Booking Passage and Crossing Paths
Navigating the ‘Los Angeles Times’ Festival of Books
A few years ago at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, I saw an image that summed up the entire festival: Nation editor and publisher Victor Navasky crossing paths on the UCLA quad with film critic and video guide authority Leonard Maltin. I mean, at what other literary festival would I have seen that? This is, after all, a Los Angeles book festival, but it is at the same time the largest single book festival in the country, boasting more than 450 authors (not including the authors and authors-to-be milling around the events) and hosting somewhere in the neighborhood of 100,000 people in two days. Every form of literary endeavor is celebrated in Southern California in this two-day idyll where writers on politics and film can converge, to say nothing of those who pen short stories, novels, memoirs, mysteries, thrillers, comic books, or cookbooks. Here is a place where Gore Vidal and Valerie Bertinelli, Peter Matthiessen and Padma Lakshmi, T.C. Boyle and Maxine Hong Kingston, Mary Higgins Clark and Joseph Wambaugh can dish to admiring readers about their respective works.
When thinking about the 13th Festival of Books this coming weekend, the only similarities I might draw between this festival and Coachella, which falls on the same weekend, are these: Be sure to stay hydrated; know your bathroom locations; and be prepared to be unable to see every event you might want. Before you head out to Westwood on Saturday, it seems fair to warn some of you: Some reading this article may be up to speed on those high-profile authors who may already be close to sold-out – I will return to the festival’s ticket situation – and others may have formulated their personal must-see list of authors or panels. One rite of summer for many readers is Los Angeles’s own Ray Bradbury (Saturday, 4:30), that most summer-smitten of
storytellers whose engaging and inspiring anecdotes about science fiction, horror, moviemaking, Moby-Dick, dinosaurs, monorails, and many other subjects continue to draw the largest crowds at Royce Hall every year.
In addition to the numerous booths representing publishers, bookstores, and literary magazines extending across the UCLA campus, the tables for gathering autographs, and the various all-day stages devoted entirely to children’s books, culinary books, storytelling, and poetry, there are a number of panel discussions with authors on all manner of diverse subjects. Which brings us to the “tickets”: Although the festival is free, each panel does require a ticket. As of last Sunday, these tickets have been available at Ticketmaster locations and through Ticketmaster.com for 75 cents per ticket. If you are willing to risk not getting in to see a particular author, it isn’t essential to pay Ticketmaster in advance of the festival. Some tickets will be available at the festival ticket location near the Poetry Stage up to an hour before each panel on Saturday and Sunday (Saturday session tickets can only be picked up on Saturday, Sunday tickets on Sunday) and those without tickets can wait in the stand-by line outside each session to be admitted on a first-come, first-served basis after ticketed seats have been filled.
Anyone who has ever attended these panels also knows that, on occasion, an author has been known to use the panel title (sometimes comically, sometimes otherwise) to illustrate all the ways in which his or her work has been misread or misrepresented. Having now dispensed with these caveats about tickets and titles – now you can’t be cross with me if you don’t get in to see your favorite author or the panel doesn’t live up to the billing – here are one man’s highly subjective suggestions for some panels for different kinds of readers:
Moments That Shaped America (Sun., 10:30 a.m.): History buffs should relish these reflections from scholars such as presidential historian (and Hunter Thompson literary executor) Douglas Brinkley and Georgetown professor Michael Eric Dyson.
Contentious Ground: The Middle East (Sun., 12:30 p.m.): The embattled terrain is traversed by Reza Aslan (No god but God), Chris Hedges (War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning), and Amy Wilentz (Martyrs’ Crossing).
Right & Left (Sat., 2:30 p.m.) and Campaign 2008 (Sun., 12:30 p.m.): Election addicts may wish to attend both of these panels to stay up with the latest insights by Robert Scheer, Eric Alterman, Arianna Huffington, and David Frum (at both panels).
Gore Vidal (Sat., 12:30 p.m.): If you can find your way in, the irrepressibly witty novelist, essayist, and political firebrand converses with novelist Jane Smiley.
Not So Ordinary People (Sat., 2:30 p.m.): Tony Earley, Dinaw Mengestu, Stewart O’Nan, and Ann Packer examine the figures who populate their books with novelist and lit blogger Laila Lalami as moderator.
Alternative Visions (Sun., 1 p.m.): Lose yourself in the worlds of Zeroville author Steve Erickson, Half Life author and short-story-in-tattoo-form-pioneer Shelley Jackson, The Age of Dreaming author Nina Revoyr, and Zachary Lazar, author of the Rolling Stones novel Sway.
City of Neighborhoods (Sat., noon) and The Great Experiment (Sat., 3): L.A.-ologists can ponder the nature of our metropolis with writers like Paul Beatty (The White Boy Shuffle), Seth Greenland (The Bones), Diana Wagman (Bump), and the always astute D.J. Waldie.
One potentially Ticketmaster-worthy item is Angeleno author Walter Mosley, creator of beloved characters Easy Rawlins and Socrates Fortlow, who will discuss his writing with KCRW’s omnivorous bookworm Michael Silverblatt (Sat., 2:30 p.m.).
West Coast Publishing (Sat., 3:30 p.m.): Those following the vicissitudes of the book business should catch this discussion with Eli Horowitz of McSweeney’s, Tin House’s Lee Montgomery, Elaine Katzenberger of City Lights Books, and publisher Charlie Winton, moderated by L.A. Times Book Review editor David L. Ulin (in one of his many appearances at the festival).
Superheroes of the Page & Screen (Sat., 10 a.m.), Reading Manga (Sat., 3 p.m.), and Graphic Novels (Sun., 3 p.m.): To accompany the “Comix Strip zone” at the festival, comic-book aficionados have a number of panels from which to choose featuring artists and writers Jeph Loeb, Mike Mignola, and Jaime Hernandez. (Continue the discussion at the tent of Hi De Ho Comics, L.A.’s oldest and still-surviving comic-book shop, and gather up what the store’s full name refers to as “books with pictures” for young and old.)
Women of Slipstream (Saturday, 2:30 p.m.): Aimee Bender (Willful Creatures), Kelly Link (Stranger Things Happen), Sarah Shun-lien Bynum (Madeline Is Sleeping), and Miranda Mellis (The Revisionist) describe their intimate embrace of the fantastic.
Poetry and Fiction: Writing in Two Genres (Sun., noon): Explore intersections between the prosaic and the lyric in the works of local writers Chris Abani, Wanda Coleman, Luis Rodriguez, and Carol Muske-Dukes.
Among Sunday morning offerings, I can’t think of a better way to start the second day of the festival than with The Lyrical Line, a conversation and musical performance (at 10:30 a.m.) with songwriters Aimee Mann and Joe Henry, moderated by writer Steve Almond.
I’m just scratching the surface here. I have no doubt neglected conversations with many of your favorite writers, panels on poetry and nonfiction, biography and young adult fiction that you have decided you must attend. Over two days, a festivalgoer could employ any number of thematic permutations to wend his way through the weekend. Those interested in following “voices” on Saturday, for example, could go from The Poets Voice (at 1) to The
Critics Voice (at 3) to New Voices (at 4). I don’t know if Victor Navasky will be at this year’s festival, but should you be looking for Leonard Maltin, he’s chairing a panel on Reinventing Hollywood: The 1960s and Beyond Saturday at 1 p.m. Better still, pick two disparate authors of your own and see if you can spot them passing one another in the night.
For more information on the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, go to latimesfestivalofbooks.com.
Published: 04/23/2008
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