Another year, another L.A. Times Festival of Books. This is my tenth one, which is kind of amazing. Have I lived in L.A. that long? And it's only the fourteenth one overall. So despite the fact that I wasn't even living here during the first three, I've managed to attend two-thirds of them. Hey, what can I say? I love books.
As I said in my Book Fest posts last year, this is hands down and sans exaggeration THE weekend of the year for me. It's this event above all others that keeps me in L.A. Every time I give even a modicum of thought to moving back east, the first question that pops up is, "Well, what about the Book Fest?" As a bonus, and like last year, the weather was perfect. Seriously. Not too hot at all.
If I had to surrender one gripe, it would be about the horrendous traffic in Westwood Village at the end of the day. Seriously, it took me a friggin' hour to go what? A mile? South on Westwood Blvd. from UCLA to Wilshire Blvd. Ugh. Well anyway, I'd gladly go through that again if it means I get to keep attending Book Fests. This is the only event for which I'd say such a thing.
A new addition to this year's Fest was the ubiquity of Twitter. While they told us to silence our cell phones during the panels, which they always do, they also encouraged us to tweet. I don't have Twitter, but that's awesome. They even had signs in front of each panel venue to the same effect.
Okay, enough gushing. Let's get to it. I attended four great panels today. For each I've listed the panel title, venue, time, authors, and my notes, thoughts, opinions, whatevers. The author descriptions are taken verbatim from the festival program.
Status Update: Social Networking and New Media
Franz 1178 - 10:30 a.m.
Otis Chandler - Founder of goodreads.com. He is a software engineer at heart and loves tinkering on his website to make it the best product possible. He graduated from Stanford University. Along with a passion for building websites, he's also a voracious reader.
Wil Wheaton - Wheaton's acting career began with roles in Stand by Me and Star Trek: The Next Generation. He is also an author, blogger, voice actor and social commentator. With more than 300,000 rollovers on Twitter, Wheaton is one of the best-known users of social media. His latest book is Sunken Treasure.
Sara Wolf - Co-editor of Itch, an evolving art project/artist forum/journal/zine. She is also a doctoral candidate and teaching fellow in UCLA's department of World Arts and Cultures and a freelance dance critic for the Los Angeles Times.
Moderator: Andrew Nystrom - Nystrom, on Twitter at @latimesnystrom, is the Times' senior producer for social and emerging media. His Yellowstone & Grand Teton National Parks hiking guide won a National Outdoor Book Award for Best Adventure Guidebook.
Notes
What better way to kick off the weekend than to attend a panel in a brand new venue? Franz Hall isn't a new building or anything, but this is the first year the Book Fest has used it to stage panels. It's also, by the way, the first year the Book Fest didn't use Royce Hall, that huge building over in the center of the festival grounds. On the Friday night before the Book Fest they usually put on the book prize ceremony there. I blogged about that last year, but I couldn't this year because, well, Royce Hall was unavailable. I meant to ask one of the volunteers about that but forgot. It's weird. I know it's still usable. This is where the UCLA Live theater company puts on all their stuff. When it was still being used by the Book Fest, they'd have the big names there. Over the years I've seen the likes of Michael Crichton (RIP), Steve Martin, and Gore Vidal at Royce. Last year I saw Julie Andrews there, which was awesome. Anyway, it's a bummer they're not using Royce this year. I read on latimes.com that they did have the book prize ceremony last night, but instead of a big public gala affair, it was an "intimate ceremony" at the L.A. Times building downtown. Man, I'd been going to those prize ceremonies every year for years, not as long as I've been going to the festival itself, but still. It was a tradition! I suppose it's also tradition that traditions must end, huh? Okay, let's move on before I get too existential on you...
