San Francisco Examiner

Katherine Seligman, OF THE EXAMINER STAFF

Sunday, October 1, 2000

The sound of the written word bounced off the waterfall, wafted through the giant metal chair sculpture, and enveloped a new bride and groom as they posed for pictures, making it the kind of day that only happens in San Francisco.

The second annual Litstock brought together 23 writers on Saturday at Yerba Buena Gardens to read, recite and perform their works. The assembled poets, novelists, monologuists, humorists and journalists were easily as diverse as the audience sprawled on the amphitheater lawn, soaking up the early fall hot spell.

“These people would never be on the same program in any other city,” said writer Jack Boulware, one of the producers of the event and also one of the readers at the five-hour literary marathon, sponsored by The Examiner. Those same people on the lawn probably couldn’t be found anywhere else, either. Serious readers, yuppies, homeless,families with toddlers, suits, and spiked hairdos that seemed to somehow match the pattern on the Museum of Modern Art building.

“It’s a lovely idea,” said Linda Okerlund, who sells scientific analytical instruments and drove up from Redwood City for the event. “It’s great to see a spotlight on some local authors. San Francisco has a literary tradition and there aren’t enough of these things going on.”

The readings were an attempt to bolster that tradition at a time when writers are faced with the same conditions that are driving other artists out of San Francisco - sky-high rents, competition for space to work and live, and a dearth of public financial support. “There are not enough material resources, publishers or funding,” said Peter Plate, a novelist who taught himself to write during eight years as a squatter in abandoned Mission District buildings and who is now the author of six novels. “The public and private sector have to come together to solve this or the San Francisco literary tradition will end. It’s obvious to all of us who are writers,” Plate said. Plate introduced the audience to his own literary version of San Francisco by reciting an excerpt from his newest novel “Angels of Catastrophe.” A gritty realist, Plate performed in what he called “the Russian declamatory tradition,” belting out his descriptions of a Mission neighborhood.

Like San Francisco’s literary tradition, the artists emerged from every sort of background. There was best-selling novelist April Sinclair, who has worked in community service programs and teaches creative writing to inner city kids. And there was noted poet and fiction writer Victor Martinez, who has been a field laborer, welder, truck driver and forest firefighter. And writer Po Bronson, who has chronicled the fast riches of Silicon Valley.

Then there were also print and broadcast commentator Merle Kessler, a k a Ian Shoales; artist and musician Emcee Crack; and writer, musician and performer Beth Lisick. Other artists included Alan Black, a Scottish writer who runs the Edinburgh Castle Pub and warns audiences of his “thick accent”; writer and performance artist Justin Chin; accountant-turned-writer Heather Drohan; writers Dan Duane, Jason Flores-Williams, Jonathon Keats, Noah Hawley, Louis B. Jones, Anne Marino, Pat Murphy and Ethan Watters; and rapper/cartoonist Keith Knight; writer and comedian Harmon Leon; poet and spoken-word performer Juliette Torrez, and monologuist Josh Kornbluth.

Watters, who has written for national magazines, created pieces for public radio and associate-produced a documentary on young people with AIDS, said he hoped the event would create more of a sense of community among San Francisco writers - something that’s been hard to attain.Though some have banded together to rent a writers haven called “The Grotto,” The City hasn’t been an easy place for writers to thrive, he said.

Watters read a story that captured a sense of isolation and anonymity in The City, an account of seeing a fatal accident on the street below his office, then meeting a young woman who’d lost her boyfriend at “the exact spot on earth where consciousness ceased.” Boulware pronounced the event an antidote to the usual venue for writers - bookstore readings that he finds “deathly dull.” “I can’t go to them,” he said, watching the Litstock performers and puffing on a cigar. “They depress me. Writers deserve to be appreciated and this is a chance to do it. . . . In other countries there is more of a celebratory culture surrounding writers and writing.”

©2000 San Francisco Examiner