The Los Angeles Times Festival of Books! A weekend-long festival of book-selling, book-talking, and books panels, where authors or book industry types gather at a table and discuss things. The weekend was full of optimism, pessimism, sex, mystery, and mountains and mountains of books.
I started my Saturday by forgetting to print my tickets, forgetting to bring my water bottle, and going to the wrong location (because two panels occurring at the same time had the same name). During my walk of shame from one side of the University of Southern California campus to the other, I passed the USC Marching Band, which was playing an instrumental version of The Offspring song “The Kids Aren’t Alright.” Thus began the LA Times Festival of Books.
When I attended the Festival last year, I spent most of my time in the book-selling alleys, strolling leisurely from booth to booth, petting the spines of books I wasn’t planning on buying, avoiding making eye contact with booksellers who wanted to convince me to spend my grocery money on books, and scoping out book celebrities. This year, I decided to focus my attention on the panels and spent my weekend listening to other people talk about books for hours and hours.
I attended eight panels. The only constant over the weekend was that nobody understood what the title of their panel had to do with anything. I wasn’t bored for a second.
The Panels
Saturday
Fiction: The Big Picture
Panelists: Chad Harbach, Jonathan Evison, Anthony Giardina, Lauren Groff
Moderator: Laurie Muchnick
What does it mean? Chad Harbach disavows the phrase “The Big Picture.” No one else understands how to use it to guide discussion. “The Big Picture” is quietly abandoned.
Topics Covered: Every panelist has read The Art of Fielding. “Intentional communities”/utopias. The utopian urge. Older festival attendees are vocally angry when Harbach does not speak directly into the mic. The utopian urge as a huge part of America or the American Myth. The utopian urge is not as strong as it was in the 1970s. The utopian urge is just as strong as it has been in the past. The “beheaded woman” book cover/“You have to be militant about not having a beheaded woman or they will slip it in.” – Groff. Female writers writing female protagonists. Female writers writing male protagonists: “I don’t think my book would’ve done so well if it wasn’t a male protagonist.” – Groff. Male writers writing female protagonists. Finding utopia in the artisanal crafts movement/“Craft brewing is utopia.” – Evison. Writing fiction is an act of prolonged empathy.
Fiction: At Loose Ends
Panelists: Seth Greenland, Eleanor Henderson, Josh Rolnick, Jervey Tervalon
Moderator: Rachel Resnick
What does it mean? No one understands how “at loose ends” applies to their book. There’s some meandering talk about characters whose lives are not together, and about how all compelling characters in every book don’t have their lives together, and then “At Loose Ends” is abandoned in favor of greener pastures.
This panel featured a raffle of books from each of the panelists and the moderator. I leaned over to my friend and said, “I plan to win,” and I did, in fact, win Resnick’s memoir, Love Junkie, and novel, Go West Young F*cked Up Chick. I gave the novel to my friend and kept the memoir, whose cover is hot pink. It is possibly an old galley.
Topics Covered: Straight edge punks. The assumption of autobiography in fiction. “Probing a little deeper.” Henderson and Rolnick admit to being squares, Tervalon is too cheap to buy cocaine, Greenland refuses to label himself square or not square. “The impulse of the novel is an empathic one.” – Greenland. Ben Marcus’ book reading. Growing up black in Los Angeles, hanging out on a street corner, discussing the racist elements of H.P. Lovecraft stories. Does reading matter? Does fiction matter?
Fiction: To the Point (Panel 1043)
Panelists: Dan Chaon, Tod Goldberg, Adam Levin, Elissa Schappell
Moderator: Matthew Specktor
What does it mean? Specktor asked the organizers of the Festival what the panel title means and they refused to tell him, but slyly mentioned that every panelist has published a book of short stories in the past year or so. The phrase “To the Point” is not mentioned again, by anyone.
Levin’s shaved head made me wonder if Harbach will become one of those men who shaves his head to hide his receding hairline.
Someone in the audience shushes someone else in the audience. An entirely different audience member has hair like yellow-sweatered Alanis Morissette in the “Ironic” video.
Topics Covered: You start a story with either character or place. Setting begets character begets plot. Levin is “extremely Chicago.” The details that haunt us. Using repetition of details to give a sense of déjà vu from story to story. Levin starts his stories with sentences, rather than character or place or plot. Writing stories about feeling disgusted with culture and all the things people don’t say. Lesbians with no legs. Goldberg says he and Schappell dated in college. Schappell makes a joke about the size of Goldberg’s penis. “I’m interested in the epiphany in the reader, not on the page.” – Schappell. Ben Marcus short stories. Schappell isn’t interested in ever writing a novel. Stupid ways to write novels. Sad ways to write novels. “A short story is like a photograph.” – Chaon. “Think about Grace Paley, live your life.” – Schappell. If you are just writing in response to the market place, you should just be making widgets.
Publishing: Nuts & Bolts
Panelists: Betsy Amster, George Gibson, John Tayman, Robert Weil
Moderator: Patrick Brown
The panel title mystery does not apply to publishing panels.
