At too many events, listeners are treated as potted plants — potted plants with nodding heads. Moderators are often drawn from ranks of semi-celebrity writers, Clinton Administration alumni, and networking types who have settled in the Emerald City and supposedly burnish its sophistication...Uncritical questioning gives off no sparks. Too often, the visiting author/speaker is often allowed to mail in a packaged performance.

First of all, it's pretty obvious that Connelly only goes to a few gigantic readings a year. I'd say 95% of the readings in Seattle are set up in such a way that half the reading is devoted to unmoderated audience questions. I'd agree with him that the other two types of readings he mentions are usually wastes of time. At Benaroya Hall last year, David Guterson could very well have been the dumbest interrogator I've ever seen. He completely squandered every opportunity to explore John Updike's brilliance. And the readings where audience members write their questions on cards often give the impression of being too heavily edited and groomed into a cult of affirmation.

But it's even more obvious that Connelly doesn't attend actual open-question readings. Trusting the audience to ask brilliant, non-fawning questions is a losing game. I've said this before, but almost every reading I attend features several variations on two kinds of questions: The "Where do you get your ideas from?" guy, who can't even fathom how to write a book (this guy even asks his question of non-fiction authors), and the lady who stands up and gives a long and aimless lecture about how she understands the book and the book is brilliant and incidentally so is she and so what does the author think of her brilliance?

I don't know what kind of rabble-rousing democratic brain-fight Connelly's imagining, but his idea is not as revolutionary as he (or the commenter who wrote this comment:

I don't know what has stoked the fire in your belly Joel, but all I can say is, "Burn baby burn!"

This city desperately needs a mirror held up to it.

Thanks for hoisting the looking glass.

believes it is. Audience questions would not have saved the Scott McClellan reading I attended at Town Hall from being a love-fest for a Bush crony who deserved to be pilloried. In fact, the questioner asked every single question the audience supplied, and they were all fawning. It's kind of cute that Connelly believes that readings would turn into a hell-bent session where the people give the author what-for, but Jesus Christ, what planet is he living on?