Last night I dragged Jim to an author event, part of the annual Concord Festival of Authors.  Though I lived in Concord for years and years, I think that this is the first time I’ve attended an event connected with the festival.  (Funny how we take things for granted when those things are easily available, and only fully appreciate those things when they’re a little harder to access.)

As you might have guessed from the title of this post, the author that we heard speak last night was one of my favorites, David Macaulay.  When I was in graduate school at Simmons a decade ago, the departmental head of the Center for the Study of Children’s Literature organized a field trip for a group of us to go down to Rhode Island and visit David Macaulay in his studio.  It was truly one of the highlights of my graduate school career (which is saying something – I loved every minute of grad school), and I have vivid memories of standing in his sunny studio as he pulled out one original drawing after another for us to look at.  It was remarkable to me that he was so willing to yank these drawings out for us to see, and I remember one of my classmates saying something to that end.  To which he replied that the real art, in his opinion, was the finished book, not the drawings made for the finished book.  I love that idea, and I also loved being in the presence of someone so enthusiastic and creative and welcoming.

My one very minor regret about that day ten or so years ago is that I didn’t think to bring my copy of Black and White for him to sign.  Sure, it would have been a little gauche to have brought a book to be signed, but it’s also a cool souvenir and reminder of an exceptional day.  Not that I lost any sleep over not having the book signed, but it would have been nice.

When I saw that Macaulay would be coming to the Concord Free Public Library to give a talk, I almost didn’t bother to sign up, given that life sometimes feels too busy to indulge in things like author talks, but finally I did pre-register, reserving the last two available seats.  And so we went last night, and got to hear David Macualay talk about most (if not all) of his published books in a quick, witty, and engaging talk with accompanying slide show.  I love that he exudes intelligence and creativity, and that’s he’s just a bit kooky, with a dry sense of humor – so dry sometimes that you have to pay excellent attention to everything that he says.  He started by showing us before and after slides from the books that he has recently reworked for publication in the new volume, Built to Last.  I really enjoyed seeing the change from black and white illustrations to color illustrations for Castle and Cathedral (though the woman in line behind me for the book signing didn’t like the change, and Jim isn’t a fan, either), and it was neat to hear his thinking about change of perspective and focus in the new drawings.  At the end of the talk, he gave excellent answers to some rather weak questions – as Jim pointed out, that’s a sign of a good speaker, someone who can take a lousy question and find the nubbin of interesting stuff in there and use that nubbin to formulate an answer. 

And, of course, I did have him sign my two books – Black and White and Building the Book Cathedral.  I told him my story of having visited his studio all those years ago, to which he gave me a tired smile and drew a picture of the robber on the endpaper of Black and White.  As is usually the case when I meet an author, the best part of the evening was hearing him speak; the book signing felt, as book signings often do to me, a little intrusive.  Intrusive meaning, of course, that those of us who wait in line with our books are almost a bit whoreish in our desire to meet the author and have the author sign the book that is going to live in our house.  I do love my signed books, but I’m starting to feel that maybe my signed book collection has reached its maximum level.

It was a fun night though, and I’m really grateful that Jim was willing to be my date for it.  It’s good to get out of our regular life pattern and hear someone speak who lives his life in a creative and intelligent way – very inspiring!