Los Angeles Times Book Prizes

Tonight I attended the Los Angeles Times Book Prizes at UCLA, an event which serves as the launching pad for the weekend-long Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. The Book Fest is without a doubt my favorite weekend of the year. Hands down. No contest. Nothing else comes within Ursa Major of approaching my ecstasy at this weekend's arrival year in and year out. I attended my first Book Fest in '99 (I moved to L.A. in the fall of '98) and have gone every year since. Except for 2001 when I was too poor.

If you don't live in L.A., no doubt you're wondering what in tarnation I'm talking about. Here's the deal. The Festival of Books is pretty much what it sounds like. It's an event during the last weekend of April during which an infinity of book lovers like me come and hear authors talk about stuff and sign their books. But it's oh-so-much-more. UCLA sets aside the northeastern quadrant of its Jupiter-sized campus to host this literary shindig. The sponsors set up tents all over the place to show off their wares. The Los Angeles Times is far from the only sponsor. No exaggeration, over 300 companies from far and wide help make this thing possible. In addition, the classroom buildings on this chunk of campus host one-hour panels featuring authors talking about the subject matter their books have in common. For instance, one of the panels I'll be attending Sunday is about murder mysteries. The authors include Stephen J. Cannell (who, in addition to writing mystery novels, is the creator of a ton of TV shows that include The A Team, The Greatest American Hero, The Rockford Files, and on and on and on), Charlie Huston (Half the Blood of Brooklyn, Caught Stealing, Already Dead), Andrew Klavan (True Crime, Dynamite Road, Shotgun Alley), and Dick Lochte as moderator (Neon Smile, Croaked!, and a bunch of books co-written with Christopher Darden). So these cats will spend an hour or so talking about the way they write, how they come up with story ideas, how they fell into writing, and probably more specific stuff too. The Book Fest features no less than a hundred-plus panels scattered throughout Saturday and Sunday concerning every subject matter you can think of. The panels are ticketed, which means that beginning the Sunday before the Book Fest, you have to go to Ticketmaster and spend 75 cents per panel ticket. Each attendee is limited to eight tickets. Yes, as you no doubt have guessed, I never fail to max out at eight. That's a good number. That means I attend four panels on Saturday and four on Sunday. Any more than that and the brain would suffer literary shock. In addition to the panels, the Book Fest features six outdoor stages where authors get up and talk and read and what have you. Those are free. You can just go to whatever stage you want and grab a seat and enjoy. Ever family friendly, the Book Fest also sets aside a couple areas specifically for kiddies to hear kids' book authors talk and watch various readings and musical performances on the Target Children's Stage. For those who need to eat (I never have time), there are several outdoor food courts scattered around, not to speak of the innumerable snack carts.

You see? It's a grand event, far too grand for one blog post. So the way I'll do it is, I'll devote this post to the Book Prizes that happened tonight at Royce Hall, and then I'll do one post each for Saturday and Sunday to list the panels I attended and any notes/thoughts for each.

Okay. So the Book Prizes. The Los Angeles Times Book Prizes is a two-hour awards ceremony held at Royce Hall, by far the largest venue of the Book Fest and also the year-round home of the UCLA Live theater company. The whole point of the ceremony is to recognize those books published in 2007 that are, in the opinion of the L.A. Times book critics, the crème de la crème.

As is my wont every year, I got to the Book Fest tonight somewhere between a half-hour and an hour early. I do that so I have time to walk around the part of campus where the Book Fest will be taking place. All of the sponsor tents are set up but are still completely empty. The food court tents are set up, complete with the cash registers and the glass soda refrigerators that are still soda-less. I'm not sure why I like to do this. I never see anyone else do it. Perhaps it's just giddiness. Indeed, I've never attended another event in my life where the vibe was so agreeable. Somewhere on the order of a hundred thousand people attend the Book Fest throughout the weekend. These people come from all over Southern California (and much, much further in the authors' cases) for no other reason than to celebrate the written word. As a passionate lover of the written word myself, I can't imagine another event more conducive to my personality.

