What's Up With All the Theme Parks?

Writing this early Wednesday morning from Austin, where I had a fun event last night with Judy Maggio, Texas broadcasting legend - thank you, Judy. I’m on to Houston today, then Dallas on Thursday, San Diego on Friday - and home, tour done.

Thanks, so much, to all of you who’ve come out to these events - it’s all been so much fun and so inspiring. Judy closed last night with a beautiful question about what these events do for me. And the simple answer was: they confirm what I’ve always said about imagining my reader. Turns out, my readers are generous, full of life, vastly intelligent and compassionate, and very much on my side. Thank you all, so much.

I wanted to let you all know about this urgent situation in Iran, involving the incarceration of the poet Ali Asadollahi, one of many writers jailed for peaceful expression and dissent. My friends at PEN ask that we amplify this in any way we can, and that our “solidarity is incredibly meaningful and appreciated by his family as they work to try and get Ali released as soon as possible.”

Now on to our Office Hours question for this week:

Q.

Hi George,

I’m writing to ask about the theme parks in your writing. We have Pastoralia, CivilWarLand, My Chivalric Fiasco, Bounty, Ghoul, Joysticks in Sea Oak, maybe some I’m forgetting about. So many parks! I also get the sense in several that these places—decrepit though they may be—are refuges from an even more f’d up world outside their boundaries.

I don’t know if this is something you would be up to addressing on Story Club. I’m just interested in what these settings do for you & why you gravitate to them.

Thanks for your work!

A.

And thank you for the question, which fits in nicely with our ongoing discussion of “CivilWarLand in Bad Decline,” as well as with a question I’m getting a lot on this tour for “Vigil,” i.e., “What’s up with all the ghosts?”

Often, people ask these questions with a thematic answer in mind: “The theme parks are meant to permit some commentary on capitalism and our entertainment/profit complex.” Or: “The ghosts are a gateway into thinking about death (but also life!).”

But I want to answer a little more honestly, by saying that, for me, these elements are not really