COLUMNS
Talk Show 9: with Jami Attenberg, Adam Braver, Nina de Gramont, Ann Hood, and Moon Unit Zappa
/ Jaime Clarke
03.02.08
––What advice would you give this place to attract people like you as tourists?
Attenberg: I probably should be their target demographic already. A lot of my friends have gone and rented a hut on a beach for, like, a nickel, and totally loved it. The Thailand tourism folks are doing everything right. It’s just my problem.
Braver: My first instinct is to make a laundry list that includes getting rid of the bugs and the creepy reptiles, installing an emergency response system, perhaps building a hospital, a bakery with fresh bread would be nice—although I’d settle for a place that served a good cup of coffee before 8 AM, access to a bathtub, a little noise—but not the noise of generators and battery-powered TVs and Winnebagos, maybe a few less ghost stories, food not cooked and eaten off sticks, and, and . . . I could keep on with the list, but I realize I’m only making the outdoors into my home, and if the outdoors is my home, then there are no outdoors for me to escape to. Even if I never want to go there.
de Gramont: Peace. Peace. Peace.
Hood: I suppose the Nepal tourist bureau could get me there for a trek if they announced that inexplicably Nepal had dropped 15000 feet and it was now possible to visit Katmandu and trek in its lovely valleys.
Zappa: Downplay the re-entry turbulence and mechanical defects. More footage of the fun to be had with gravity.
Jaime Clarke is the author of the novel WE’RE SO FAMOUS, editor of DON’T YOU FORGET ABOUT ME: CONTEMPORARY WRITERS ON THE FILMS OF JOHN HUGHES, and co-founder of POST ROAD, a national literary magazine based out of New York and Boston.
Attenberg: I probably should be their target demographic already. A lot of my friends have gone and rented a hut on a beach for, like, a nickel, and totally loved it. The Thailand tourism folks are doing everything right. It’s just my problem.
Braver: My first instinct is to make a laundry list that includes getting rid of the bugs and the creepy reptiles, installing an emergency response system, perhaps building a hospital, a bakery with fresh bread would be nice—although I’d settle for a place that served a good cup of coffee before 8 AM, access to a bathtub, a little noise—but not the noise of generators and battery-powered TVs and Winnebagos, maybe a few less ghost stories, food not cooked and eaten off sticks, and, and . . . I could keep on with the list, but I realize I’m only making the outdoors into my home, and if the outdoors is my home, then there are no outdoors for me to escape to. Even if I never want to go there.
de Gramont: Peace. Peace. Peace.
Hood: I suppose the Nepal tourist bureau could get me there for a trek if they announced that inexplicably Nepal had dropped 15000 feet and it was now possible to visit Katmandu and trek in its lovely valleys.
Zappa: Downplay the re-entry turbulence and mechanical defects. More footage of the fun to be had with gravity.
Jaime Clarke is the author of the novel WE’RE SO FAMOUS, editor of DON’T YOU FORGET ABOUT ME: CONTEMPORARY WRITERS ON THE FILMS OF JOHN HUGHES, and co-founder of POST ROAD, a national literary magazine based out of New York and Boston.