15th annual 'Magic Barrel' literary event a chance help fill empty cupboards, listen to Oregon Book Award finalists

CORVALLIS - An evening of live literature, "The Magic Barrel: A Reading to Fight Hunger," will be at 7 p.m. Friday, Nov. 7, at the Majestic Theatre.

Eight well-known Oregon authors will share their works in a benefit for Linn Benton Food Share to help relieve hunger in the mid-Willamette Valley.

This year's "Magic Barrel" features novelist Molly Gloss, an Oregon Book Award finalist who filled The Arts Center in June for a reading from her latest book "The Hearts of Horses"; poet and essayist John Daniel (Rogue River Journal); and fiction writer Ehud Havazelet, whose latest book, "Bearing the Body," is also a finalist for the Oregon Book Award.

In addition, short story writer Susan Jackson Rodgers, who recently joined the faculty of the Oregon State University English department's creative writing program, will make her Corvallis debut.

Other readers include novelist John Addiego, poets Eric Dickey and Marilyn Johnston, and nonfiction writer Paul Vandevelder, who wrote "Coyote Warrior."

Now in its 15th year, "The Magic Barrel" event is named after the short story collection that great American writer Bernard Malamud wrote while living in Corvallis and teaching in the OSU English department in 1958.

Malamud, who died in 1986, is perhaps best known for his baseball novel "The Natural," which was adapted into a 1984 film starring Robert Redford.

Along with Saul Bellow and Philip Roth, he is considered one of the great American Jewish authors of the 20th century.

Although writers at the "Magic Barrel" event generally read from their own works, Corvallis novelist Havazelet, who is a noted American Jewish author himself, is toying with the idea of reading from Malamud's original "Magic Barrel" story collection instead.

"I haven't decided yet," Havazelet said. "It just seems like a nice tribute to our most famous and best writer."

Havazelet, who commutes to Eugene for his job as a creative writing professor at the University of Oregon, has recently had work published in The New York Times, "Ploughshares" and "Tin House."

Although a past winner of both the California Book Award and the Oregon Book Award for fiction for his first two collections of short stories, "Like Never Before" and "What Is It Then Between Us?," Havazelet was still pleasantly surprised to be chosen as a finalist for the Oregon Book Award for Fiction this year.

"You never know if you're going to come up against some steamroller that will knock everybody else out of the way. So, I didn't have any particular expectations, but it's really nice to be nominated again," he said.

The book Havazelet was nominated for, "Bearing the Body," has been a long time in coming. Like his role model Malamud, who wrote a mere seven novels in his career, Havazelet tends to write slowly and carefully.

"My first book came out in '88, my second book came out in '98 and this came out in 2007," Havazelet said.

"I had been taking notes for the book for a couple years and had some of the ideas for the book for 20 years - ever since I started writing," he said.

"Then, I got a wonderful month-long fellowship in Italy in 2000 and I said to myself ... OK, here's your shot .... put-up or shut-up time," Havazelet said.

"And it was a great month. I came back with the first 70 pages of it written and kept working on it and sold it," he said. Unfortunately, things hit a snag when Havazelet fell ill for an extended period of time. "I was basically a year and a half to two years away from it," he said.

"I was very lucky that I had, by then, 200 pages written and a contract and I knew that when I was ready - when I was better - it was there waiting for me," he said.

Havazelet already had a late start in life as a writer, taking the long route to authorship by spending some years as a jazz musician.

"Flannery O'Conner has one of my favorite lines," Havazelet said. "Lots of people want to be writers, very few people want to write."

"That was me. I wanted to be known as a writer. Have the lifestyle that I thought a writer had and be famous as a writer," he said. "But, the work and the writing, the drudgery part of it, I didn't really want to do that, so I never learned to edit, or sit down, to take advice or listen to 'my betters.'"

"So, I did music for a long time," he said. But, eventually, Havazelet found the motivation to come to terms with the hard work of writing. "I think I made the right choice," he added.

Havazelet now writes five or six mornings a week, so intensely that he's usually burned out by noon.

In "Bearing the Body" he reveals the fruits of his efforts, taking readers deep into the troubled lives of the Mirsky family - father Sol and sons Nathan and Daniel.

"This is a book about three people in this family, who have these real burdens," Havazelet said. "And, they have very little sense of how to cope."

"I think that's true of a lot of people," he added. "It can come out as rage. It can come out as addictive or destructive behavior."

Havazelet is unflinching in the portrayals of his characters' shortcomings, which drew criticism early on in the writing process.

"Yeah. My editor didn't like it, my agent didn't like it and my wife didn't like it," Havazelet said. "Everybody said you've got to cut back on this. Got to make the Nathan character more likable."

"And, I tried," Havazelet said. "I guess the easiest way to say it is that the book that I wanted to write, couldn't be written that way."

"Nathan, to me, is someone who is trying really really hard to find himself, and he'd really like to be a good doctor and help people, but he doesn't know how to stop his rage," Havazelet said.

"We fail each other by not understanding and not being able to say what we really feel," Havazelet said. "And perhaps most destructive, at least in this book, by doing things that we can't forgive ourselves for, so we can't move forward."

"The books that I admire most are about someone with a problem. I think those ones are the truest ones ... because all of us have problems," he said.

In addition to the author readings at the "Magic Barrel" there will be live music by Sideways Portal starting a half-hour before the show and continuing afterward and complimentary beverages and desserts from local restaurants. Grass Roots Books & Music will be on hand with autographed books.

Admission is a suggested donation of $7, but no one is turned away for lack of funds.

For more information, call 737-6198, or see, www.magicbarrel.org.