Some ruminations on personality, business, making, as Juve says, something out of nothing

You know, this might come off as bitter. It's not. I swear. Today I went to a volunteer orientation at 826 Valencia at 826 Valencia, San Francisco, the organization founded by novelist Dave Eggers and someone else. What's fascinating about 826 is its relationship with what has become a massive Egger empire - Dave's personality, personal expression, comes through in it all (McSweeney's, 826, The Believer), pervasive. Unfortunately, I find his style to be fussy, put-on, facetious, overly fastidious, tiresomely ironic, and annoying. BUT, he's no doubt a large player in the modern American literary landscape. And amazing in his own way. His 2000 breakout novel, A Staggering Work of Heartbreaking Genius (A Staggering Work of Outlandish Self-Reflection (Navel-Gazing) and Inanity) put him onto the scene. Note: Finally reading the whole thing (I know shameful to judge without reading, but I read parts of it!) and will have a more intelligent, detailed critique soon. But, the Berkeley Public Library has it filed in its Teen section. Enough said?

Dave founded McSweeney's, the West Coast's representation of a "serious” literary journal, a la The Paris Review, Granta. The journal paused as it transmuted a couple of issues into make the outstanding one-time-only newspaper, The San Francisco Panorama. Amazing! I first heard about it from my grad school cohort and bluegrass bassist extraordinaire Brian Heffernan who interned at San Francisco Magazine one summer. He was here (in SF) when Panorama was published. The newspaper listed its exact publishing costs, line-itemed. Insightful, intriguing, a genius-move. It was an experiment in newspapering in this chaotic digital time.

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826 is just as Eggerish – rococo sheets billowing from the ceilings, bookshelves/books everywhere, and most notably, the storefront (about 18 yards wide, 15 yards deep) is a Pirate Shop, no doubt born from Eggers's whimsy. He or whomever might argue the details of who did what (suggested what, etc., but the details aren't the issue, the issue, it's the broad vision/inspiration), but the style is unmistakedly Dave's; some people just provide a vision/framework/style and then people take that and run. There's nothing like having a framework in which to work. I've seen this exact same thing before; we all have probably, but this one is notably, remarkably similar. When in journalism grad school at the University of Missouri, Columbia, I came across Paul Sturtz. His name first entered my realm as a public life beat reporter at the Missourian, the MU journalism-student-produced city newspaper (with bunches of issues all its own. Inexplicably, it loses (or did when I was there in 2008-ish) one million dollars a year and has a circulation of 1,200! Pathetic, inexcusable, a waste of time and money (the competing city paper, The Columbia Daily Tribune, had successfully argued that a university newspaper competing against a city paper was unfair, and dangled a lawsuit over the Missourian's head; there has to be a functional, good resolution, compromise. Maybe the Missourian becomes a section of the Tribune. But, whatever needs to be done, stop beating your heads against the wall, please! As a former Missourian, it was painful; the wall stared at you everyday, large thick bricks. You walked in in the morning and there it was about two feet in front of you (no way around, no way over, no way under, and, tragically, no way through) waiting for you to make the percussive next move, over and over and over)). But, unfortunately, this circumstance resonated a certain harmony that sang throughout the journalism school: extreme, professional effort with absolutely no vision, a sincere blindness to common sense.

(I am aware of the irony of this juxtaposition). Anyhow, my great editor, great human being, cool, real, hardworking, inspiring, a canoeist, lead-singer of a rejuvenated teenage Sedalia, Missouri, 80s punk band, The Abusers, skinny-ass Levi pants that accentuate his legs' stork-like thinness (fragility, impression), ending in big brown, clunky work boots, an inveterate smoker, coffee drinker, a deep voice, a very simple, logical, at-the-surface, always-ready-to-gurgle-up sense-of-humor: Scott Swafford (earnest: he was also taking graduate classes with us grad students. In one seminar, I sat next to him in class; several of us had noticed that he had meticulously highlighted all of the text, all of it, on a page of an obscure reading in the meaningless, useless qualitative research methods class. The whole page! It was hilarious; he held it up for a second and shook his head in acknowledgement of the acknowledgement). In the Fall of 2007, when I was a reporter at the Missourian, Scott asked me, excitedly, to contact Paul Sturtz as he had just entered the First Ward city council race. The First Ward is the core of the pop. 100,000-ish town, dominated by the university, State Farm Insurance and Shelter Insurance. It's a swale in the middle of central Missouri's crop fields. Anyhow, Scott was notably reverent toward Paul; the descriptive quote about him stuck out (and indicates Scott's mix of purity, naivete and unabashed straightforwardness), "He writes poetry.” Ha. Scott, 45-ish, grew up in Sedalia, Missouri, and has been a newspaperman since right after school. He has the Show-Me-state sensibility to his core. So, because of my reverence for Scott, and his for Paul, I took notice. Slowly, I learned that Paul (co-(see my Dave Eggers vision point))founded the True/False Film Festival, a world-class international documentary film festival held in Columbia each twilight-of-winter. And he used to teach at the Missourian and he helped save a park and he (co-)founded the independent bar/cafe/movie theater in town.

