Book festival shows Los Angeles is about more than movies

Susan Sontag enjoys meeting the reading public

May 5, 2000
Web posted at: 4:35 p.m. EST (2035 GMT)

By Stephanie Bowen
Special to CNN Interactive

LOS ANGELES (CNN) -- It was a perfect weekend for the beach, yet more than 90,000 Southern Californians shunned the sand and surf to get a glimpse of their favorite authors at the Festival of Books.

The two-day event sponsored by the Los Angeles Times was held on the UCLA campus. It brought together more than 300 authors such as Susan Sontag, Clive Barker, and Annie Proulx for panel discussions, book signings and even performances.

Times book editor Steve Wasserman says this event, which is in its fifth year, is so successful because in a city as large and sprawling as Los Angeles, people are looking for a place to come together. It is also because the people of Los Angeles read, and read a lot.

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According to Publishers Weekly, Los Angeles has had the country's highest number of books sales per capita for the last seven years.

"Despite the distractions of the entertainment industry, despite all the blandishments of the virtual world," says Wasserman, "this very archaic and rather sensual form, the book ... will not soon disappear."

Recently almost 10,000 tickets to a New York book festival sold out in days and annual book fairs in Miami, Chicago, Seattle and Nashville have garnered enthusiastic response from the public.

A 'maddening' array of choices

Sandra Tsing Loh signs books after a lively performance

The Los Angeles festival had a carnival-like atmosphere, where children listened to Mayor Richard Riordan read from Dr. Seuss's "Green Eggs and Ham," crowds went from booth to booth examining books from large and small publishers, and chefs like Dom DeLouise prepared delicious meals with one hand and signed cookbooks with the other.

The panel discussions were as varied as the landscape. Los Angeles commentator Sandra Tsing Loh entertained a packed audience with a standup routine of her most popular material. The crowd erupted with laughter when Loh's 80-year-old Chinese father appeared on the stage wearing only a pair of clingy, red knit pants, chanting and doing yoga poses.

Across campus, a group of distinguished professors and historians earnestly discussed the fluidity of truth in writing history. Zachary Karabell, author of "The Last Campaign: How Harry Truman Won the 1948 Election" (Knopf), spoke on the challenges of writing about opaque politicians -- of bringing them to life without creating a different character. And Orville Schell, author of "Virtual Tibet" (Henry Holt & Company) told how the desire by the West "to have someplace on the globe that was good," has left Tibet somewhere between fiction and history.

The author selection process began in October when a committee of eight, mostly comprised of the Los Angeles Times book review staff, sent out invitations to authors. Once the guest list was compiled, they decided what panel discussions to have and who to put center stage.

George Plimpton signs an old copy of the 'Paris Review'

There were discussions on religion, pLe Guinaphy, travel and sports, to name a few, and individual appearances by best selling authors like Ray Bradbury, Michael Crichton, Kareem Abdul Jabar and Jane Goodall.

Between events, festival-goers could enjoy lunch over readings from poets like John Ashbery, Sandra Cisneros and Ursula Le Guin. Readings were performed on an outdoor stage throughout the weekend.

One could almost get overwhelmed like Joel Drazner, who comes to the festival every year. "It's maddening. It's got a great collection of writers but there are too many things happening at the same time and you can't be at more than three or four places at once."

In one hour alone the choices were plenty: "Children's Literature: The Power of Imagination"; "Outta the Park: Baseball by the Book"; "Biography: Writing Lives"; "American Gothic: From John Lennon to JonBenet"; "Historical Fiction: Mists of Time"; and Martha Grimes and Susan Sontag.

Soul-searching with famous authors

George Plimpton, author and editor of the literary journal Paris Review, told a full auditorium that he never thought he was going to become a writer and still keeps his fingers crossed that his writing will get published. In the next breath, this American icon talked about setting up a meeting between Ernest Hemingway and Tennessee Williams, then ended his session by soliciting subscriptions to his journal.

Some fans were disappointed that Susan Sontag used her hour on the stage to read instead of holding the originally advertised "conversation," but Dominique Drexler, who drove from Long Beach to see Sontag, was fulfilled.

The public had the rare opportunity to ask questions of their favorite authors

"I thought the literature, the reading, said everything and more about her, about her life, her writing, her interests."

Sontag apologized to the fans who wanted more, saying she enjoys the question-and-answer format, but was daunted by the size of the audience. There were close to 1,000 people packed into Royce Hall to hear her speak. Despite the mix-up, Sontag said festivals are a tremendous way to see that books have a real audience.

George Plimpton agrees. "Writing is a very lonely business and when you come to a book fair and you sit at a table and people come up to you with books that they've had in their library for many years and they think it's been somewhat enhanced by a signature, it's always a pleasure."

One independent bookseller brought stacks and stacks of Plimpton's books and old copies of the Paris Review for him to sign.

Sontag says it's no mystery why festivals are so popular. "Of course the movies are going to be the more visible, more high profile, for the simple reason that a lot more money is involved and this is a largely money-oriented society. ... Nevertheless, this is a very good book town, whether it's known to be that or not, and that's why you have something like this."

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Los Angeles Times
LA Times - Festival of Books

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