Authors and Book Discussions

The other night we had a book discussion with the book’s author there. This is the second time I’ve ever been able to do this; although there are plenty of local authors, many of them write things that are not that appropriate for discussion – mysteries, thrillers, things like that. People have asked me if it’s difficult talking about a book when the author is sitting right there. I don’t think it is. Most authors like to discuss their work, and if they perceive people as serious readers, they like to hear their thoughts, even their criticisms.

The first time I had an author at a book discussion, it was Richard Burgin, and we were discussing his novel Ghost Quartet. This is a book with several unsavory characters and much reprehensible behavior. Some of the readers liked it; some simply disliked the characters too much to enjoy it. But they told Mr. Burgin these things and he talked about it with them, and even made some want to read the book again to see the things he was talking about. One person in the discussion even brought up a point that Mr. Burgin claimed no magazine or newspaper critic had ever noted – and was relieved that somebody finally said it. All in all it was one of the most interesting book discussions I have been to.

This time, we had author Scott Phillips in attendance while we discussed his novel Cottonwood. It was interesting to see the different styles of authors during a discussion. Where Richard Burgin had been quiet, even reticent during the discussion, Mr. Phillips was loquacious, and offered a good deal of insight into the editing and publishing process, and how his book had become the particular work we had before us. This prefigured the major criticism one of the group members brought up, that there seemed to be a break in the action between the first and second parts of the book. The author pointed out that in the original manuscript, there were a few hundred more pages between those two sections, with a lot more action and character development, but that the editor, leery of publishing too long a book, asked for significant cuts. I don’t think one can have better insight into a work of art than to have the author describe how it came to be what it is – the good and the bad.

I hope sometime in the future, we’ll be able to have another discussion with the author present. Have you ever been to one? How did it go?