Wordstock

I attended the final two hours of the Wordstock festival last Sunday at Portland's Convention Center. There seemed to be fewer booths this year and fewer interesting ones (it's the economy, stupid!) and thus I was a little bummed. I did get to see the back of Sherman Alexie's head as he signed books for folks, and then I poked into the finish of the Shawn Levy reading--enjoying his Q&A session wherein he answered questions about his new biography of Paul Newman. What I was there for mostly, however, was Paul Collins' reading/presentation from his new book, The Book of William: How Shakespeare's First Folio Conquered the World. He read some entertaining passages, told us some fun stories about his research process and some juicy tidbits about the world of Folio collecting, rare book auctions, and publishing in WS's day. Afterwards, I shook his hand and told him I was the emailer who invited him a couple days ago to Clark College for a reading in Feb. "Stalker!" he cried. "Help! Help! Police! This man has been sending me harassing emails and now he's here to steal my life! He claims that I'm living the life that was meant for HIM!: writing books which explore the obscure corners of the literary world and the lives of oddball characters from history, talking about antiquarian books on NPR, teaching at a Portland university, writing regularly for McSweeney's, and editing the Paul Collins library of rare and out of print books for them! Arrest him at once! Help!" Of course, it was minutes before the festival was closing and there was no one around to hear the muffled cries...

CD