I can't see any of you, it's very strange.
I've never had that experience.
When I've read here in the past, I've
always been able to see everybody's faces.
I'm going to read from the first two chapters of this new book
Rowing in Eden.
I tried to cut it so we wouldn't be here for too long.
And what I did was just I tried to cut out
those things that weren't essential to understanding
the first few chapters.
[MIC NOISE] Was that me?
[LAUGHTER]
OK, I'm going to put these on.
"July, a queer hazy day, overhead the sun
made an odd white bulge in the pale, pale sky like ice
thought Franny, ice melting into a glass of milk.
Or maybe a knee, an eerie thought,
maybe a knee or an elbow that poked out
from a pool of concrete.
Franny Wahl staring out through the plate glass
window that belonged to the showroom of the Pynch Marina.
Many shiny boats hunkering quietly at her back.
Frances Jean, she was 13 years old,
face set in a look both obstinate and dreaming.
Frances Jean Wahl thought about the summer sky, yes,
made up her string of words to describe the sun in that sky,
but other words ran in her head as well.
We don't do that Franny.
Those were the words she meant to shut out
by playing with words of her own, we don't do that Franny.
Outside the Marina, Lakeside Drive ran bumper to bumper
with irritable tourist traffic, this
was Pynch Lake a town of 20,000 in the roughly
rectangular state of Iowa.
The noise from the traffic, course engine
pops rising from a tangle of music and machinery
on both the street and the lake.
That noise poured through the Marina's open door
and was overlaid by the sound of a radio
playing in the back room.
After late breaking news, we'll return with summer 65
countdown, the announcer said in a voice
that was as much a honk as the honks
from the cars in the street.
And still over all of this.
Franny Wahl heard, we don't do that Franny.
At the four way stomp, a pretty girl in a black swimsuit
stood up from behind the wheel of her convertible
and began to yell.
The object of her fury, a man in a station wagon,
who had hoped to back his boat trailer into the lake
via the ramp at the end of the parking
lot that served both the Marina and the Top Hat club.
Somehow, this man had gotten his trailer hung up
on the curb in front of the Top Hat
and now he blocked traffic for the entire intersection.
More horns, the driver of the station wagon
mouth working in his red, red mouth climb from his car.
Something-- something, the mellifluous newscaster
said of the closure of the investigation
into the misconduct of Senate employee, Bobby Baker.
As Franny's father often became agitated by such news reports,
the newscasters words gave the girl
the same sort of passing qualm, she might have experienced,
had the Marina's fluorescent lights flickered.
Still she did not actually listen to the report,
she did not much care about news of the nation.
She did however pity the driver of the station
wagon, a big man, a good 6 foot 5, 250 pounds.
He's sure to come untuck in back as vainly,
he tried to lift the boat and its trailer over the curve
and into the street.
Franny let forehead tip against the cool glass of the showroom
window, she closed her eyes because she
felt sorry for the driver and appalled by him.
And even a little humiliated by his plight
because he reminded her too much of her father.
Still the driver did not entirely
distract her from the words, we don't do that, Franny.
She could not seem to stop herself
from holding those words up for inspection,
pouring them back and forth like a string of beads,
a handful of pebbles, she tasted them, something
a little chemical like copper, like a penny
held on the tongue."