In my introduction for Jeff Martin when we sat down in front of a Tulsa audience, before he headed to Seattle, I mentioned that David Sedaris called him the “literary king of Tulsa.” I can’t think of a more proper title.
This is an edited version of the interview:
JC: The headline of the first story that really featured Jeff as Jeff, written by my good friend Jason Ashley Wright, “Book Pub is like a book club, only cool.”
JM: And that was written on April 12, 2009, which was my wife’s birthday.
JC: What do you think when you’re looking at some of the people here tonight for you?
JM: I mean, mostly just like amazing gratitude and the sense of how someone once said that luck is when preparation and opportunity collide, right? Because I’m very lucky person, but I mean, the two things that really pop in my mind is my friend Cindy Hulsey, and my good friend was there with me at the inception of Booksmart Tulsa, which was kind of the grassroots organization. And of course, Cindy was my partner in taking it to that next level when we decided to do Magic City Books. I wish both of them were here right now. But you know, as much as this is the spotlight on me. There are so many people that you know, either publicly or behind the scenes, opened doors and said yes to something that probably shouldn’t have said yes to, and just there’s a malleability to Tulsa, and there certainly was at that time when I look back at a conversation earlier today about this, the period of like, 2008, 2009, 10, 11. That period of time was something quite special about that time. I was also working with my friend Michael Mason and we were creating This Land at that time, you know, we were doing all these different things, and it felt like everybody was saying yes to everything. And this was like right after the BOK Center opened and that was really important, because it was the first capital investment that I had seen in some I was in my mid-20s. And that was saying, Tulsa could be something else. I think that momentum of that inspired me and people who were my age at that time to maybe just try some stuff. And even if you didn’t know what that stuff would be.
JC: You are certainly not a solo act. I don’t think any of us are. You said this during the opening of Magic City. You talked about how important it was for leaders to be readers.
JM: Is anybody there in the opening day in Magic City Books? Look at that. It was, it was a Monday morning the week of Thanksgiving, November 2017. It was pretty chilly outside. And, you know, people have jobs, so I didn’t know who would show up. And we ended up having hundreds of people like lining up down the street. It was pretty overwhelming. And I think the quote was, you know, our community is always stronger when our leaders are readers. It’s just are you have a curious interest in what’s happening. And I don’t care if you’re reading, you know, I prefer if you read a physical book, but you know, it’s just like a curious mind should be leading us, you know. And obviously we don’t have to get into that, but you know, there’s some challenges in that department.
JC: What was the first book that really made you go?
JM: 100% “Lord of the Flies.” I think still to this day, it’s under appreciated for how messed up that book is actually.
JC: And pretty relevant with leaders who aren’t readers.
JM: It taps into some dark corner of human psyche. I think about the core of that book and what it means, and it’s very It’s disturbing, right? It doesn’t touch on something that you kind of want to recognize in another person, but he may have kind of tapped into some primal thing that we’ve still not grappled with fully.
JC: You’ve interviewed more than 1,000 authors. Give us a story or two.
JM: Salman Rushdie was someone to me, kind of on Mount Rushmore and also inaccessible for very valid reasons. He was so jovial and just fun. And I was thinking he’d be serious. He was quite the opposite of that. And he was like, I need to eat something. And it was late, so I called up the guys who owned Mondos, and I said, I have someone who needs to eat, but we need privacy. They were closed already, to their credit. They opened just for us. We were sitting in this restaurant that’s empty, but then at the bars, all the FBI agents who had been following us around, which was the Joint Terrorism Task Force from the FBI, had to be there. It’s pretty hard to top Stephen King at Cain’s Ballroom. We played ping pong in the green room in between him signing books.
The New York Times profile that came out just before the event:
Collington Index 