Tim Blake Nelson
Tim Blake Nelson was at the Synagogue last night as the December guest of Magic City Books. That’s the outfit headed by Jeffrey Martin, Tulsa’s answer to Terry Gross. Every city needs a literary impresario, someone who creates a traffic pattern of culture. Jeff has been doing this work for years, drawing us together for sessions with authors and playwrights and anyone who has anything interesting to say.
It’s not so strange to see Tim at the Synagogue. Despite a brilliant, idiosyncratic career as one of the most inventive character actors of this era, he has been careful to keep his Tulsa connections alive. His extended family has been here for many generations, rooted in the Synagogue and in the community at large. He has done an hilarious dead-on imitation of my predecessor. I am terrified that he will one day do one of (uh oh) me.
Hundreds came out to see him on stage, roaring with a kind of hometown joy. The event felt more like a community singalong than an author’s talk, with a mix of new and familiar music played on a very large neighborhood porch before a gathering of family and friends. Imagine seeing Bob Dylan back at his synagogue in Minnesota, reactivating the network of his childhood community. The sense of communal thrum felt deep and pleasing.
That doesn’t mean there was anything homespun about the event. Tim is a mature artist, operating at a high level of intellect. He described a reading program that was elevated and professorial, the legacy of his mother’s own restless cosmopolitanism. He clearly engages with popular culture, but true to his experience as a college classics major, he swims in the deeper sea of Dostoevsky and Kundera.
Many would say that they have heard some of this before, at other gatherings in Tulsa and elsewhere. But what caught my ear this time was something more important and fundamental: a deep sense of generosity that was elevating in itself. Before Jeff could pull his first sentence together, Tim interrupted to valorize Magic City. He wanted us to know that the new Tulsa now taking shape was lucky to have an original independent bookstore. He went on to say the same about Circle Cinema, our arthouse theater and its founders Clark and Michelle Weins. His tribute was not a pro forma box check, but a series of extended, enthusiastic salutes, specific to the screening program and warmly celebratory.
Finally, of course, there was Sterlin Harjo, who arrived at the Synagogue just as the event was beginning. Tim has performed in dozens of films. He has written screenplays and novels and created cinematic classics. There is no better filmic treatment of the Sho’ah than The Grey Zone (2001), his portrait of the Sonderkommando uprising at Auschwitz.
What he did last night, however, was to speak a message about Harjo that felt like the accolade of a peer, speaking artist to artist. He praised his fellow filmmaker, not as a hometown success, but a genuine contributor to visual culture, shaping a cinematic world of beauty and authenticity. He told us that he came to be part of The Lowdown, the television project Sterlin has brought to life with Ethan Hawke, simply because he wanted to enter Sterlin’s imagination.
I mention all of this for what it says about Sterlin Harjo, but also what it says about Tim Blak Nelson. He was in Tulsa last night to promote his new book, Super Hero. The rules of the game suggest that his job was to sell himself. But he used the occasion to do something more important, to wrap his arms around people doing exceptional work and invite them into the public circle of his moment.