherwise.
The Second Annual Book Fair was all of this and more - I felt like high-fiving everybody I saw, a sensation I usually reserve for occasions like a new friend saying "my kid was totally unplanned" or a mutually witnessed bulk-foods vandalism. This was a much purer feeling. I got to the Fair on Saturday. The Historic Harrisburg Resource Center was open and in full peacock-strut with its briliant windows. Not only was the main room the perfect example of what a room should be, it was so full of people looking at books that I couldn't move. I had to fight my way to the community room, which had the drafty, creepy remoteness of an all-purpose room in a church, and it was full of young artists. There is probably a very on-point word for that whole feeling in Portugese. Of the several swank little tables of handmade wares, I ran to the back to the girl who sat alone with a bunch of immaculate graphic tshirts and a basket of buttons. We talked about Audrey Kawasaki and I ran away to find a dollar. When I returned, a man and my friend Jonathan Frazier had joined her. Joëlle Workman and Justin Arawjo - the art-peddling strangers of whom I speak - are Philadelphia residents who are, when their powers combine, Communitea Graphics (this link is no accident - this item of theirs should be sewn over the hearts of every man, woman and child). Justin is a former residents of Harrisburg, but it was only Joëlle's second trip. Under pressure, she characterized Harrisburg as a nice, small city. I later heard Harrisburg characterized as a "smoldering Gehara." This might be apocraphyl or I simply misheard. Gehara is a hairy, ragged ghost monster from the Godzilla franchise. Who votes a big, awesome yes?
I would have enjoyed spending the whole weekend in the mill of bodies, but unfortunately I only made it back to the Fair Sunday evening for the panel on City Contented, City Discontented: A History of Modern Harrisburg by Paul Beers, the premiere publication from the Midtown Scholar Press. I crept up and watched it from the lofted art book collection on the second floor. The topic covered chiefly in my presence was the mutation of journalistic media's role in the community, the way the Patriot suffered when its readership expanded to the suburbs, its newfound majority readership discouraged by the lack of coverage about their small towns. Contextualizing one's community in the firm embrace of an intelligent, powerful voice should never be underestimated. As the Patriot astutely pointed out this past year, Harrisburg suffers from a lack of cohesive branding, of which - I believe - active intellectual investigation regarding the condition of life in the metro area is a vital part. It is my hope that with the influence of institutions like the Midtown Scholar, Harrisburg wears "smoldering Gehara" better and prouder.
The panel made me want to congratulate and make inquiries and mix - something I, retiring writer-type that I am - don't jump to do on Sunday nights. I put the Gregory Crewdson monograph away (I did not buy it, it is still there - you can go look at it, too) and went to slip out and start writing this. I noticed my phone was dead. A girl in the crowd lent me the use of hers. She was a chestnut-haired stunner and while on her phone I noticed around her shoulder she had an n+1 bag slung. I had a line ready: would you like to do a little community building with me? Hopefully all the magic that was the Second Annual Harrisburg Book Fair will not isolate itself to that weekend.
Kari Larsen's chapbook, Say you're a fiction, is forthcoming from Dancing Girl Press in the summer of 2012. More information on this and other projects can be found at her blog, Cold Rubies.
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