I have to say it was an unexpected treat when I saw that Wil Wheaton was part of this panel. I don't think I noticed his name in the program that came with last Sunday's paper, which is also when I got all my panel tickets online. If you're not much into sci-fi, then you probably have no idea who he is. After playing the main character in Stand by Me in 1986, he played a regular on Star Trek: The Next Generation. He wasn't there for the show's entire seven-year run, but he was there a good while. His character, Wesley Crusher, was the son of the ship's doctor, Beverly Crusher. Since then he's been acting sporadically, mainly lending his voice to cartoons and what have you. And, per his presence at the Book Fest, he writes stuff. This new book he just self-published, Sunken Treasure, is a collection of various essays, sketches, and excerpts from his past books. Anyway, Stand by Me is one of my favorite movies. And I was a big fan of The Next Generation. It was neat seeing him here.
Wil's also a big Twitter guy. I had no idea about that. Like I said above, I don't use Twitter. And I don't plan to. I am a big Facebook user, though, and that was my main reason for attending this panel. Wil must've had a lot of his hardcore fans in the audience, including people who subscribe to his tweets. When Andrew introduced Wil and mentioned how often Wil tweets, Wil leaned into the mic and said, "Sorry." Dude tweets a lot apparently.
Speaking of the moderator, Andrew ranks pretty high up there at the L.A. Times. He's basically their top dawg for all things social media. At one point during the panel he mentioned that his desk is literally right outside the office of the paper's top editor, Russ Stanton, who just took that position a year or so ago. Andrew said it's not as stressful as you'd think because Russ travels a lot. This past week, for instance, Russ was visiting Harvard for a social media conference.
One of the things he asked Wil was about his (in)famous tweeting. Seeing as how hockey season is in full steam right now, Wil said that he tweets all the time during hockey games. He never did tell us his favorite team. I'll have to assume it's the Kings because he's an L.A. native. Anyway, he's a diehard hockey nut, and he likes to Twitter about what the score is, which player he's mad at, what he thinks of the commentators, etc.
Wil told us about this one time when he tweeted his wife during a flight to Seattle. Kenny Loggins was on the same flight, and Wil told his wife that he hoped he didn't get caught in the danger zone. That got a good laugh. Any eighties reference is awesome by me, and I'm pleased to see most everyone else got it too. Just before the flight took off, Wil tweeted his wife one last time before turning off his cell, telling her he loved her the most. And then when he landed in Seattle and turned his cell back on, he found zillions of responses from his subscribers saying how much they loved him too. He hadn't just tweeted his wife, he'd tweeted everyone. Hilarious.
He talked about how happy he is with self-publishing. He founded his own little press called Monolith. If you want to buy his stuff, his site is pretty much the only place you can do it. He did have hard copies of Sunken Treasure in stores, but it sold out. If you're interested, make sure you've got the Adobe Acrobat Reader. His site also lets you give feedback. He confessed that sometimes he lets negative feedback get to him, but he is getting better at letting it go. Lots of people are buying his books so he figures he must be doing something right. At least it's better than the editor reviews on Amazon. This is where everyone else on the panel chimed in. They collectively agreed that those so-called official reviews on Amazon are ridiculous. Of course those are sugar-coated because Amazon just wants you to buy the book, right? I always thought that was weird too.
Wil talked about his personal life a bit. He's been married to the same woman, Anne, for about ten years now. They don't have kids of their own, but Anne has two kids from a previous marriage, Nolan and Ryan, which means either she and/or her ex-husband is a huge baseball fanatic. Wil talked about having heart-to-hearts with his stepkids about Internet fundamentals. Nolan and Ryan are in college now. Wil just wants them to think hard before putting anything online. Because once it's out there, as Wil said, it's out there "until the lights go out on planet Earth." Part of his sincerity is based on his time working as a scout at Propeller, a company that handled spam filtering for AOL. He was like, "You wouldn't believe the stuff I saw." He was just blown away by a lot of the, well, spam that people would send out into cyberspace. A lot of it was juicy stuff too, like people spamming their ex-lovers and so on.
