I rarely write about books, mostly because I hate to read.
Just kidding.
We already have someone doing book reviews (Barbara McIntyre on Sundays), so we’ve got that covered. But in rare cases, I can’t resist.
The Akron Anthology is one of those cases.
The collection of 22 essays is a must-read for anyone who cares about this city.
Much of the writing is beautiful — what else would you expect in a book that includes a chapter by Rita Dove and an introduction by David Giffels?
Set for release on Oct. 15, The Akron Anthology is essentially a long series of scenes, of moments, of memories of people and places that have made Akron unique. This is a quirky city with a quirky past, easily lending itself to fun stories.
The book subscribes to the theory that the big story is best told in a series of little stories, focused narrowly on specific times and locations.
Truth be told, some chapters are relatively mundane, and a couple of the authors cheer for their hometown a little too persistently. But the ceiling is lofty.
Among the chapters that jump out is an edgy inside story delivered by Denise Grollmus, a Beacon Journal reporter for a couple of years in the early aughts who was married to Black Keys drummer Patrick Carney for a couple of years in the late aughts.
Need we say it didn’t end well?
Although Grollmus’ piece is not a scoop — it was originally published in Salon in 2011 — it would be an eye-opener for most local residents.
Former U.S. Poet Laureate Rita Dove shows she is just as adept at writing prose, contributing a fascinating piece about becoming a majorette at Buchtel High School.
In another chapter, we learn about an odd, now-dead recess tradition at tony Old Trail School that involved hitting classmates in the butt with tennis balls.
There’s the obligatory LeBron chapter, nicely and briefly handled by Matt Stansberry, a regular contributor to Belt Magazine, the group that published the book.
(Belt is sponsoring a free “release party” with some of the authors at 6 p.m. on Oct. 18 at the Akron Public Library downtown.)
Chris Drabick, who teaches English at the University of Akron, has fun with the story of how he very nearly purchased the Henry Heepe House on Sand Run Road in West Akron.
That would be the one where police found the 50-year-old man in bed with parts of his 77-year-old mother’s newly dead remains, blood on his mouth. And let us not forget the eyeball in the toilet and other body parts boiling in a pot on the stove.
Humble tycoon
There’s a thoughtful piece on Jamie Stillman, a punk musician who turned into a big-time businessman when he started to market his handmade “stomp boxes,” an effect pedal used by guitarists.
The boxes became an international sensation, used by artists as well-known and diverse as Coldplay, Brad Paisley and Bruno Mars. Notable: Stillman never name-drops in his advertisements because A.) he thinks it’s tacky and B.) he wants his products to stand on their own.
Through it all, Stillman has remained humble and cautious.
“Is there a place more fertile for the traits of humility and caution than this city?” asks the author of that chapter, musician and freelance writer Andrew Poulsen.
“If history has taught Akron anything, it’s that success guarantees nothing and the well of good fortune can run dry at any moment. Growing up surrounded by so many boarded-up factories and storefronts gives Akronites an inherent humility. A whiff of mortality.”
Another writer recounts a job that involved changing the highest light bulbs, capturing invading birds and chasing away a serial pooper at E.J. Thomas Hall.
There’s an uplifting tale of Archbishop Hoban students hanging with the homeless.
We get a flashback to Bilbo’s, a moving paean to Akron Children’s Hospital and much more.
Segedy rocks
The most pleasant surprise (at least to me) is the potent, stylish writing of Jason Segedy, known to the general public for his long run at the Akron Metropolitan Area Transportation Study, that mouthful of a planning agency known as AMATS, and, in recent times, as the director of planning and urban development for the city of Akron.
Segedy, who also edited the book, offers a piece that is a call to “move on” rather than “get over” the segue from Rubber Capital to Rust Belt, a period he aptly calls “the great unraveling.”
Some of the smallest details leap out from the pages, such as Segedy’s toddler-era 1975 memory of “the green overhead freeway signs along the West Expressway. Some of the signs were in kilometers as well as in miles back then, due to an ill-fated attempt to convert Americans to the metric system.”
Segedy reinforces his points by trotting out quotes from such disparate sources as F. Scott Fitzgerald, the movie Fight Club and the band Death Cab for Cutie.
All of these tales are worth telling.
As Giffels puts it, “We tell [these stories] because they have substance: the tales of a great rise and a great fall and a gritty fight back toward grace.”
The Akron Anthology advances that fight.
Bob Dyer can be reached at 330-996-3580 or bdyer@thebeaconjournal.com. He also is on Facebook at www.facebook.com/bob.dyer.31.