By Ken Bullock
The Berkeley Daily Planet
June 11, 2009
Owen Hill, longtime bookseller at Moe’s Books on Telegraph Avenue, will read from his new humorous detective novel about the Berkeley adventures of Clay Blackburn, book scout and private eye, The Incredible Double (P.M. Press), for the reading series he established and continues to run at Moe’s. Summer Brenner will also read from her latest, I-5: A Novel of Crime, Transport, and Sex.
“Summer
and I read together on tour,” Hill said, “Five readings in New York
City. We come off as a team. She writes hardhitting noir; mine’s full of
jokes.”
Hill’s detective fiction comes from the building he
lives in, around the corner from Moe’s, on Dwight Way, the Chandler
Apartments, also the title of his first novel, published in 2002 and now
out of print
“It’s a grand old building,” said Hill, “And would
work well in a mystery, I thought. It became a kind of joke. I’d always
written poetry. On a whim, when I was laid up, I started The Chandler
Apartments. I must’ve joked around enough. I’d always been a mystery
fan, knew the form as a reader; there’s a lot of pulp in my library. I
stole from [poet] Jack Spicer’s Tower of Babel the idea of using the
detective novel to poke fun at the poets in your circle. The Chandler
Apartments is full of poets. In a bland world, poets are still kind of
nutty. I respect them for it.”
Asked to give a thumbnail
description of the story, Hill said, “With a short book—The Incredible
Double is 140 pages—it’s hard to give a reading without giving the plot
away! Clay Blackburn’s a book scout and poet at the end of his scouting
run. It’s harder and harder to make a living as a scout, so he falls
into detecting. Through some weird fluke, he’s hired to find a Berkeley
nut who threatened a CEO, whose security forces don’t know how to
penetrate the Telegraph Avenue underground.
Questioned about
that impenetrable underground, which swirls outside Moe’s front window,
Hill replied, “It’s as I’d like it to be. There’s not much of a Bohemia
anymore, in this country at least. But there is in my novel.”
Pressed about Berkeley locations in the book, Hill cautiously answered,
“Moe’s is in it a lot, of course, where Clay sells his books; a couple
of my coworkers get to have cameos. There’s a kidnapping in Elephant
Pharmacy—gone now. Clay likes to drink at Cesar’s; he meets his love
interest there. My car mechanic, from Pete’s Automotive, happens to
drink at Cesar’s, too, so another cameo.”
“It’s kind of a
Berkeley thing,” Hill added, “An auto mechanic with an advanced degree.
The overeducated underachiever. A friend’s plumber is a marine
biologist! Such a beautiful part of Berkeley, which makes conversations
so interesting. It doesn’t happen everywhere.”
Hill himself
hails from Southern California, “Torrance, the suburbs, till 20, 21,
then to Santa Cruz. I was heading for college, but dropped out. I did a
stint as ice cream maker at Polar Bear, pre-Haagen-Daaz gourmet ice
cream, then got a job as a buyer at Logos Books on the Mall. Then came
to San Francisco, worked at Columbus Books, after Discovery Books went
out of business there, near City Lights. Then did a stint at Shakespeare
& Co. while I argued my way into Moe’s—‘Moe, I could buy for
you…’ ‘No, no…’ Finally, he gave in.”
Moe gave in in 1986.
Reflecting on almost a quarter century on the Avenue, Hill said, “It’s
been a long ride, but it’s home. It’s the best bookstore I was ever in.
Moe took care of his employees, and that’s still happening, post-Moe.
It’s a little oasis.”
Expanding on the theme, Hill said, “I’ve
always really liked public life, bookstores and cafes as the place to
make a living. There’s a constant flow of characters.”
The
reading series at Moe’s “started very informally, then snowballed. So
many other bookstores were dropping off; we became the premiere reading
series in the East Bay—readings once, twice, three times in a week. But
it began almost by accident. There was a little garden area behind Moe’s
we don’t use anymore. [Poets] Clark Coolidge, Michael McClure, Nanos
Valaoritis were all friendly customers, shopping the poetry section. I
said, Why not come outside? That was 1999. Then we came back in, later
got a microphone … Now I’ve invited myself to read in my own series.
And I accepted.”
Bookseller, “curator” of the poetry section at
Moe’s, himself a poet, detective novelist and humorist … “I’m happy
to be in the middle of it. Coming from the suburbs, I’ve been running
away from blandness my whole life. Berkeley isn’t bland.”
