Review of the Event:
On what was very likely the hottest day of the year so far, celebrated author Stephen King came to Hartford, Connecticut tonight. It just so happened that Justin Bieber was in town, as well as a fireworks display that had been delayed due to weather from an earlier dates.
King recently released Joyland earlier this summer. He also has another novel to be released later this year- Dr. Sleep.
The assembled crowd was very enthusiastic, and seemed willing to provide loud local support for almost all of the novels that King so much as mentioned, playing to King's playful vanities. He in turn referred to the crowd as "awesome".
King discussed numerous issues, and briefly touched upon his opinions and viewpoints on a wide range of issues.
That included some advice to aspiring writers, and he spoke about the need to have a fire inside that cannot easily be put out or controlled. He also spoke about the need not to allow yourself to get discouraged by negative reviews, or to fixate on reviews or critics in general.
To that end, she shared one story about what he called the best response to a review that he had ever heard of. It was not by a writer, but a musician, and it was in the eighteenth century, I believe. The musician wrote the reviewer that he was in the smallest room in the house, and had the review before him, but that it would soon be behind him. Not to be overly graphic, but just in case you did not get the reference, it should be noted that old newspaper strips and such were commonly used as toilet paper in older days.
In fact, King showed his strong sense of humor throughout the evening. He also seemed to be in a reflective mood, mentioning many of his novels by name, and talking not only about them, but about the film adaptations that have sometimes worked much to his liking, and sometimes, not so much.
Particularly, he took issue with Stanley Kubrick's version of "The Shining", and claimed that the character of Jack Torrance was clearly insane from the beginning of the movie, when Jack Nicolson (who played Torrance in the movie) was being interviewed for the job. He also took issue with Shelley Duvall, and making sure to explain that she was a talented actress, went on to describe her role in the movie as that of a "scream bag". According to him, many men that he knew, after watching the movie, had explained that they would have killed her, too.
King also discussed some serious issues of the day. He just touched upon his publication "Guns", a little online piece that he wrote about trying to curtail gun violence in the country. But he also mentioned that not only had he come from a staunchly conservative family, with his mother never voting for a single Democrat (until George Mc Govern at the very tail end of her life), that even he himself had tended to support and vote for conservative candidates early on, including Nixon - something that he mused his wife, Tabitha, never let him live down.
On the subject of God, King humorously mentioned that he conveniently believed in God, because "what's the down side?" If you're wrong and you die, you'll never know any better, anyway. But if there is afterlife and you believed in God, it might earn you some extra points.
But King was a bit more serious in rejecting organized religion, and said that he had seen enough of what organized religions that effectively discredited them.
When asked one of the final questions of the evening to wrap the evening up, When asked who he would be if he could be anybody in the world for twenty-four hours, he mentioned that he would like to be a black bus driver from Cleveland. Or perhaps a woman. Mostly, he just did not yet want to be a WASP male, and he was not particularly interested in being famous. He definitely would not want to be Barrack Obama. When pressed, however, he did admit that it would be tempting to be an athlete, to be able to physically do things that most people simply could not do. He specifically mentioned Tom Brady, and that it would be nice to be able to throw like him, also adding that he would want to be good-looking, as well.
Notes on the Bushnell Center:
Let me be blunt here: this event was horribly organized. The doors were supposed to open one hour before start time. But it was at least five minutes after 7pm when the doors were actually opened. That itself was not too bad, albeit a bit annoying, given the extremely uncomfortable heat and humidity outside. Yet, had it been relegated to that, it would not likely have been a big deal.
But for those of us upstairs, we had to wait around an extra half of an hour or more before the staff allowed everyone to begin to sit down. By then, showtime was actually rather near. And since there was apparently not enough staff for this event, the seating arrangements and instructions on how to get to one's seats were very unclear, causing additional annoyances and delays. We were not aware, for example, that to get to the balcony, we had to go back to the large lounge room, where refreshments could be purchased, and where we had been herded to and more or less forced to stay in while waiting for them to open up seating, where there was an elevator to whisk us up to the top. But the problem was that there was a line, and it took an extraordinarily long time - we were on line for almost twenty minutes (no exaggeration). We learned later, while we were near the front of the line, that there indeed was a staircase (one of the employees there had assured us that there wasn't), but that we would have needed to go back down to the lobby level, and then take the stairs all the way up three levels. Had their been clear instructions to do this from the beginning, we just might have done that. But, almost everything about the actual process of getting to our seats seemed unnecessarily complicated and annoying. With so many people standing in tight quarters, in close proximity and on such a hot day, you can bet that people were uncomfortable. I was sweating, and so was almost everyone else. You could smell it, too.
I had been to the Bushnell once before, back in 2006, for the Connecticut Writer's Forum. Back then, I had seen Kurt Vonnegut, Joyce Carol Oates, and Jennifer Weiner. It had seemed much more organized and professional then, so I am not sure what happened in the intervening seven years. All I know is that it severely detracted from the enjoyment of this event. We arrived early, were standing outside waiting to be let in before the doors even opened, and had not only wanted, but tried, to get to our seats as early as possible. But as it turned out, we only got to our seats moments before the event actually began. Nor were we the only ones with this kind of complaint about the general lack of clarity as to what to do and where to go. Granted, we did not actually miss anything, but we really pushed the envelope on that score. What is most upsetting, was that it was not even our fault! I blame the unprofessionalism of the Bushnell Center for that! Shame on you people to delay and inconvenience so many people, on what was surely one of the most uncomfortable weather days of the year! Surely, you did not delay the money received by ticketholders paying for their tickets. maybe next time, you should not make them wait and be so inconvenienced when trying to attend the event that we all paid good money to see!
The venue itself is nice, physically. It is an aesthetically pleasing building, with some beautiful rooms inside, including the waiting room to be seated on the second floor, as well as the actual room where events take place. It is unfortunate, however, that we were not able to focus on some of these more pleasant things about the venue, given the unfortunate circumstances that the ticketholders found themselves in last evening.
That aspect was tremendously disappointing, and really might make me scratch my head about ever attending an event here again.
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