Paul Harding, author of Tinkers, came to Concord last week for a reading. Our independent bookstore Gibson’s hosted him, and it was a full house, maybe fifty people, a mix of book groupers and writers.
Harding read a passage from early in Tinkers (tinker Howard’s wordless relationship with Gilbert the hermit, Gilbert the improbable Bowdoin graduate and friend of Hawthorne). Afterwards, he answered questions about the book and his writing path. He was good-humored, at ease, and self-deprecating, and he made some interesting points:
— His manuscript was rejected over and over, in short because agents and editors were pretty sure that no one wanted to read such a quiet novel (ostensibly) about an old man’s death.
— Harding had a pretty good life as a mostly unpublished writer, with his Iowa Workshop degree and his jobs teaching creative writing to Harvard undergrads and extension-school students, and reading nineteenth-century fiction.
— Tinkers was originally published by Bellevue, a small nonprofit medical-issues press affiliated with NYU (and maybe affiliated with Bellevue Literary Review?).
— And one larger point: Small independent presses are taking over the mid-list authors, as large publishers shed their mid-lists. Which gives me hope.