When I finally got to my seat, I found myself sitting next to a middle-aged guy with a pony tail who, like me, came by himself. Talk about a lover of books, this guy's been working in the Torrance and Garden Grove library systems for over thirty years. Dealing with a lot of kids as he does, his main reason for coming tonight was to see young adult novelist Francesca Lia Block, who was tonight's presenter for the Young Adult Fiction prize. According to this guy, the big fave to nab this one was Sherman Alexie for his novel The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. I wish I could've gotten this guy's name, as it seemed he had quite a few stories to tell from his own life. I did find out that, when it came to his own writing, he preferred poetry over fiction.

The first person to come out onto the podium was Russ Stanton, who only just became the editor of the Los Angeles Times on Valentine's Day of this year. In his forties or so, balding, mustachioed, and somewhat built, Russ can't speak for shit. I sure hope the man's editing skills are impeccable, because as a speaker, he mispronounces more words than you can count. What's worse, he referred to Africa as a country. In general his wooden demeanor makes Al Gore seem positively electric.

After him came Kenneth "Kenny" Turan, the head film critic for both the Times as well as NPR's Morning Edition. I love this guy. I don't always agree with his film reviews (most recently he disagreed with Iron Man in a way that was wildly off the mark, in my humble opinion), but he's the consummate professional, always very classy in the way he talks about movies and their makers. Before the whole film critic thing, Kenny Turan was in charge of the L.A. Times Sunday book review, and he still works for the book section on the side. In fact, the bearded bespectacled dude is director of the Book Prizes. The gist of his talk tonight was about Dutton's, an independent bookstore in Brentwood that's closing April 30 after 24 years. I'd never been to Dutton's (Brentwood is not exactly on my way anywhere), but I knew about it by reputation. Dutton's was always that bookstore in West L.A. that got the biggest names in literature to show up and talk and sign their books. In fact, after Kenny was finished, up to the podium stepped none other than Doug Dutton, the shop's namesake. His hair was mostly white, but his face was youthful. If he was bummed out by his store's demise, he didn't betray one iota of it. That might be because everyone in the packed house gave him a standing ovation. I feel kind of guilty that I never made it to his joint. Doug seemed like such a sincere guy, like wearing his heart on his sleeve was the only way he knew how to live. He had no hard feelings but was simply grateful to all the readers and writers who passed through his doors. I wish you the best of luck, Mr. Dutton!

The MC tonight was Mr. Gay Talese. Ever hear of him? The wily old codger's generally credited with pioneering a form of writing called New Journalism. He's written stuff like The Kingdom and the Power, Honor Thy Father, and Thy Neighbor's Wife. Like me, Gay grew up in Jersey. Unlike me, he's the child of Italian immigrants. When not working on his own stuff, he's a professor at USC's masters of creative writing program, of which I'm a proud alum. I never did take his classes (nonfiction's not really my thing), but he did show up one time to talk in one of my fiction classes. I remember him being dressed in a very nice suit with perfectly combed silver hair. He had a white hat that he placed on the table when he came into the classroom. Tonight he looked pretty much the same way, the ten years since I'd seen him be damned. He didn't have the hat, but the man was dressed as impeccably as anyone at a mob funeral. His wife, by the way, is none other than Nan Talese, whom I also met at the same fiction class. As someone aspiring to be a published novelist, I'd kill to be Nan's best pal, as she has her own imprint with Random House.

Since each category had its own presenter, the honorable Mr. Talese's main duty was to introduce each presenter, in addition to his awesome pep talks at the beginning and end of the ceremony. Below I've listed the nominees under each category with the winners in bold, as well as any notes or thoughts about each. Here goes.

Current Interest

Ishmael Beah - A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier

Tom Bissell - The Father of All Things: A Marine, His Son, and the Legacy of Vietnam

Ronald Brownstein - The Second Civil War: How Extreme Partisanship Has Paralyzed Washington and Polarized America

Naomi Klein - The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

Elizabeth D. Samet - Soldier's Heart: Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West Point

The presenter was Scott Simon, host of NPR's Weekend Edition Saturday. While going through the five nominees, his reading the subtitle of The Second Civil War made everyone in the auditorium roll on their asses. Have you ever seen a subtitle more apropos?