Wil made an interesting point when Andrew asked him about the impact online media was having on the downfall of traditional newspapers. Wil doesn't blame the Internet for that. He was very critical of the corporations who own the newspapers and who pressure them to churn out shallow content at the expense of in-depth stories. Newspapers are so worried about going out of business that their parent companies apparently lean on them to churn out articles to keep the ad dollars flowing, right? But a lot of papers have been going out of business this past year, including big city ones. They committed a self-fulfilling prophecy, according to Wil. But then Andrew pointed out that the L.A. Times just published a series of articles that was the culmination of several years of research and won the paper some prestigious recognition.
Otis Chandler is not related to the Chandler family that founded the L.A. Times back in 1882. So no, he's not related to the Otis Chandler who was part of that same family and was publisher of the Times during the sixties and seventies. Nah, he's just this software geek and avid reader who just happens to have that name. He was a pretty interesting guy. This Otis was blond and looked the same age as Wil, late thirties or so. He was soft spoken and always began his answers with "sure, sure."
Otis pointed out that reading is not mass media because we're alone when we do it. His motivation to create his book networking site, goodreads.com, was that it bugged him when he'd completely forget what a book was about two or three years after reading it. He also talked about this dating site he used to run, and how the difference in reader feedback is night and day compared to goodreads. For the latter, "people actually think before they write." Indeed, Otis is a fan of his goodreads community. I haven't used this site so I don't know much about it, but as far as I can tell, it's an online book club of sorts where people talk about books they've read, rate them, post reviews and so on. One anecdote he told us had to do with when he changed his site's five-star rating system to a four-star system. Immediately a ton of goodreads members sent him mostly scathing feedback. It meant all the books' ratings had to be changed. If a book had originally gotten five stars, it would now be four stars. Readers were complaining about having to go back and redo all of their reviews. It was the proverbial can of nightcrawlers. Otis changed it back to the five-star system, but he was thrilled to have such a passionate literary crowd.
Sara Wolf looked to be in her fifties or so. She rubbed me the wrong way pretty much right off the bat when she slammed L.A.'s literacy. She didn't give any statistics or anything. Nah, to her, the people who came to the Book Fest are the only people in L.A. who read. What bullshit. I know a ton of people in this city who read, but they're not big on the festival either because they have other plans, they live too far away, or they're not a big fan of crowds or something. Over a hundred thousand people attend the festival throughout the weekend. If you don't like crowds, it won't be for you. Call me sensitive, but I really resented her assertion there. How can you make a blanket statement about a city of four million people?
Anyway, Sara's big thing is Facebook. She's primarily a dance critic, so it was the Facebook dance community that she talked about most. At one time her list of e-mail contacts was on one sheet of paper. Then she joined Facebook to try to build a dance community online, and it's worked like gangbusters. Well good for her. I'm not big on dance, so I don't really care. Sara said more, but I sort of phased her out after she dissed L.A.
Memoirs with a Twist
Fowler Auditorium - Noon
Gustavo Arellano - Arellano's !Ask a Mexican! column has a circulation of more than two million nationwide. His aptly titled first book, !Ask a Mexican!, was a national bestseller. In Orange County, A Personal History, he sheds light on a topic near and dear to him: Immigration.
Chris Ayres - Ayres joined The Times (London) in 1997 and has since been posted in New York, Los Angeles, and Iraq. He is the author of two books, War Reporting for Cowards, which is now being developed as a motion picture, and his latest, Death by Leisure.
Rachel Resnick - Resnick's first book, Go West Young F*cked-Up Chick, was a Los Angeles Times bestseller. She has published articles, essays and celebrity profile stories nationally and is a contributing editor at Tin House magazine. Resnick's most recent book is Love Junkie.
Marion Winik - Author of eight books including her latest memoir, The Glen Rock Book of the Dead. A longtime commentator on NPR's All Things Considered, she lives in Glen Rock, PA.
Moderator: Erika Schickel - Schickel's essays, reviews and reporting appear in the Los Angeles Times, LA Weekly, L.A. City Beat and Bust Magazine. She writes online for LAObserved, HipMama.com, 23/6.com and thedailyreel.com. She is the author of You're Not the Boss of Me: Adventures of a Modern Mom.
