Sherman Alexie and Chris Van Allsburg

On Sunday I went to the Seattle Library as part of my making-Seattle-cool campaign, to hear Sherman Alexie and Chris Van Allsburg speak about their new collaborative book (with short stories from other famous authors) called "The Chronicles of Harris Burdick".

I particularly wanted to go to this lecture because Sherman Alexie wrote the script to Smoke Signals, the film that my production company produced, and I want to check out his work and his thought process.

I didn't know what to expect. Except I was hoping for inspiration!


Sherman Alexie turned out to be a stoic, nonthreatening.. but very interesting looking man. I knew he was of Native American descent, so I wasn't surprised to see his rich black hair or hear his slight native accent. Chris Van Allsburg was a hero from my childhood.. being as one of my favorite books was "The Polar Express". 


What I found is that, yes, they are smart individuals, yes, they are students of the world and know a lot of things... have studied a lot of things... but what impressed me most about going to hear them talk, is that they were strong personalities and had strong, sometimes shocking opinions.. and a very strong point of view. 


They conducted the talk in an interview style format, and sadly the interviewer was garbage.. she wanted to talk more than the writers.. and she tripped over words. You knew what she wanted to say before she could get it out! She took forever to get there.


In contrast, Van Allsburg and Alexie were master communicators. They knew what they believed and knew how to say it. Had the courage to say it. They were like giant planets. It was like Jupiter and Saturn were sitting at that table and their massive gravity of ideas were sucking everybody towards them. It made them compelling. 


It was interesting, maybe cynical, their views on children. The conversation kind of hovered there because of the nature of Chris Van Allsburg's format of writing.


Their ideas of a non-innocent childhood. That kids are the most narcissist human beings possible. That kids can sniff out condescension way fast that adults. Kids don't need to be protected from ideas in writing, adults do. Especially the idea that kids' imagination is new and untainted, and as we grow we start emulating to learn.. and then we start emulating the media and loose our point of view. We have to later, as adults, reclaim that point of view. 


I loved that they talked about remix culture. Which is basically taking existing things that are old and juxtaposing them to make something new and creative (e.i. Pride and Prejudice and Zombies) And how horrible that is. Their thought is that we should be creating the new Pride and Prejudices, instead we are mixing in zombies and calling it art, new and ingenious. 


It was thrilling to hear some intellectual thoughts! Some strong ideas communicated well. A new window to look at life from.


Sherman Alexie may be a hard person to get along with.. I couldn't figure him out from a distance, but he sure has strong ideas. I could see why his stories stick out from the bunch, why he might be who he is today. His ideas were also effective because the spoonful of sugared humor each one went down with. He couldn't speak about his opinions on Native Americans without a large dose of very dry humor. He didn't take himself too seriously.. Which I appreciated.


The book they were talking about was equally haunting and interesting. Chris told this story before he talked with us about the book:


A book editor came to Chris Van Allsburg in 1984, at a book signing, and told him that he had some illustrations that he should see. He thought they were so compelling and harkened to Chris' work enough that they would not be easily forgotten. 


The book editior, Peter Wenders, told Van Allsburg, that a man named Harris Burdick had come to him in 1954 with these drawings as samples of his work.. drawings that had stories attached to them that he would bring in for critique the next day. He was thrilled at the idea of maybe getting them published!


The next day, however, Harris Burdick never showed up and Peter Wenders never heard from him again.


When Chris Van Allsburg came to Peter Wenders office the next day he saw what he had meant. He knew that they had to be published and he did... but Harris Burdick has never come forward, and no one can seem to find anyone who ever knew him.


This new book "The Chronicles of Harris Burdick" is a collection of authors, brought together by Van Allsburg to tell stories inspired by the Burdick images. Stories that might of been if Harris Burdick had ever come back to the book editor that day in 1954 to publish them.


Take a look at the images yourself.. the are beautiful. dark. haunting.