opening day of the melbourne writers festival and brad amanda and i went to check out dave eggers, who was doing the keynote speech, part B.
dave is a pretty cool. he looks cool. he publishes a hip literary magazine, his most recentbook about the life of a refugee from the Sudanese civil war has been described by many as ’simply extraordinary’, he founded a community writing centre which proliferated into several across the states.
but what i reckon is the most cool is that, to fund his non profit writing centres, he opened a series of stores, including the Brooklyn superhero supply store, the pirate store in San Francisco, and the ‘boring store’ in Chigago which is a spy shop. [i wonder if they do online orders for superhero capes?]
after the speech we decided that we needed to get this guy’s signature on our books. in truth, if we knew we were to be waiting for that long we would have pretended to be dave and signed it for each other. but after 1 hour we got to the point of not being able to leave out of principle of waiting for so long anyway. dave wrote on my book, with extra flourish as brad suggested he should: “your patience means the WORLD”. to brad and amanda he wrote something like: “dear brad and amanda, you are my totally best friends”.