Notes
I have no plans to write a memoir. I'm pretty much a fiction guy. However, and speaking of fiction, I do have plans to write, and fairly soon, a collection of linked short stories that will take place in 1986 New Jersey and will be largely drawn from my childhood experiences (I grew up in Jersey in the eighties), complete with characters based on myself and my family. So I guess I saw some relevance to this panel. Plus, when I decide which panels to attend in general, sometimes I like going to those that ostensibly have no connection to my writing. Because isn't it true that we can gain insight in the unlikeliest of places? Besides, just about all of the panels are fool-proof if you're looking to sit for an hour and listen to intelligent people, experts in their field, talk about what they do.
Another draw for me was Rachel Resnick, an author I've never read but know somewhat by reputation, which just goes to show how effective authors can be at advertising themselves if their publishers back them up. Her publisher must have an awesome marketing department because I remember quite clearly when her first memoir, Go West Young F*cked-Up Chick, came out about ten years ago. And I think I've read about her or quotes by her in various feminist-related articles over the years, not that I've read many of those unless they were in TIME or The Economist or Entertainment Weekly.
When I first saw her up at the panel table, I thought, "Gee, she looks a bit older than I expected." I mean she looked to be in her forties. Hardly old, right? But I guess with a title like Go West Young F*cked-Up Chick, I was expecting a chick who was, well, young. But then I was like, "Wait, that came out ten years ago!" At any rate, just looking at her, you could tell she's toughed out a lot, two memoirs' worth and probably more. Her short blonde mushroom-style hair was cute 'n all, but her tanned face had some lines you could see even from my seat. Not just the simple lines of age. Lines of experience. Life lines, if you will. Those eyes seemed to say, "I dare ya!" But with a smile.
It's just as well I mentioned TIME above. Erika Schickel is the daughter of long-time movie critic Richard Schickel. I've been reading this guy's reviews for a long time, both in TIME as well as the L.A. Times. Sure enough, he was there, sitting a few rows in front of me and to the left. I recognized him because he himself has sat on movie-related panels at the Book Fest over the years. As someone who wants to be a father, I have to say it was kind of touching seeing him there to watch his baby girl moderate her own panel.
Gustavo Arellano was a scream. He mentioned he was thirty at one point, which might be one reason I really connected to everything he said. He was the closest one to my age on this panel. In another life he must've been an actor. When he spoke, it seemed like a performance. His voice projected quite well. It wasn't deep or anything. It was more like a stand-up comedian's voice. A kid's voice. At one point he said that all aspiring writers should reach out to as many established writers as possible to find a mentor. When he was starting out, he sent e-mails to tons of writers. Only two responded, but he only needed one. Both of those writers became mentors of a sort and ended up helping him a lot. Having grown up in Orange County, Gustavo was very critical of all the TV shows that are set there. He was mostly targeting the reality stuff since, as a writer, nonfiction is his domain, specifically as it relates to the O.C. The only O.C.-related show of any kind he's fond of is Arrested Development. It's fiction, yet he thought it was pretty realistic, which in turn is what made it so hilarious. That's pretty awesome that he liked that show. I watched all three seasons a couple years ago. It's comedy gold.
Chris was also hilarious. An Englishman, and equipped with that oh-so-English self-deprecating humor, he talked about first living and working in L.A. for his London paper. He said he purposely sold furniture on Craigslist because he knew a lot of the hot aspiring actresses in L.A. shopped for furniture that way. Sure enough, he ended up marrying one of them. Much later, long after they'd gotten married, he told her this story. She didn't talk to him for days.
What makes him really funny is that he's the first-ever reporter who deserted the unit with which he was embedded in Iraq. The Times sent him to Iraq, and he was there for all of nine days before he was like, "Fuck this. I'm outa here!" At that point he was already the Hollywood correspondent for The Times so I'm not sure why they'd tap him to cover a freakin' war. And he still covers the Hollywood beat. I suppose it's appropriate that he'd write a memoir about being a war reporting coward and then sell the movie rights. God damn if that isn't perfect.
