Writer Alex Shakar ran into a picket line while on his way to give a reading in New Haven last month. People were protesting against the Atticus bookstore’s recent firing of a woman for wearing nose rings. “Every leather-clad, dreadlocked bohemian in New Haven was there,” says Shakar. “They were carrying signs that said ‘Atticus sells bodies, not books.’” He proposed that the group accompany him into the store. He would say what he thought, they’d get a chance to do the same, and then he would read. The protesters agreed.
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“So I went into the bookstore and all these protesters filed in after me. They had their signs on their shoulders, like a troop from some guerrilla army. The manager was standing there. He shook my hand and he was very, very nervous. I said, ‘Look, I brought some friends with me. They want to hear some literature.’” The manager canceled the event, and Shakar and the protesters headed back onto the sidewalk.
Born and raised in Brooklyn, Shakar left New York in 1993 for Austin when he was awarded a Michener Fellowship to study writing at the University of Texas. Once he landed in Austin, though, all he could think about was his native New York. “I started dreaming about its architecture.” He began to view the urban jumble as a metaphor for the vast complexity of modern life, with its various, and sometimes competing, influences. “Today’s urban environment is an accretion, a by-product of staggering proportions. No single person or single group of people can hope to understand more than a fraction of what it means.”
–Zoe Zolbrod
