By Isaac Hamlet
Today at 7 p.m., authors Nickolas Butler and Kevin Allardice will read from their new work at Prairie Lights, 15 S. Dubuque St.
Butler, a graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, will read excerpts from The Hearts of Men, a book that begins at a Boy Scout summer camp in the 1960s and follows three generations of Americans attending the camp up until the modern day.
As part of his research, Butler — a former Boy Scout himself — bought all the Boy Scout handbooks he could find published in the last half century.
“Early leaders of the Boy Scouts viewed it as a knighthood for Americans,” he said. “Now, for better or for worse, most people don’t think it’s important. So in the 1960s it’s something that’s important to kids, but it was also sort of natural. Then in the 1990s, the kids view it more as a joke and start to question its politics.”
Baseball, an interest of Butler’s, is also a motif throughout the book. Much like the summer camp, it acts as a benchmark. Something each generation experiences but perhaps interprets differently.
“The book is sort of a lament for all these things that have faded in America over time,” Butler said.
While his book ruminates on the past, Allardice’s book involves satirizing the present.
Family, Genus, Species, is definitely satire. A woman in her 20s attends her nephew’s 4th birthday party. After an argument with her sister, however, the story turns into a quest to get her nephew his birthday present despite escalating family drama.
“I’d imagined it as a short story,” Allardice said. “It had been in my mind for a number of years. I’d tried to write it a number of times, but it didn’t get its footing until it began to bump up against these other ideas I had.”
The story mostly takes place in a backyard, outside of which a number of protests are occurring, which for the most part just have the party-goers feeling uncomfortable.
This setting, as well as the relationship between the woman and her family, is a commentary on class and social issues that have arisen in the past half-decade.
Part of this is in the title, which readers might recognize as the biological classification for living things. It also relates to the main character’s background as a science student in college.
“When I first typed the phrase [which became the title] in the very first chapter, it stuck with me, and it stuck with the book,” Allardice said. “So much of what she’s trying to understand is her family and how she fits into it.”
His book will be released widely on May 2, but will be available at the reading.
Where: Prairie Lights, 15 S. Dubuque
When: 7 p.m. today Cost: Free