Erika talked about how the research for You're Not the Boss of Me required her to go to strip clubs. The first couple times she went with girlfriends, and then she kept going back on her own for so-called research. Tough research. I hope I don't have to write a book someday that requires me to frequent strip clubs. Heaven forfend.
Marion's been living in Glen Rock most of her life. She talked about doing all the research for her Glen Rock Book of the Dead. By research, I mean researching all the dead people from her hometown, including those who died before their time. We're including young kids who died of an illness or something. It was pretty depressing stuff, and she confessed it's one of the toughest books she's ever had to write. If I were the moderator, I might've asked her why she would want to take on such a grotesque assignment if she didn't have to, but that's just me. Not to sound cynical, but maybe Marion was out of ideas. It does sound like a beautiful book, though, don't get me wrong. An original idea, if emotionally taxing.
And now let's get back to Rachel, shall we? She seemed like a pretty cool chick, if a pretty scarred chick. When her father read her new memoir, Love Junkie, he told her he wouldn't be able to talk to her for two years. Ugh. Naturally there were many an audible gasp from the audience when she said that, including from me. She also talked about attending a ton of Book Fests over the years since publishing Go West Young F*cked-Up Chick. It was during these years that she was living through the experiences that ultimately became the fodder for Love Junkie. She talked about having this one relationship where she and the guy e-mailed each other something like sixty times in the first day or two after they started dating. She had no problem confessing to being a love addict. Well, the first step to recovery is to say aloud what it is you want to recover from, right? She's got that down. Rachel referenced her love addiction several times.
She also said she had a hard time figuring out what the "twist" was in the panel's title. She may have been facetious, I'm not sure. Of course the twist is that most of the authors on this panel have written memoirs that aren't exactly your traditional chronicle type of memoir. Take Marion's book about dead people in her home town. That's not a memoir about her per se so much as a memoir about her town. And a collective memoir about a bunch of people who've lived there over the years. Perhaps the twist, Rachel said, was her, in that she's the only one on this panel whose memoirs are of the simple straight-ahead classic type. Then she said that's the only way she knows how to be. No bullshit with Rachel, which is why she's a cool chick.
As with all the panels, when it's done, the authors go out to tents on the festival grounds. The program lets you know where they'll be. Well, I went straight out there and was first in Rachel's line. She and I had a great chat. No copies of F*cked-Up Chick were on sale, but I scooped up a copy of Love Junkie and had her sign it for me. And get this, she actually invited me to sign up for her writing workshop. She lives in L.A., which I didn't know. And she had this yellow legal pad where I put down my name and contact info. She had this other sheet with some info about her private workshops. It was the only copy so I couldn't take it home, but I did skim enough of it to see that it costs about a thousand dollars or something. I dunno. I can tell she's awesome and that we'd get along famously. We hit it off and could've talked much longer if her adoring fans hadn't lined up behind me. If I ever do have that much disposable income, I may just take her class.
Clive Barker in Conversation with Gina McIntyre
Broad 2160 - 2:00 p.m.
Clive Barker - Barker began his creative career writing in Liverpool, directing and acting for the stage. Since then, he has gone on to pen such bestsellers as The Books of Blood, The Great and Secret Show, and the acclaimed fantasy series Abarat. As a screenwriter, director and film producer, Barker has worked on the Hellraiser and Candyman films.
Interviewer: Gina McIntyre - McIntyre worked at the Hollywood Reporter for seven years before joining the Los Angeles Times. She has an extensive background in film and TV journalism. McIntyre currently works as an entertainment editor of the Calendar section.
Notes
Broad Hall is another new venue for the Book Fest. Perhaps they figured they needed both this and Franz Hall to make up for the humongous Royce Hall being unavailable. Broad is also the most remote venue for the Book Fest. To get there, you have to huff it all the way to pretty much the northern end of campus, well removed from the rest of the festival.
