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The novelist's newest book is a memoir, "Hoop Roots: Basketball, Race and Love".

Space to share

By John Edgar Wideman, who finds hope in simple human connections.

Being on the road to promote a new book is one of my least favorite times.

But here I am, huckstering in Orlando. Beyond the car window are spas, hotels, rides and spectacles awaiting the planeloads, busloads and carloads of families docking daily to get a slice of the American culture that commodifies human interaction, reducing citizens to consumers, morphing careers, institutions and morality into ads and adding machines.

In my hotel, I head immediately for the fitness center. Maybe honest sweat will take the sour edge off.

The only person in the exercise room, a guy who could have been an NBA small forward, lifts weights and practices karate.

A few minutes later, a tall, gangly, bony kid saunters in and climbs aboard a thigh-pumping apparatus.

So here we are, three African-American males in a cubicle in a resort, and how in the hell did we wind up here? After Africa, the Middle Passage, slavery, integration's cures and curses? The possible routes and stories are dizzying and dazzling. Wouldn't it be fine if each of us treated the others to his tiny piece of the puzzle?

No one gives up more than a nod or a grunt until the well-toned man warns the kid not to be abused by the shiny equipment. He schools him in how jumping back and forth over a locker room bench with a medicine ball in your arms will improve vertical leap 6 or 8 inches. He starts in as if he's known the kid his whole life. The boy is entranced, grateful.

Then, because we share passion for hoops, I'm moved to say to the middle-aged guy: 'Hey, don't call yourself an old-timer. I'm the old head here." He laughs, and so do I. And the kid smiles.

A circle forms. We exchange simple facts, lofty aspirations.

I'm the last to leave the workout room. I still must perform my book-promoting duties that evening.

But I'm fortified. Not because the soul-shriveling pressure to succeed by conforming and consuming has been lifted. No, because I have been reminded there's still space -- unexpected, remarkable, precious space -- to share something, stand for something, talk with one another, if only for a few minutes, if only in the cracks and crevasses of a hyped-up world.