Dragons and Farmers

The Tucson Festival of Books shacked up two days ago to draw in the eclectic bunch of "readers" that the locale has to offer. Philip Roth once pondered that, from a population of 180 million, only about 100,000 Americans go to bed with a book rather than a television set. I wonder how many of the number aren't complete nutboxes. Forced to meander my way through the malaise of tents, teepees, awnings and shacks, I took careful note of the type of person who frequents such a festival. Lonely women, often escorted by a dog, often wearing bandannas saunter from the mysticism section to the eco section. Readerless authors sit awkwardly alone at the signing tables, finding themselves mistaken in their careers, mistaken by passers-by for a lost-and-found representative. Odd and mismatched couples accompany a stroller. A child one can't help but pity. One half grotesquely overweight, the other thin. One white, balding, the other Asian, Chinese as a rule. One man dressed as a plastic Stormtrooper buys an expensively produced, ribboned copy of Dragons and Farmers, the latest, I'm told by a banner, from a local author and specialist of Medieval mythology. He has a long ponytail. At least he does trade. So too do shacks marked Spirituality, Asian Self-Realization, and (my favorite) Organic Buddhism. Surely these aren't the people Roth was referring to.