Politics and Prose: Our Local Bookstore

We have had an excellent series of author events at our local bookstore.
     Jane Smiley talking about her new book, the first part of a new trilogy about an Iowa farm family that will take them up to--I think she said--2020, so it will involve some forecasting as to how this country will develop, and at the moment one can only be deeply pessimistic about that prospect. Seeing her reminded me to get "Thirteen Ways of looking at the Novel." I came home and got it for $0.99 plus $3 postage from Abebooks.
     Boris Johnson, talking about his Churchill book (the place was packed). He is clearly intellectually brilliant, and in an era of wishy washy personalities in British politics--he stands out as being at least A CHARACTER. If you had to choose to spend a day with Cameron, Milliband, Clegg, Osborne, or Johnson--you would have to choose Johnson. He captivated his American audience, who are not used to such articulate flows of language.
      Richard Ford, at seventy, was wry and funny--reading from his new book, which consists of four stories with his famous sportswriter, Frank Bascombe, getting old and facing up to that fact. Some of the passages he read were hilarious. And he was excellent in the Q and A.  One mot: "don't let an author tell you writing is hard work--it isn't. It's just something anyone can do when they have nothing else to do." He also quoted Henry James in the introduction to "What Maisie Knew," But so far I have not been able to find the quote--it was something about the task of the novelist and why we read novels.
     And lastly--I have just come back (Joan is out with 'the girls')--a discussion between Madeleine Albright and the author of a new biography of Vaclav Havell. The author was Havell's friend and press secretary for most of Havell's life: his name, Michael Zantovsky, and he is presently the Czech ambassador to the UK--or as they insisted in his introduction--to The Court of St. James. The DC Public Library has the book and I have put a hold on on it. A book I shall probably dip into rather than read from cover to cover.