It was just over a year ago that three leaders of the San Francisco literary community quietly gathered to plan the destruction of books.
The trio included Amy Stephenson of the Haight bookstore
The Booksmith, and Casey Childers and Steven Westdahl, co-founders of
Write Club SF. The nefarious trio met over after-work beers to envision what would ultimately become Shipwreck, a local answer to Ray Bradbury’s classic
Fahrenheit 451, or as they bill themselves, “San Francisco’s Premier Literary Erotic FanFiction Competition.” The recurring show now regularly sees audiences of over 100 for its collaboration between Booksmith and The Write Stuff. The Aug. 7 show at Booksmith takes aim at the dystopian children’s classic,
The Giver.
The Giver, which debuts as a movie next month is the achingly sweet middle child in a literary family that counts
A Brave New World and
The Hunger Games as siblings. The slim dystopian novel, consumed by young children and savored by their older counterparts, is without a hint of sexual energy (sex is purely reproductive in
The Giver) and thus so rife for erotic parody. The three founders of Shipwreck debate which novel to destroy over a lengthy email thread in the weeks leading up to the event. Past successes have included
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,
The Hobbit, and
The Chronicles of Narnia;
A Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy was the most popular event to date. Nate Waggoner won
The Catcher in the Rye Shipwreck competition with a piece where Holden Caulfield stands in a bar, trying to recall the word phony:
"My uncle had to have both his knees replaced after a treadmill accident," said the tall one. It must have had something to do with a previous conversation. "So now he has these faux knees."
What was the word for these people? Charlatans? Impostors? Frauds? I was going just about half crazy trying to remember it.
"Ugh, my battery's almost dead," the princess says, looking down at the weird little white screen she kept banging away at with her fingernails all night. "This place is really not meeting my phone needs."
They were a real bunch of ... Boy, I just couldn't think of it. Pretenders? Impersonators?"
