Readings 101: Taught by Prof. Barnes

Literary readings can be, at their best, teaching opportunities. Here are some of the things that were passed on to the 50 or so of us who showed up at Auntie’s Bookstore tonight to hear Kim Barnes read from her novel, “Finding Caruso”:

Barnes, an acclaimed memoirist who teaches creative writing at the University of Idaho, showed up dressed in a black outfit, complete with rhinestone-trimmed, fringed jacket and specially made cowboy red-and-black boots marked with splashes of white. “What I’ve found,” she told the audience, “is that writing fiction allows me to dress like a rodeo queen .”

Snake Junction, the town in which “Finding Caruso” is set, is a pseudonym for Lewiston. But the bar, The Stables, carries the same name as the real establishment. “How many of you have been there?” asked Barnes, who grew up in the backwoods of the Clearwater River . “I was,” she said with a laugh, “though I shouldn’t have been.”

Her New York editors had several questions for her, including: Would an Idaho restaurant in 1958 serve Italian wine? Was Calamine lotion the correct treatment for poison ivy? Does anyone still use the term “well-stocked bar”? And they had one demand: They didn’t want any mention of the word “West” used in the novel’s marketing.

“They wanted to call it a ‘Plains’ novel,” Barnes said. They wanted, she said, to ape the success of Kent Haruf ’s acclaimed novel “Plainsong,” which is set in eastern Colorado. “There’s still an incredible bias toward the West,” Barnes said.

Remember that. It’ll be on the final.