A car is parked in front of my building. In the extremely grimy rear windshield, someone has written, “I wish my boyfriend was this dirty.”
Anyway, this weekend I went to the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, which was more massive than I could have possibly imagined — hundreds of writers, thousands of attendees. It stretched across the whole UCLA campus. It was amazing that so many people showed up to talk about books, but the crowds were just out of control.
I showed up Saturday around 1:00 p.m. I would have gotten there earlier, but I’d had an appointment at noon in Santa Monica to get my car serviced. While my car was parked on the street recently, its headlight was bashed out. I know nothing about the driver other than her name, but I feel oddly certain that she is a sorority girl who was driving her SUV while talking on her cell phone. I got to the dealer and they said they didn’t have the part. I said, “But I talked to you last Thursday and you said you had it.” The guy explained, without the slightest trace of apology, that they’d been bought out by another dealer who had made them send back all the parts they’d ordered and reorder them from a preferred manufacturer. So that was a total waste of time (and gas).
Anyway, I arrived at the Festival of Books. I didn’t really know what else to do, so I went to an information booth and asked when and where on Sunday the T. C. Boyle reading would be, since I was supposed to meet people there. The woman asked if I had tickets. Tickets? To an author reading? I’d never even heard of such a thing. She explained that I should swing by the Ticketmaster booth and pick up tickets, if I could. That sounded ominous. I walked for twenty minutes to the Ticketmaster booth, where I happened to run into my friend Lindsey, who explained that all the tickets had been given away already. I said, “So I can’t get into anything at all?” She said, “You can wait in the standby line and if some of the people with tickets don’t show, they might let you in.” That didn’t sound so promising either. On the upside, Lindsey had an extra ticket to see Joyce Carol Oates later that day, which she gave me.
We waited in a standby line and managed to get in to see a panel on “the Book Biz,” which consisted of a lot of the usual doom and gloom about how book readers are dwindling and how it’s harder and harder to get published if you’re not a celebrity. Which led someone to mention James Frey, which led someone else to remark, “Wow! We made it through an entire half hour on a panel without mentioning James Frey.” Which of course led into a discussion of the girl from Harvard who seems to have accidentally cut-and-pasted numerous long paragraphs from someone else’s novels into hers. (She got a half a million dollar advance, by the way.)
I tried to get into a panel on writing young adult fantasy, but I didn’t have a ticket and there were about 500 people in line ahead of me, so I bailed on that one and wandered around the booths for a while. Then I decided I was going to damn well get a good seat for Joyce Carol Oates, so I went and got there before anyone else and camped out at the head of the line. Later, I struck up a conversation with the woman next to me, who gave me the lowdown on the festival. She and her husband have come every year for the past 11 years. (Even moving from L.A. to Austin four years ago hasn’t stopped them from coming.) She told me that the organizers hold back a large number of tickets to distribute each day, so if you come first thing in the morning you’re virtually guaranteed to get whatever tickets you want. Good to know.
Joyce Carol Oates was great. My favorite part was where someone asked her about her blurbing materials that some might consider lowbrow, such as the Hellboy graphic novel. She maintained that Hellboy, and many graphic novels like it, have far more literary value than many prose novels that are published, such as almost the entire “chick lit” genre. She also confessed that there wasn’t much reading material around when she was growing up, so much of her childhood was spent reading comics such as Tales From the Crypt and MAD Magazine.
Sunday I showed up bright and early and got in line for tickets. I was about twentieth in line. The woman in front of me turned around, and it was the same woman I’d been standing next to in line the day before. I said, “We’ve got to stop meeting like this.” Then I saw someone I know from USC, so I hung out with him for a while and got tickets to everything I wanted. I saw Berke Breathed, creator of the newspaper comic Bloom County, one of the most brilliant creative works of all time. I also saw Larry Flynt, creator of … well, you know. Actually, Flynt told a pretty funny story. For years Flynt’s greatest nemesis was this televangelist. When the televangelist was eventually caught in a hotel with hooker, the police also found a copy of Hustler in the room. Then I went and saw two veterans of the ongoing Iraq war, one of whose memoir I’d read. At one point, the other soldier said, “There’s been a lot of criticism of the media that they’re not providing ‘balanced’ coverage of this war, not reporting the good along with the bad. But look, if you want good news, go report on Disneyland. War is a completely f***** up thing. It’s not about good news.” Then I went to T. C. Boyle’s reading, and actually got invited to tag along to dinner afterward with him and his friends and family, which was lots of fun.
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