I wouldn't be a writer if it weren't for Clive Barker. Seeing as how a devotion to writing can be both a blessing and a curse, part of me should be really mad at him. Nah, seriously. Even without that, his books also got me into reading as a hobby. Before I picked up The Books of Blood volume II in the summer of 1989, I avoided reading the way little fishies avoid sharks. I hated it. Nothing could seem more boring. But then, browsing the bookstore at the local mall with Mom one day, I saw these horrible monster faces on the covers of these paperbacks. They were part of a display of paperbacks near the cashier, promoting the first three volumes of The Books of Blood by some guy named Clive Barker. I didn't have a clue who he was, but as a huge horror movie buff, I really dug those gruesome covers. I determined that the second volume had the best (i.e. grossest) face, and made Mom buy it for me. I didn't read it right away, but eventually I did. First I read The Three Musketeers, which my grandparents got me for my thirteenth birthday in August of '89. I enjoyed it, and I found reading wasn't so bad, so I picked up The Books of Blood volume II, which by that point had been sitting in my bedroom untouched for a few months. I read that, loved it, and made Mom take me back to the bookstore to buy the other two volumes.
So I suppose I should also thank my grandparents for getting me to read. And Alexandre Dumas. Shit, you know what? Maybe I should write out an acknowledgement page. Whatever. At any rate, fast forward to the following summer. By that point I'd devoured Clive Barker's entire oeuvre and had also decided what I wanted to do with the rest of my life.
I don't read him so much anymore. My tastes have changed and expanded somewhat over the past twenty years. Unavoidable really. But I do read him now and again. The last book of his I read was Coldheart Canyon back in the fall of '03. I have his first two books of Abarat, but I haven't gotten to them just yet. Don't worry, I will.
Not that Clive needs me, though. There was a long line of ticketholders outside Broad when I arrived a good half-hour early. It started at the entrance and sort of snaked and wound around to keep people from spilling south onto the rest of campus. I was thrilled to see the guy's fan base is still rock solid.
As for the man himself, he looked awful. I'm sorry, but I can't sugarcoat it. He was a good ten minutes late, which is one thing. I didn't think anything of that at first. A lot of these authors are very busy, in-demand people. But now that I think about it, maybe the poor man was late because, well, his health is for shit. First off, you've got his buzz cut. His hair was cropped to the scalp like a new army recruit. That has nothing to do with his health, of course, but it wasn't flattering either. Then you've got his face. It was very drawn and worn out, as if all his facial muscles had just stopped working. One of his eyelids drooped. Most startling of all, and most noticeable at an event where authors are called upon to talk about their work, was his voice. That is to say, he almost didn't have one. Now I'm not sure if he's suffering from something like laryngitis or a bad cold or something. He did have to take a timeout now and again to wipe his nose. That's one thing. But something told me his dreadful and exhausted appearance was symptomatic of something more ominous. I sure hope not. Gina didn't ask him about it so I'm left to speculate.
Gina, by the way, is an editor for the Times' Calendar section. That's awesome because Calendar has been my favorite section by far ever since I subscribed to the paper upon moving out here eleven years ago. She was a great interviewer, but she apparently had to abide by some rules I'm guessing Clive's handlers set up. For starters, I can't imagine how she wouldn't ask about his health unless she was specifically told not to. Also, she didn't ask him about his movies. Not that his movie oeuvre is that big, but when she opened the floor to questions toward the end, she told the audience to ask only about his books. Weird.
Despite his raspy voice, Clive still gave great, elaborate answers. He still keeps his same ambitious schedule that he's had for as long as I can remember. He writes longhand from eight in the morning to six at night, and then he paints until eleven. As far as Abarat, it's longer than he anticipated. When he published the first book back in 2002, it was supposed to be the first of four, what was to be called the Abarat Quartet. That was still the plan when the second book came out in 2004. Now, apparently, while working on the third book over the past five years, he's decided it needs to be a quintet. Speaking of the third book, he said it's one of the most difficult books he's ever had to write. He didn't really elaborate on that only than to say that perhaps it's because it's the middle book. It's the hump. The good news is that he's just ten or so pages from wrapping up the final draft.
