... And Read All Over

"I write mostly for myself," Louis Sachar told The Austin Chronicle in 1999 (see Louis Sachar: Top of His Class for his interview with Barbara Strickland). "I can never imagine my readers." That, of course, is a writer's line, but regardless, Sachar should have no problem imagining his readers in the coming months. In theory, every single person he sees in this town will have a copy of Holes somewhere on their person or property, dog-eared, damp with sweat, and, most importantly, read all over. That's because we, the people, along with Mayor Gus Garcia and the Austin Public Library Selection Committee, have chosen Sachar's Newbery-winning story of Stanley Yelnats and Camp Green Lake as the second annual "Mayor's Book Club" book. This year's theme? "Keep Austin Reading." Holes, which will be available for checkout (and for sale through Friends of the APL, which has been a boon for the branches so far, according to the APL's Patricia Fraga) at each of the city's 21 libraries, emerged from some heavy company: In something received as a bit of an upset, it beat out A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole (which is also being adapted, by David Gordon Green, no less) and Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451. Some snobs are sad about this, but this snob isn't. After all, it's safe to say that most of Austin's generally literate -- especially those in their teens or older -- are more likely to have read Dunces (on par at this point with Catcher in the Rye as a rite of passage) and Fahrenheit 451 than a mere children's book. Right? Right. Yet those of us who have read Sachar as children and as twentysomethings know that his work is as sophisticated and subversive as just about anyone's. Last year's selection, Rudolfo Anaya's mesmerizing Bless Me, Ultima, was in the same vein: Classified as a young-adult novel, it nonetheless had the community talking across town, in discussions organized and otherwise. Holes looks to have that kind of success, and the Austin Public Library will release an event schedule in July to celebrate the campaign. One event I know of now for certain: BookPeople's Mayor's Book Club Panel on June 4. I hear that Mayor Garcia, in one of his final public appearances, will be costumed as Mr. Sir and will demand to be addressed as such.