Larry Harvey and the 19th-Century British Novel

As I think back about the interactions I have had with Larry, for some reason one that particularly stands out was a conversation that he hand with Josie and me sometime right after the office moved to 6th and Market. He was hanging around the BRAF office waiting for Tomas and was carrying a worn copy of an Anthony Trollope novel (was it The Way We Live Now?). I asked him about it because, not knowing him much at the time, I wouldn’t have necessarily thought that 19th-century British novels would top his reading list. One thing I learned about him in that conversation was the sheer breadth of his interest and curiosity as well as the force of his own opinions and preferences. It was clear from the conversation that he was a voracious reader but he also (claimed to) utterly reject a large share of contemporary fiction — if I understood him right he felt that anything written by someone who had gone to school for writing suffered from an excess of style over substance and a reaching for originality that stripped the work of what one might call integrity. I recall that he appreciated the detail and plainness of Trollope’s description and characterization and the transparency of his authorial voice and had been reading through a number of his novels at the time. I think one of the reasons this sticks with me is that, among other things, it was a step in my own changing understanding of Burning Man. I think at one point I saw the event itself as a kind of high-art activity on some level — sort of an elaborate group happening piece. But I came to feel that it works more as the exact opposite of that, and talking through Larry’s preferences in literature was somehow a step in re-thinking the what, at its core, we are doing when we participate in a Burning Man event. One way I think of Larry is that if you scratch the surface you’ll never know what you’ll find at any given moment; as someone who doesn’t hesitate to delve into anything that interests him or to reject anything he personally finds lacking; willing to discuss any particular topic with any given person given the right moment; largely unbounded by convention or any sort of foolish consistency; an intellect but not an intellectual. That’s only one side of him, but I’ve always appreciated it.