Disney is no longer pursuing the idea of a theme park based on the Abarat books. Again, this was the plan when the first book was published. Clive had apparently struck some monster-sized deal with Disney to do a whole park inspired by the archipelago where these books are set. I thought it sounded rather ambitious at the time and so can't be too surprised it didn't pan out. The official story as to why it fell through is that the Disney executive who championed Abarat is no longer with the studio.
This led Clive to bitch, albeit with his usual trademark eloquence, about the Hollywood corporate culture. As a fan of The Lord of the Rings movies, he says Peter Jackson was able to get away with so much control because he produced it in New Zealand, far away from Tinseltown. It's funny that he'd like those films because later on, in response to an audience question about the cinematography in his films, Clive said he loathes CGI.
Of all the things he talked about, what struck me the most is when he said that the more he writes, the less he knows about where it all comes from. The reason he writes fantasy is because, to him, fantasy is a good way to get into people's heads and explore very real issues. One timely issue he mentioned is corporate greed, represented in Abarat by the father of the main character, Candy Quackenbush. Candy's dad makes a killing (pardon the pun) at slaughtering chickens. I can't tell you more than that because, like I said above, I haven't read these books yet. Besides Tolkien, he also talked about his admiration for Philip Pullman, author of the His Dark Materials trilogy. He doesn't agree with Pullman's anti-Christian message, but he loves the stories. Speaking of his distaste for CGI, he talked about disliking the film adaptation of the first His Dark Materials book, The Golden Compass. Clive was amazed at how badly they screwed it up. I have neither read that trilogy nor seen the film, so I can't comment on that.
Besides the Abarat books, he's also got a book coming out called Journeyman, which is a collection of various things, including poems. He read us this one poem from it about angels. And yes, he does still intend to do a Third Book of the Art, but it's at least four years away or so. For you non-Clive fans, he wrote a novel back in 1990 called The Great and Secret Show: The First Book of the Art. As far as I can remember (it's been a while), the Art refers to a kind of magic. Then in 1994 he published the sequel, Everville: The Second Book of the Art. And that was that. It still had a lot of unresolved stuff at the end, and he's said at other signings that there will be a third one. Obviously it's proven quite elusive.
Someone in the audience asked about his painting and how long it takes him to finish one. He said it depends on how big the painting is. Some of them can be quite massive. His favorite-sized canvas to work with is five by four. For a painting that big, it usually takes him a solid week. He admitted to wasting a lot of paint and canvas with rough drafts.
I hope the guy feels better.
History: Unknown Los Angeles
Haines 39 - 3:30 p.m.
Frances Dinkelspiel - Award-winning journalist who spent more than twenty years in the newspaper business. Her first title, Towers of Gold: How One Jewish Immigrant Named Isaias Hellman Created California, captures the life of her great-great grandfather Isaias Hellman.
Chip Jacobs - Jacobs has written for the Los Angeles Times, The Daily News and LA Weekly. His book Smogtown: The Lung-Burning History of Pollution in Los Angeles, written with William J. Kelly, was published this year. Jacobs lives in Pasadena.
D.J. Waldie - Received the California Book Award for nonfiction for his book Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir. His latest work, California Romantica, was a Los Angeles Times bestseller in 2007.
Moderator: William Deverell - Director of the Huntington-USC Institute on California and the West. He is the author of numerous studies on the history of California and the American West.
Notes
William Deverell was an excellent speaker, the best I heard all day. When he mentioned in his intro that his duties as director of the Huntington-USC Institute included teaching classes at USC, it made perfect sense. Dude's either a natural born lecturer or he's just gotten good at it over the years. He had dark hair, balding on top, and looked to be in his forties or early fifties.
