LB Who?

I saw Tim O'Brien yesterday at Columbia College. He's one of my favorite writers, and I've been looking forward to it for a while. When I got there the room - a movie theater really - was packed with students, professors, and people from all over Chicago. The image of the fliers for the event - pictures of the Vietnam memorial with the words "An Evening With Tim O'Brien" - were projected onto the screen.

An evening, I thought. Wow, a whole evening.

There was an empty chair at the front, one of those directors' chairs made of cloth. It looked as if anyone sitting there would be perpetually perturbed by the large flower arrangement that was placed next to it.

In the end, O'Brien didn't sit in the chair, though, he spoke at the podium. He looked oddly frail. Odd because he reminds me a lot of my teacher Mr. McGraw - they were both veterans and writers and O'Brien's book-jacket photo has him wearing a baseball cap with sort of unkempt hair, and he looks very much like Mr. McGraw - but Mr. McGraw was undoubtedly vital, coaching JV baseball and pacing around the room, dancing in flurries of arm movements at the board. During the reading, O'Brien kept his hat on the whole time - a sort of nondescript beige hat - which made his eyes look sunken.

He spoke at length about the distinctions of what he calls story-truth and happening-truth, an idea I find very interesting, so I was listening intently. The two girls behind me, however, were not listening so intently.

At one point, O'Brien mentioned passing a statue of LBJ somewhere in Texas. "What's LBJ" one of the girls behind me asked.

"I think it's Lyndon Johnson."

"Lyndon Johnson?"

"Yeah, the president."

"Oh. [thinking] What's the 'b' stand for?"

Then, when the talk let out, I waited in line for some of what seemed to be really delicious food. There was spicy chicken satay, stuffed mushrooms, peach-brie quesadillas, and sliced-tenderloin tarts with carmelized red onions. The only problem was that the dishes were so fancy they only had one of each, so after ten minutes of creeping though the line, there was nothing left. Not even a diet coke.

I left without getting my book signed.