LEFT COAST WRITERS LITERARY SALON: James J. Patterson, noted musician, Co-Founder of Alan Squire Publishing and Author of Bermuda Shorts
Monday, May 2, 2011 || 7pm
Book Passage || Corte Madera
51 Tamal Vista Drive, Corte Madera || www.bookpassage.com
We’re ecstatic about a VERY SPECIAL guest publisher and author visiting from Washington D.C. and hope you will join us for a lively evening of humor and celebration. In honor of James Patterson’s visit, we will be opening the salon to your special guests … just let us know (leftcoastwriters@aol.com) who you want to add to the guest list.
James J. Patterson grew up with a foot planted in each of two worlds — one in Washington DC, the Capital of the Empire as he calls it, and one in rural Ontario, where his Canadian mother insisted the family spend their summers. His father, one of the wizards of 20th Century newspaper publishing, introduced him to the city’s wheels of money and power, which he would later navigate as an entrepreneur, starting his first business at 20. But those Canadian summers introduced him to a different world – one where a cedar strip boat was better than any car, and where the ghosts of those who’d previously inhabited the family’s island house floated out over the water of Lovesick Lake. It is those two worlds that blend in Bermuda Shorts, a collection on what it means to be a man, an artist, an iconoclast, a patriot, and a lover, as the 20th Century rolls over into the 21st.
In clothing, Bermuda Shorts are casual formal wear – and in this collection of essays, Bermuda Shorts is the perfect metaphor for James J. Patterson’s fundamentally serious but playful literary style. Patterson writes like the love child of Henry Miller and Mary Karr, with all the contradictions that implies —a philosopher who thinks best over a glass of fine wine; an ex-Catholic still
haunted by the image of the Crucifixion; an irreverent political satirist whose patriotism flies the flag of another iconoclast, Thomas Paine.
A life long student of history, philosophy and politics, Patterson has managed country bands, delivered newspapers, adapted Sherlock Holmes short stories for radio plays, and published a highly regarded sports magazine. As a singer-songwriter, Patterson was half of the political satire folk music duo, The Pheromones, one of the first acts to be featured on MTV and one of the last bands to play on American Bandstand. With the Pheromones, he toured the US for over fifteen years.
Alan Squire Publishing (Patterson’s independent press) also published Oakland author Joanna Biggar (That Paris Year).
Trust us: You will NOT want to miss this evening.
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