Inspiration from the 2023 Sun Valley Writers' Conference

Some people are SMART-smart #122

If you’re lucky in life, you will get to spend a few immersive days talking about books with people who love them. If you’re really lucky, you’ll hear from people at the top of their craft, revealing and illuminating concepts that challenge your understanding of the world as well as your vocabulary. And if you’re blessed and highly favored, sometimes you get to do those things whilst in a spectacular setting of dappled, whispering aspens and glass vats of lemonade.

Friends, for a few days, I was one of those fortunate people in life at the Sun Valley Writers’ Conference (cue my appreciation for the absolutely reckless optimism of a people who named a conference with an apostrophe that is no doubt ceaselessly abused.) Three tremendous days of fiction, journalism, science, humor, memoir, politics, poetry, and above all, deep humanity. Oh - and cake. There was also a book about cake. It’s called inclusivity, people.

I did my level best to read many of the featured authors; I’ve put so many others on my to-read list. But virtually everyone I heard inspired me to a greater aspiration of excellence, and that’s a worthy takeaway. Read on for a few of the featured authors, books, and completely out-of-context idea fragments that have stayed with me. Perhaps you’ll be inspired as well, to read or to even visit next year! #notanad

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My brain and ego hurt in all the best ways listening to Emily St John Mandel, Mohsin Hamid, Hernan Diaz, and Ayad Akhtar talk about alternate worlds in fiction. I’ve only read one of these authors (Diaz’s Trust, which I and the Pulitzer committee liked.) But I own some, that counts, right?

I had some faint and apparently incorrect sense that Emily SJM writes about dystopian futures, no thank you very much, but she won me over with this sentiment: “If we’re living in a simulation, the appropriate response is ‘so what’? We’re still here.”

Honestly, I could have listened to these authors for two more hours. I could also fill this newsletter with profound thoughts they all just casually tossed off, along with the words “diachronical,” “agon,” “hermaneutical” and “epiphenomenal.” So yeah, we should probably read all these books and improve our lives.

“A book is nothing but someone looking at ink printed on wood, having a hallucination.” - Hernan Diaz

Spending an hour listening to Imani Perry talk about her book South to America, in which she melds memoir, history, and on-the-ground reporting to try to explain the nation? It might turn me into a more regular non-fiction reader. That’s how accomplished she is.

“My mother taught me that it was more important to learn how to look, rather than what you saw.” - Terry McDonell

“We know how Russian governments fall; they fall in a revolution during a war that they are losing.” - Robert Kagan

Nothing like spending your precious vacation days listening to a panel entitled “Will Democracy Survive?” But actually, what an enlightening and accessible conversation between global affairs experts Anne Applebaum, Robert Kagan, and Evan Osnos, all of whom would be equally tremendous and terrifying at a dinner party. You should probably read these books and tell me what they say.

“Balanchine wanted to invest the human body with so much life that it would be death defying.” - Jennifer Homans

Why yes, we DID recently talk about The Covenant of Water and why I loved all nine thousand pages of it. And yet, Abraham Verghese’s presentation was so warm, so thoughtful, so emotionally generous, that I feel moved to bring it up again.

“Who believes in America more than the immigrants who run down the gangplank and kiss the ground?” - Abraham Verghese

And lastly, I urge you to read Say Nothing or Empire of Pain by the incomparable Patrick Radden Keefe (see why here). But I really urge you to take any chance you have to hear this man speak. Funny, measured, humble, crisp but colorful. He is the very model of the modern major raconteur. Possibly my favorite speaker of all three days.

“The secret to flying is throwing yourself at the ground and missing.” - Mohsin Hamid

Have you read any or all of these books? Have you heard a compelling author? Will democracy survive? Let me know in the comments!

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A Humiliating Confession

Be careful what you spaketh into existence, my little bookmarks. Because, as threatened back in edition 112, I did see Ed Yong. I did tell him that he has given me existential dread about Long Covid. I did say that I liked An Immense World and relate how it has changed my behavior.

It did go about as clumsily as you might imagine, through absolutely no fault of the charmingly polite Ed. Someday I’ll learn how to act right in public but sadly it was not that day, goodbye forever from my cone of shame.

But YOU can hear his excellent conversation with Ezra Klein HERE, in case you’ve ever wanted to know how a mantis shrimp decides what to punch.

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Final Notes on a Napkin

• If you’re missing the Gentle Lamb scale, can’t get enough book ideas, or are just plain old new around these parts, don’t forget that there’s an entire archive of past recommendations waiting for you HERE.

• All links this week go to Miami-based indie bookstores Books and Books, owned by bookseller Mitchell Kaplan, the godfather of book festivals. Remember, every time you buy books from an indie bookstore, an angel gets a soothing weighted blanket. And don’t forget to share your favorite indie bookstores in the comments, for future newsletter inclusion!

• Seriously. Someone used the phrase “epiphenomenal froth” in conversation! What, and I cannot stress this enough, the actual what.