Steve Almond: author of New York Times bestseller “Candyfreak”By Dylan Nice / Editor in chief

Steve Almond is going to a deep, dark place—he’s taking you with him. The dark place is shame; it’s filthy urges; it’s a past of masturbating in the family hot-tub and stealing a tube of penis cream. And for Almond, shame is the path to truth.

Almond, author of the bestselling “Candyfreak” and “My Life in Heavy Metal,” will read from his new book of nonfiction “Not That You Asked” as part of the Writing Festival in Village Hall on Wed. March 26 at 7 p.m. People magazine called him “A gifted story-teller,” and said, “[Almond] hooks you on the first page and keeps the trills coming.”

Major magazines’ comments borrowed from the book cover aside, Almond writes nonfiction aimed “arousing the anguish hidden inside of us.” In his book, he indicts Oprah as being “The Wal-Mart of Hope,” tells of his sexual frustrations growing up in California, and how he quit his job as an adjunct professor at Boston College in protest of a visit by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

“[M]y first words were these: ‘BC is inviting Condi Rice to speak at graduation, and I’m fucking quitting,’” Almond wrote.

His opinions leave him a target to the label of “liberal,” insinuating debauchery and immorality. But Almond writes of morals repeatedly in “Not That You Asked.” His moral ground being, he wrote, Rice is a liar.

His resignation from BC landed him on a spot on Fox News’ “Hannity & Colmes” where Almond defended his decision by referencing Bill O’Reilly’s sexual harassment suit. The duo’s rebuttal was silence and the sound of papers shuffling.

Though he attacks the “Hateocracy,” Almond views himself as his own biggest target.

“If I’m writing about the right wing, I’ll get all angry and full of self-righteousness,” Almond said, “So I can see part of them in me.” Almond said if a writer is totally honest with the reader, then the reader tends to be forgiving. This honesty awakens the reader to a greater sense of themselves.

Stories of Almond’s adolescent sexual angst comprise a section of the book. Not to titillate the reader. (Not entirely, he does teach a lesson to the aspiring writer of erotica). He tells the stories because there’s something “funny and sad and poignant about it.”

“We experience it so powerfully at adolescence, sometimes we laugh at it. But I’m saying, ‘Isn’t it hard to be a human being?’”

Literature is life saving, according to Almond. Not in the physical sense, but in that it rattles people out of the materialistic, hydrogen-jukebox bubbles they live in. Literature is the weapon of the prophets. Kurt Vonnegut is like Almond’s Elijah. He wrote a section of “Not That You Asked” about it.

“One thing that Vonnegut can do is take the darkest shit and show me what’s totally hilarious. He was someone able to step away from it and get to the beautiful absurdity,” Almond said.

The dark place is a state of self-awareness that television and lifestyle obsession have stolen from people, according to Almond. The fear and darkness, the self-doubt and uncertainty are what make us human beings, he said.

“Without it, life would just be fucking and fighting and building nests,” he said.

Because it attacks the status quo, offends and wounds notions of self, and challenges men to cry, Almond calls literature the “most dangerous shit out there.” He said writers are “fucked-up” and “funny” and what they produce isn’t something to be quietly pursued—it’s the rants of madmen—it’s a party.

Almond said he plans to rock Greensburg.

“With any luck people will drag some people there and we will rock,” he said.

The other Writing Festival readers are poet Ed Ochester on Monday; fiction writer and poet Jane McCafferty and photographer Charlee Brodsky on Tuesday; and poet Jim Daniels on Thursday. All readings are in the Coffeehouse in Village Hall and begin at 7 p.m. All presenters with the exception of Wednesday’s will give an informal talk at 3:30 p.m.

For more information contact Lori Jakiela, associate professor of English, at 724-836-7481 or lljakiela@aol.com.