Young Adult Fiction

Sherman Alexie - The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Geraldine McCaughrean - The White Darkness

Walter Dean Myers - What They Found: Love on 145th Street

Kenneth Oppel - Darkwing

Phillip Reeve - The Hungry City Chronicles: A Darkling Plain
The presenter was Francesca Lia Block, a young adult novelist herself. I don't remember too much of what she said, as I was too focused on her model-like figure. That's right, kids. She was kind of hot. The pony-tailed librarian sitting next to me was expecting Sherman Alexie to nab the prize, so when Francesca announced Kenneth Oppel as the winner, he was like, "Hmph." Kenneth Oppel is an Englishman who wasn't here tonight to accept his prize in person, so they played his video acceptance speech on the big screen. Darkwing is apparently the fourth and final novel in a quartet he started back in '91. He said that his love of airships was what inspired him to write the series in the first place.

Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction

Antonia Arslan - Skylark Farm

Rebecca Curtis - Twenty Grand: And Other Tales of Love and Money

Pamela Erens - The Understory

Ellen Litman - The Last Chicken in America: A Novel in Stories

Dinaw Mengestu - The Beautiful Things that Heaven Bears

The presenter was Susan Salter Reynolds, one of the book critics for the L.A. Times. Specifically, Susan's in charge of a section of the Sunday book review called Discoveries. I've been a regular reader of her stuff for years now. She's not always a presenter at the Book Prizes, but I always see her during the Book Fest at some point. It's always great to see her. She's a terrific talker. The award's namesake, by the way, was the founder of the Book Prizes and worked at the LA Times during the sixties and seventies as a columnist and book critic.

Science & Technology

James L. and Carol Grant Gould - Animal Architects: Building and the Evolution of Intelligence

Douglas Hofstadter - I Am a Strange Loop

Christine Kenneally - The First Word: The Search for the Origins of Language

Daniel Lord Smail - On Deep History and the Brain

Gino Segre - Faust in Copenhagen: A Struggle for the Soul of Physics

Okay now check this out. The presenter was a gal named Dava Sobel, a science writer herself who won the L.A. Times Book Prize back in 2000 for her book Galileo's Daughter. Tonight she was presenting the prize to Doug Hofstadter for his I Am a Strange Loop. When Dava won her prize eight years ago, the man to present her with the prize was none other than...you got it...Doug Hofstadter. Now THAT is a strange frickin' loop.

Poetry

Marvin Bell - Mars Being Red

Elaine Equi - Ripple Effect: New and Selected Poems

Albert Goldbarth - The Kitchen Sink: New and Selected Poems, 1972-2007

Stanley Plumly - Old Heart: Poems

Jean Valentine - Little Boat

The presenter was Mark Doty, a very accomplished poet himself who is a past L.A. Times Book Prize winner as well as a winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award. He's also the only Yank to have scored the U.K.'s T.S. Eliot Prize. The winner, Stanley Plumly, is a white-maned guy who had a funny anecdote to relate about his early days as a poet back in his home town of Akron, Ohio. Back when he first started earning money for his poetry, his checks went to the Akron post office, which had a general sorting method that meant his checks would wind up in the pile for Stanley Plumbing. He thanked the Times for his prize because it would help him convince people at long last that he is not, in fact, a plumber.

Mystery/Thriller

Benjamin Black - Christine Falls: A Novel

Åke Edwardson - Frozen Tracks: An Inspector Erik Winter Novel

Karin Fossum - The Indian Bride

Tana French - In the Woods

Jan Costin Wagner - Ice Moon

Karin Fossum's from Norway and wasn't able to make it to the City of Angels. Accepting the award on her behalf was the top dawg from her publisher, Harcourt. He read a note from Karin that talked about how she was interested in writing about shy men. If you've read The Indian Bride, maybe that makes sense to you.