So, I went after him. Like Dave, he's an amazing hub of energy: directing, inspiring others with a resolute, dependable, detailed and always-reliable vision. I pitched a profile of him to one of Columbia's lifestyle magazines, Inside Columbia Magazine, and got the go-ahead. I then went after Paul. I emailed him and emailed him. He never said no, but he was trying to brush me off. But, I wrote/told him each time, "Just say, 'No,' and I'll go away. Until you say 'no,' I'm going to keep asking you for the profile.” He finally acquiesced. It was about a week before the city council election. He graciously had me over to his house. I walked in and Paul's style/sensibility struck me immediately as a carefree, slightly mischievous Calvin and Hobbes one; maybe because among the books that lined the room was a Calvin and Hobbes collection. He sat down, collapsed in a chair and rubbed his face; he looked exhausted, he didn't want me to do the story in the first place but I went for it. His exhaustion was something deeper. He calls himself a "social entrepreneur," and he said (paraphrasing), "Sometimes I just feel so drained. There are amazing highs from motivating, inspiring people to do something great; and there are great energy lows.” In other words, he's completely conscious of his talent. I was drawn to him because I recognize in me the same skill/gift/way-of-being/curse. Anyhow, I walked with him around the neighborhood on the cold, cold day, his nose running a little, my hands numb. He knocked on each door, wrote a hand-written note on each flier. His goal was lofty: to knock on every door in the First Ward. I said something like, "It's a good way to go," and he replied, quickly, "It's the only way to go." Gives you an idea of his striving for perfection. He said several times in several different guises that what motivates him is a sincere need to justify his existence on earth. With limited resources, what are you doing to justify your place on earth? My piece ("Walking to Utopia") in the magazine ended with a quote from a book that he recited to me in his house, the same quote he closed his First Ward City Council seat victory speech with at The Pasta Factory in Columbia on April 8, 2008: "What is utopia for? It is for this. For walking."

marching to utopia: T/F 2010 opening second-line (band from New Orleans) parade through downtown Columbia - UTOPIA

Just before he acknowledged the win, his True/False co-founder, David Wilson, and he had an aside-moment. David was saying, "Dude, you won. Give the speech,” and Paul was demurring, "I think it's classier if I wait, don't you?” Thorough to the end.

So, the Eggerish thing about Paul is really seen at the True/False Film Festival. As his ex-partner and mother of his son Zola, Sheila Johnson, said (paraphrased), "The year they brought the whole Afro-Cuban All-Stars, that was all Paul.” (In the context of our discussion, to be clear, she was confirming the overwhelming, unmistakable impression I had that Paul was the fest's primal force). I covered the 2010 festival for Inside Columbia (story). Glorious (photos). A true utopia over four days. Art, music. Buskers on the street, throughout downtown, filmmakers everywhere. Encountered a NYC busker wailing Charley Patton with a finger-slide and guitar the opening Thursday of the fest outside a coffee shop in the heart of downtown, a couple of blocks north of the University of Missouri campus. Made your heart sing. And the legendary Timothy "Speed" Levitch gave walking tours of downtown Columbia. Timothy "Speed” Levitch!? He's a legend. I was mesmerized by his starring role in the 1997 bio-documentary The Cruise, in which he basically performed one long paean to the city of New York and the soul-warp of its upper-island grid and the birds-nest creative expansion of South-of-Houston glory. (Click on the freeze-frame below of Speed sitting gloriously framed on his NYC tour bus throne, caught in rapture, mid-top-of-the-brain-ramble, mid-exuberant-seemingly-always-present-poem rhapsodizing from his rara avis genius). He was there in person! I still can't believe it. I went to two of the tours he led. And in a down moment, 15 minutes before one of the tours, I asked him what he's up to now. Living with his mom in Kansas City! Crazy!

Paul, 45-ish, won the seat. Sheila, his former partner, said to me (we became friends; I took over her amazing clifftop house in Columbia's best neighborhood when she went to Nepal for her master's project), in a tone that whispered both admiration and respect, "When he won and we talked, he said, 'You know, it will be just such a great opportunity to learn.'!" I did one more accuracy check with Paul in his True/False Film Fest office a few weeks after he won; he was noticeably happier, more relaxed. It wasn't the happiness/relaxation of a person achieving something specific they wanted, it was the happiness/relaxation that comes, finally, in a life where amazingly hard work has led you to a full place from which you know you will never leave; this was his culminating/climax moment where life and work finally merged. He said, in his office (left a deep impression), "My life finally has some grace to it now. It wasn't easy." I saw the same thing with my brother recently. Where everything (life, work) seems like it's going downhill, in a good way. Nice to see.

Anyhow, at 826 Valencia there is a pirate store with supplies for pirates, stuff they would need like sand, eyepatches, rope (and also some booky stuff and t-shirts). 826 needed a storefront for their proposed tutoring center because the site was zoned commercially, and, thus, the founders had to find something to sell to make the location work. The ironic thing … the store makes a profit and accounts for 10 percent of 826 Valencia's operating budget. The harmony of flowing with the particulars of life. Okay enough for right now …

Will tie this up some time soon, hopefully.