Last Wednesday, a line snaked down the Theatre Walk along Coolidge Corner Theatre and around back near the parking lot behind Harvard Street. The queue was for a Brookline Booksmith Writers & Readers Series event; this evening featuring Colin Meloy, the lead singer of the small-Pacific-Northwest-indie-rock-band-makes-it-big five-piece The Decemberists, and his wife Carson Ellis, writer and illustrator, respectively, of young adult fictive work Wildwood.
Hipsters young (elementary schoolers) and older (20- and 30-somethings) alike held their copies of the book (purchase of which, or a $5 ticket, was required to attend ), leafed through the fantastical, allegorical tale while a father bounced his baby in line. Fans of the musical offerings of Mr. Meloy’s band (read: older hipsters) had clearly come out in number. Given his group’s propensity for the literary, these fans are also those who, without too much of stretch, would enjoy imaginative children’s lit and literary fiction in general.
Held upstairs in the Coolidge’s full-size movie theater (filled to near-capacity), the Booksmith-sponsored event took the form of slide presentation by the husband-and-wife duo after a brief introduction by the independent bookseller’s event manager, Evan Perriello. The slideshow/talk featured Meloy and Ellis elaborating on slides that included pictures of Ellis’ early work on Meloy’s bands’ posters, candid photos of them (having a foam noodle battle in their roommate days in Portland, Oregon) and drawings in different stages of development for their current book. To move the evening along, there were title-slides introducing each section of the talk, such as “Collaboration,” all drawn elegantly and with a flourish by Ms. Ellis.
Wildwood is not the first time the couple has worked together. Ms. Ellis has been illustrating professionally for about the last decade, counting among her work a Lemony Snicket title and Decemberists posters and album art. The couple collaborated previously on a book project which, at around 80 pages and about a young girl who goes on wild adventures in a quasi-Russia, served as a precursor to Wildwood and whose plot Mr. Meloy detailed and expounded upon bemusedly to a chuckling crowd.
A section of the evening was dedicated to maps during which Mr. Meloy clicked through cartographic examples from books such as the Narnia series, The Lord of the Rings and their own Wildwood. This became particularly relevant as Ms. Ellis explained the main character in their novel is the “world in which it’s set”—a re-imagining of their home base of Portland and specifically, Forest Park, the greenspace known as the “Impassable Wilderness” in the story. To give a better visual idea of the place, they showed various views of the park and surrounding areas.
The evening began with Mr. Meloy reading an excerpt from the book, which put on display his boldy-, proudly-literary style, his memorably-named protagonist Prue McKeel, and settings that include buildings with “porticos” and “the throne room of the Dowager Empress.” (It’s interesting to note that “Calamity Song,” one of the tunes on the latest Decemberists album, includes the lyric “dowager empress” in its lines.)
Mr. Meloy cited Maurice Sendak as an influence as he discussed his use of the children’s literature archetype of child abduction, which sets off the action in Wildwood. Roald Dahl’s influence could also be easily seen in this work, as Mr. Meloy noted at one point—referring to a possible film adaptation for his new piece of writing—that he and Ms. Ellis loved the movie Fantastic Mr. Fox (director Wes Anderson’s take on the classic Dahl novel).
In the final segment titled “The Moral,” Ms. Ellis stated they hoped that kids and adults alike would go and discover their own natural surroundings as a result of reading Wildwood. The evening ended on a note of levity with an interesting question-and-answer inquiry: Was the process for songwriting and book-writing different? Mr. Meloy said they come from the same place, but couldn’t be more different, as writing a book, as opposed to songwriting, felt like “honest work.”
With this book officially titled Wildwood: The Wildwood Chronicles, Book I, there looks to be plenty more honest work ahead for the team of Meloy and Ellis.
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by Andrew Palmacci
