Month: June 2019

Faerie Book Gifting

/ Tony Gentry / Leave a comment

So, I read about this thing where writers leave their books for people to pick up and read wherever, and thought it might be fun. In Charlottesville yesterday, followed the trail that the characters in The Coal Tower make, and left a copy of the novel at the Downtown Mall bus station, where Dr. Cannon holds his Hollywood-inspired party. In the book, I imagine this party on the rooftop of the bus station, giving the attendees views of a concert in the Sprint Pavilion next door. Couldn’t, of course, get up there, so left the book on a seat inside:

Would you party on that roof?
Leaving my lonely book behind…

Then went up to UVA, but the Jeffersonian pavilion where the good doctor relieves himself (after his slo-mo streak) was wrapped in scaffolding. So left a book on a rocker in front of one of the student apartments.

Finally, sought out the old coal tower itself. In a driving rain, came upon a dramatically different scene than the one in the novel. Where there once was a field (where the teenage lovers Chloe and Lucas end their daylong traipse around the city), there now stands a long row of condos and brightly painted storefronts, the apartments running right up to the edge of the coal tower, with more on the way. Once completed, the complex will bookend the old tower, which I guess is just too sturdy to tear down.

But the train tracks that figure in the story still run along to the right of the picture, the Sally Hemings dress frame structure (that the book’s character Sid thinks is an antenna for cosmic aliens) still tops the tower, and at least until they finish that new row of condos on this side, I think you can still imagine the climactic drama from the novel. Too wet to leave a book – next trip!

The Coal Tower is all about the tensions, misunderstandings, and disparities in families and community in Cville. Along the way, though, I paused before this corner, marking the place where the city exploded beyond anything I could have imagined just two years ago. What are we all going to do about that?

Post-Reading Glow

/ Tony Gentry / Leave a comment

Visiting the Outer Banks this weekend to hang out with son Nick, who’s ocean rescue life-guarding for Nags Head again this summer, and still feeling the glow from last weekend’s reading at Book People in Richmond, VA. David, the owner, played gracious host, friends (counted among them six occupational therapists – hey, birds of a feather!), family, and the occasional casual shopper dropped in. Paul Witcover, my best friend and a constant inspiration (he’s a well-published SF author – here’s his website: https://paulwitcover.com), drove all the way down from New York; one of my pals from high school, Doris McGehee, drove in from Palmyra, and my son Stephen, who designed the covers for both my books, took pictures and made a video of the reading (not yet edited, but soon, he says).

I read a two page section from The Coal Tower drawn almost autobiographically from my childhood, when Grandma Glass, our next door neighbor, would impress her fingers in a “foldover sandwich” made from Nolde’s white bread and her own homemade blackberry jam. Here’s a paragraph from that passage.

Fun to sign books (David had set out copies of The Coal Tower and Last Rites for people to purchase). The whole afternoon just so fun! Thank you to all who came, to all who wanted to come but ran into obstacles along the way, but mostly to David for being the most caring, personable, open-hearted bookseller in Richmond. Go visit his shop, if you don’t know it. It’s at 536 Granite Avenue, in a cottage. He’s got easy chairs to sit in, a Keurig machine at the door, and a nicely curated collection of new and used books, including a shelf of local authors, often discounted. Here’s the store’s website: https://bookpeoplrichmond.com.

My next reading is scheduled for New Dominion Book Store on Charlottesville’s downtown mall on Wednesday August 28 at 7 pm. What’s so cool about this: a lot of the action in The Coal Tower occurs right outside the doors of New Dominion on the mall, and the whole novel takes place on Game Day, Labor Day weekend, the same week when I’ll be giving the reading! In my book the UVA football team plays Penn State that day. This year they’ll be playing Pittsburgh. Close!