And see the postscript, Mayor John Engen's beautiful welcome from the opening night of the festival.
Bill Kittredge introduces |
Tom McGuane |
Germaine White's session on the restoration of bull trout in the Jocko River; published by the University of Nebraska Press; Germaine was vice chair of my board in 1997 |
Poetry dispenser at the registration desk |
My successor, Ken Egan, introduces the panel for the "Coen Brothers' Cinematic West"; "careful, man, there's a beverage here" |
Friday night--family night--at the Top Hat; only in Montana |
Rick Bass; just for the record, I became convinced of the importance of Montana writers on a late 90s visit to Paris and a Left Bank bookstore table of Rick's books |
Kiddie time at the festival, with Snow White, Grumpy, and Corduroy the Bear; I am now much more attuned to kiddie time... |
Mary Clearman Blew |
Festival of the Book 2011
"Why is Missoula, Montana, home to so many writers?"
That's the sort of question you get asked when you're the mayor of Missoula, Montana. And while your first instinct is to offer a matter-of-fact reply, something like: "We believe it has much to do with the abundant availability of inexpensive liquor," you know there's a more appropriate answer.
When you're born in Missoula, Montana, you're likely to take for granted the sense of place that folks long forgotten worked to cultivate and later preserve. You assume that the guy moving your piano is a poet and the woman pouring your coffee has a reading tonight at your independent bookstore and that your state's poet laureate connects school kids, many of them outsiders, to words and that those words lead to self-expression and that expression leads to realization and that realization leads to fully formed human beings who think for themselves and believe that some stuff in this life still matters in the midst of all this relentless damn noise and nonsense.
You take for granted that our piece of the West, while populated in part with images of Justin Bieber and some Real Housewives of Somewhere Else, is still a bit spare. There's still enough room to be lonely and, if you want, alone. You take for granted that the weather changes, that most of us are still in the same boat, that you've got to work, one way or another, to make it work here, and it ain't always easy.
You take for granted that people of character provide fodder for characters and that the facts are all over the place but you've got to look hard for the truth and one of the ways you do that is by fighting with words over sound and cadence and meaning and depth until you embrace a sentence that's just about perfect for the moment. And you add that sentence to the last hard-won turn of phrase and start in on the next one.
You take all that for granted when you're born here. But if you're from a place that's no longer a place and you ache for a reality that fuels imagination and you're a writer, want to be a writer or will become a writer despite your better judgment and warnings from family and friends, Missoula, Montana, is a discovery. It's a place and it's a place for writers. They are welcome, admired, respected and most likely have day jobs.
And if all that weren't enough, there's a book festival here every year. And it starts now.
Welcome, folks, to Missoula, Montana.
My name's John Engen, I'm the mayor, I'm a writer, and these welcoming remarks are titled "The Chamber of Commerce Will Not Approve."