Steve Oliver Will Read From ‘Clueless’ Friday

If you remember the Tom Hanks-Meg Ryan film “Sleepless in Seattle,” you may remember how great a date movie it was.

That’s how Seattle author-publisher Steve Oliver recalls it. Only Oliver sees it as more of a comedy than a romance.

Oliver, who wrote the wry collection of short stories “Clueless in Seattle,” will no doubt explain more of what he means when he reads from the book at 7:30 p.m. Friday at Auntie’s Bookstore, Main and Washington.

“It just struck me as funny,” he said during a phone interview on Monday. “Here’s this guy living on a houseboat, whose wife died, of course, which leaves him totally blameless for any problem with the relationship ending.”

Not only that, Oliver said, but Hanks’ character is a guy “who is basically doing nothing to resume a relationship except stay up all night. Then his son, who is upset, calls a radio station and Meg Ryan happens to hear it and, you know, they happen to meet at the Empire State Building.”

His point? “Well,” he said, “you could get further away from reality than that. You could stick the romance on Jupiter or something.”

In the title story of his collection, which he subtitled “Tales of Ethical Purity, Simple Snobbery and Awful Stupidity,” Oliver’s protagonist, who is named Simon, doesn’t have near the luck that Hanks does in the popular movie. In fact, the very character flaws that keep Simon single are those that author Oliver sees so rampant in the real Seattle.

“Having lived here for, oh, about 20 years,” Oliver said, “it struck me as funny that there are so many people here who … make their approach (to relationships) so complex that nobody could ever meet the qualifications.”

A 1973 graduate of Eastern Washington University, Oliver is a former journalist who, beginning in 1978, worked at Microsoft for nearly 10 years.

It was an experience that apparently was kind to his pocketbook.

“So that allows me to waste a certain amount of money on this,” he said of his full-time writingpublishing career.

As owner of OffByOne Press, which published “Clueless in Seattle,” Oliver said, “I started the press and I am my favorite author.”

OffByOne Press will publish his forthcoming book, a mystery set in Spokane that is titled “Moody Gets the Blues.” And the company is looking for other Northwest authors to publish.

Specifically, he said, he’s looking for “people from the Northwest or who have a Northwest perspective. People who are funny, preferably, and who never expect to be paid very much.”

Tales of romantic rendezvous are clearly not required.

, DataTimes