An award winner at last night’s Society of Midland Authors dinner quoted St. Augustine, saying a book must “serve,” meaning serve the public interest, be useful.

Yes.  Every idle word is to be accounted for on the last day.  What ho, the frivolous! 

He’s Gary D. Schmidt, whose winner book, a piece of children’s fiction, is The Wednesday Wars (Clarion Books).  It’s “deep but upbeat,” per San Fran Chronicle, which also says that’s “no easy task” when writing for prepubescents.

The trick in reaching such an audience is to avoid both “Dr. Phil fare and plots driven by death, disease, divorce, drugs and the like.” 

Schmidt succeeds, but does the parents badly, delivering “caricatures.”  On the whole, however, says the reviewer,

this graceful novel is full of goodwill, yearning and heart, and serves as a growth chart for Holling, recording his increasing depth. “The Wednesday Wars” also gently reminds readers to take constant measure, as Shakespeare and Holling do, of what it means to be human.

That’s high praise, but last night, maybe sensing kindred spirits at the Inter-Continental Hotel dinner, he got a might preachy, speaking ominously of our troubled world and the current war, wondering where the protestors are.  The Viet Nam war, which coincides historically with his book, drew “a hundred thousand” protestors a day.  “I wonder where they are today,” he said. 

For one thing, the hundred thousand dropped to almost nothing once the draft was ended.  And there’s no draft now, so his wistful wondering is poorly aimed.  For another, he came across as a soft-core activist happy to plant a bit of self-accusation among writers. 

He teaches at a small Christian college, Calvin, in Michigan, and very well, I assume.  But he’s slightly affected by or infected with that yen to solve people’s problems for them and show them the way.  Or so he appeared.