On Hitting the Small Time
By Michael P. Branch
After several years of COVID-induced seclusion I’ve been on the road lately, touring my new book, On the Trail of the Jackalope. But my run of 45 book events around the American West sounds impressive only to folks who aren’t writers. As any writer will confess, our readings are often stunningly modest, attended by only a few wayward souls. While I’ve enjoyed robust turnouts at some museums, universities, and venues where I have home field advantage, most of my gigs are mighty small. Especially for those of us who write about the rural West, we aren’t talking wine and cheese receptions here. Think instead of a few folding chairs in a tiny community bookstore, library, or café, followed by a cold one on the porch or the tailgate when the reading is over.
“Small towns offer big hospitality to visitors. Marquee at Coos Bay Public Library, Coos Bay, Oregon.” Photo courtesy of Michael P. Branch.
I launched this book tour in the theater of the Nevada Museum of Art, but the following morning I visited a kindergarten class. (The kids later sent me their drawings of jackalopes!) After a gig in rural coastal Oregon my audience spontaneously took me out for fish and chips. In an upriver lumber mill town, the local librarian—who prides herself on the fact that her library also loans cake pans—held a raffle in which the lucky winner received a copy of my book. When the gentleman who won was asked if he wanted his picture taken with the author, without missing a beat he replied “Nope, but the author might want his picture taken with the guy who won the raffle.”
“The author (right) with the winner of the local library’s book raffle. Coquille Public Library, Coquille, Oregon.” Photo courtesy of Michael P. Branch.
At a reading in a small town in northern California, I was repeatedly interrupted by an incredibly drunk man, whose blathering helped me to hone my craft as a quick wit. Only one couple showed up to my gig at a tiny library in Utah. Afterward the woman hugged me and told me that it was the best event she had ever attended, then apologized for having to rush out to convene the group leading the town’s book banning initiative.
At five consecutive events in five community libraries in Colorado, a librarian apologized that the building scheduled for my event was structurally unsound and dangerous, an argument broke out about which local brewery served the best IPA, several neighbors calmly discussed whether to attend my reading or evacuate from an encroaching wildfire, a woman spontaneously lifted her shirt to show me her jackalope tattoo, and a man with a long, white beard introduced me while inexplicably holding a stuffed armadillo.
When I’m toiling at my writing desk, my readers remain purely conceptual, an abstraction I reach for in the dark. But thanks to the enthusiasm of local hosts and the support of arts and humanities programs, I have the opportunity to visit communities where appreciation for my work is more likely to take the form of cold beer, fried fish, or big hugs than book sales. So, my dispatch from the road is just this: I feel deeply grateful to have hit the small time.
Blogger photo by Kyle Weerheim.
Michael P. Branch is Foundation Professor at the University of Nevada, Reno, and is the author of ten books including the Nevada trilogy Raising Wild, Rants from the Hill, and How to Cuss in Western. His new book, On the Trail of the Jackalope, has been called “an entertaining and enlightening road trip to the heart of an American legend.” The Nevada Center for the Book is featuring Michael P. Branch and his book On the Trail of the Jackalope, as a Nevada Great Reads from Great Places selection for the 2022 Library of Congress National Book Festival. Michael will also be participating in the 2022 Nevada Humanities Literary Crawl on September 10, 2022, in Reno.