History

David A. Bell - The First Total War: Napoleon's Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know It

Margaret Macmillan - Nixon and Mao: The Week that Changed the World

Andrew Nagorski - The Greatest Battle: Stalin, Hitler, and the Desperate Struggle for Moscow that Changed the Course of World War II

Lynne Olson - Troublesome Young Men: The Rebels Who Brought Churchill to Power and Helped Save England

Tim Weiner - Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA
The presenter was Douglas Brinkley. Besides being a history professor at Rice, he's written a ton of very well received current interest and history books. One of them was The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast, which scored him the Robert F. Kennedy prize and was an LA Times Book Prize finalist under the Current Interest category. Tim Weiner, meanwhile, was a very serious-looking, almost dour middle-aged guy. What disarmed me about him, though, was that his date for the night was his ma. He thanked her for teaching him how to read. Awwwww. He then ended his acceptance speech by giving a very passionate plea not to let newspapers fall under government purview. When the ceremony was over, I went out to the Borders table in the lobby and scooped up a copy of Andrew Nagorski's book on Hitler and Stalin.

Biography

Nancy Isenberg - Fallen Founder: The Life of Aaron Burr

Tim Jeal - Stanley: The Impossible Life of Africa's Greatest Explorer

Simon Sebag Montefiore - Young Stalin
Robert Morgan - Boone: A Biography

Michael J. Neufeld - Von Braun: Dreamer of Space, Engineer of War

Presenter Jim Newton edits the LA Times editorial pages and is the guy who wrote the biography And Justice for All: Earl Warren and the Nation He Made. I already own Young Stalin courtesy of my father, although I have read neither that nor Simon's book just prior to it, Court of the Red Tsar, which I also own. Simon's currently on a world tour for Young Stalin and so had to give his acceptance speech via video. I actually got to meet him at the Book Fest a couple years ago, at which time he signed my copy of Red Tsar. Then as now, he comes off at first as a very straight-laced Englishman, but then says something with a dry wit that all of our former colonial masters seem to have in common. In his acceptance video, Simon went on and on in such a sincere way about how the biggest challenge in writing Young Stalin was to make his mom like it. The man never betrayed an ounce of humor but seemed so sincere about the difficulty of writing for his ma. The audience cracked up.

Fiction

Junot Diaz - The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Andrew O'Hagan - Be Near Me

Stewart O'Nan - Last Night at the Lobster

Per Petterson - Out Stealing Horses: A Novel

Marianne Wiggins - The Shadow Catcher: A Novel
This turned out to be quite the international category. The presenter was Ngugi wa Thiong'o. Sixty years old and a native of Kenya, Ngugi teaches English and comparative lit at UC Irvine and churns out the occasional novel or play. He's also a journalist and social activist. Andrew O'Hagan, meanwhile, is a Scotsman. During his acceptance speech, he talked about the small town where he grew up, and how he and his pals considered Los Angeles a suburb of Scotland because of all the L.A. writers they admired. He also talked about a studio exec back in the fifties who came to Scotland to make a movie but decided the country wasn't Scottish enough. So he went back to Hollywood to make his film on a soundstage.

The last award of the night was the Robert Kirsch Award, named after the LA Times book critic from 1952 until he died in 1980. This award is sort of like those Lifetime Achievement Awards given out at the Oscars. The author is usually someone who's been around the block a few times, and whose work concerns the American West. Past winners include Larry McMurtry and Tony Hillerman. The presenter of the award was LA Times book editor David Ulin. And the winner is....Maxine Hong Kingston. A silver-haired Asian woman from the Bay area, Maxine is a professor emeritus at UC Berkley who's written all kinds of stuff of both the fiction and nonfiction stripe: Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace, The Woman Warrior: Memoirs of a Girlhood among Ghosts, China Men, Through the Black Curtain, Tripmaster Monkey: His Fake Book, and The Fifth Book of Peace. She was so adorable, that little thing, coming up to accept her award, perched on her toes to see over the podium. She was quite humbled by the whole experience and was completely without airs.

And finally we got some closing remarks by David Hiller, the publisher, president, and CEO of the Los Angeles Times. The gist of his spiel was thanks for coming, we look forward to seeing you this weekend at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books. I'm looking forward too!