Topics Covered: eBooks. Optimism for the future of publishing, which all the panelists feel. The eBook and physical book need to co-exist. The author is expected to be a partner with the publishing house in marketing, and that is how the publishing world has changed in the past decade. The Department of Justice lawsuit against Apple and five of the major publishing houses, explained eloquently by Brown. There are more people reading today than ever before. Weil passionately defends the physical book, the audience applauds. “eSingles”/mid-range sized books. Implicit devaluing of intellectual property. The close connection between print books and eBooks. eBooks. eBooks. eBooks and physical books are interconnected. The single biggest determiner of if you’re going to read a book is if you’ve read a book by the author before. Whether or not demonstrating an audience through social media influences a publisher’s decision in buying a book (answer: not really). We are a marketing obsessed society.
Sunday
Fiction: The Dream Deferred
Panelists: Ayad Akhtar, Mona Simpson, Hector Tobar, Jesmyn Ward
Moderator: Joy Press
Press prompts the panelists to each read from their own work, marking the first time I encounter the insides of books all weekend.
Panel Title Mystery, Unfolding: None of the panelists know what to say about “The Dream Deferred.” During the Q&A session, someone reads the entirety of the Langston Hughes poem that coined the line “a dream deferred.”
Topics Covered: Sleep deprivation (as a result of mothering an infant). I wrote it because I needed to. Characters “surprising” the author. Inner innocence. Begging the audience to buy a book of literary fiction. Simpson’s skill/ability to “enter” people. Male writers writing female protagonists. Outside is the new inside. The economic realities of being an author today. We are living in a period when American identity is being re-founded. “We too watch television! We too saw The Wire and think its amazing.” – Simpson. People watch and read things that are complex and difficult. Writing is like trying to do cold fusion in a garage.
Fiction: Destinations & Detours
Panlists: Susah Sherman, Pam Houston, Tara Ison
Moderator: Barbara DeMarco-Barrett
What does it mean? Houston, a good sport, shoves her book into the limiting thematic structure of the panel name.
Tara Ison is the co-writer of Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead!
Topics Covered: Paying a particular kind of attention to place and setting. How would your novel have changed if it took place in Milwaukee? Do characters project a sense of who they are onto a setting or do they internalize the city to develop of a sense of who they are. Alcatraz, the prison, is like another character in Houston’s novel. “Where is it going and what does it mean and how does it end, are questions I never ask.” – Houston. Research thrall. Henry James said a novel is a big shaggy monster. “I’m so afraid of writing something I haven’t seen.” – Houston. Henry James said a writer is a person upon whom nothing should be lost. You do so much research then you have to forget about it. Committing to arriving at “the chair.” Detailed answers to technique questions. The nature of inspiration/inspiration from life/inspiration from historical research. Houston is a million mile flier on United. “The pilot came out and shook my hand and gave me a bottle of Shiraz like George Clooney.” – Houston. Why Opera? Why Jim Fry? Why can’t we write in the middle? Before Jim Fry, Houston’s book would’ve been called a memoir. Reference to Tim O’Brien.
Publishing: Finding New Voices
Panelists: Laura Cogan, John Freeman, Rebecca Friedman, Ethan Nosowsky
Moderator: Johnny Temple
The panel title mystery does not apply to publishing panels.
Topics Covered: Agents/publishers, looking to be passionate about something. The bigger publishing houses have become less experimental. Granta editors read the slush pile, not interns. Zyzzyva editors also read the slush pile. Dave Eggers does not look at submissions. Are we talking about the same book? It’s nice to work with nice authors. Personality is hard to separate from art. An upcoming writer is compared favorably to Tim O’Brien. It’s no comment on the quality of work to say something need some editing. One tries to be self-aware of what one’s taste is. Pronouncing reportage as “ree-poor-tah-je.” There’s nothing cooler than a Bulgarian. Reference to the SNL Skit “The Californians.” Are all literary panels required to discuss eBooks? Reading an electronic device is like having sex with a machine. A physical book is a sensual experience.
Publishing A – Z
Panelists: Miwa Messer, Bonnie Nadell, Dan Smetanka
Moderator: Sara Nelson
The panel title mystery does not apply to publishing panels.
Topics Covered: Nadell’s take on the publishing industry: the sky is, in fact, falling. Other panels agree, complete pessimism about the state of the publishing industry. DOJ case referenced but not directly mentioned. The economics of eBooks versus the economics of a print book. The sky is falling. One of the great lies about eBooks is that they should cost less because they cost less to produce, but to get them to the point of physical production (acquisition, editing, design, etc.) are the same. But printing costs are less. But the expense of publishing books hasn’t dramatically changed. Media window for reviewing books has gotten shorter. eBooks cannot sustain the publishing industry alone. Negative feelings about eBooks. Championing books you love. Loving books. Naming names is permitted; the name that is named is Amazon. Word of mouth. There is no one way of doing anything anymore.
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