Another piece on Powers's Miami appearance

From the "Of Mild Interest" blog, a very fun piece on Powers's reading and talk at the Miami Book Fair.

As another added bonus, the icing on the cake to the evening, which would already have affirmed near-hero-status of Powers for me (though chronologically, this happened at the opening of the Q&A portion): Powers doesn't sign his books. And rather than just saying that he doesn't sign books, he actually explained why. His reasons happened to line up rather precisely with reasons I've maintained for years for not getting books signed by authors, so that as he finished his explanation (dealing with the themes of his first book as well as how we construct meaning and use-value, and how that pertains to what kind of aura-of-specialness an author's signature gives to a book), saying "...how we find meaning in the age of mechanical reproduction," and trailing off a bit. I was compelled to applaud, which really doesn't happen to me very often. My two friends joined in a bit, and a couple other folks in the hall, but mostly people just looked over, wondering who the hell was clapping. But Powers looked too, so that was great.