D.J. "Don" Waldie is an author I've seen a few times over the years, going back to when I first started attending the Book Fest ten years ago and he'd recently published Holy Land: A Suburban Memoir, about his growing up in Lakewood. Don's a bespectacled guy who still has a boyish voice despite his being in his fifties or so. While his forte as a writer has always been Southern California suburbia, his new book is about Spanish colonial architecture in Southern California from the 1910s and '20s. If that sounds a wee bit specialized, well, that's what agents and publishers want if you're going to write a nonfiction book. Don't try to teach people stuff that's already been written about. Find a topic no one's thought of. I'd say it's a safe bet no one's written about Spanish colonial houses from the '10s and '20s. He talked about the white Protestant majority of that era, the primary demographic that was interested in this kind of architecture.
But then Frances, whose book covers a time period that overlaps with Don's, said wait a second. L.A. wasn't just Protestant, it was actually quite heterogeneous. Then as now, L.A. was a hotbed of immigrants and minorities. We're talking blacks, Asians, Native Americans, European Jews, you name it. She said the European Jews were able to settle all right, but the blacks, Asians, and Native Americans had a tough time. I sort of already knew about the Europeans. What a lot of people don't know is that the Hollywood studio system was mainly founded by Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe. And they weren't coming over here expressly to create movie studios. They were fleeing persecution. Interesting, huh? Whites were still the majority, though, unlike today. I'm pretty sure Latin Americans are the majority in L.A. these days. As for the white Protestants, Don said that one of the primary motivations for the architects to use so much Spanish colonialism was specifically to counter the majority white Protestantism.
Like the other two guys, Chip Jacobs looked to be in his fifties or so. He had a full head of gray hair. While a book about smog might sound like a cure for insomnia, I have to say I was fascinated when he spoke about it. At one point in the 1950s, the smog had gotten so God-awful that the authorities considered evacuating entire sections of the city. It got so thick sometimes that people would get lost while walking around their neighborhoods. Can you imagine? Many people got fed up and moved to Denver. It's not that they didn't know their cars weren't at fault, but their cars were the only way to get around. Today L.A.'s got a somewhat decent transportation system. They've got a vast bus network as well as a rail system that's slowly but surely expanding. Back then, though, none of that existed, and L.A. was just as spread out as it is today. As a youngster growing up in the San Gabriel Valley, he remembers going outside during summer and being confused as to why it became so difficult to see the San Gabriel Mountains, which really weren't that far away. If you live in Pasadena, for instance, they're practically right in front of you. Chip said that one of the points he's trying to make with this book is that it doesn't matter how clean and efficient automotive technology gets. In the end it's the people who have to be the primary catalysts for change. Technology is a supplement, not a panacea. It's a good point that I think gets lost sometimes amid human complacency.
I saved the most fascinating topic for last. Frances Dinkelspiel is the great-great-granddaughter of Isaias Hellman, the Jewish Bavarian who's the subject of her new book. He's the guy who co-founded Wells Fargo and, according to Frances, has his fingerprint in so much of L.A.'s history. Other titans of local lore, such as Edward Doheny and William Mulholland, couldn't have done what they did without support from this guy Isaias. That's kind of amazing really. Wow. And that's just the tip of it. She rattled off a bunch of stats, most of which I can't remember. Suffice it to say that the course of history L.A. took in the nineteenth century was largely determined by this guy. And no one really knows that. His life story is one of those amazing true stories that make you wonder what took so long for someone to tell it. Leave it to one of his descendants to shed the light.
Frances also mentioned some other interesting things about L.A. For starters, did you know L.A. supported the South during the Civil War? That's amazing! I had no idea. California didn't support the South so it never occurred to me that this city would. Sure enough, it sparked riots, and Governor Jim Downey had to come down from Sacramento to quell the unrest. Simply amazing if you ask me.
I was so taken with Frances and her story (and she's a terrific speaker) that I immediately went out to the tent after the panel, bought her book, and had her sign it. I tried talking to her but didn't get to say much before the woman behind me took her turn. Frances did tell me about her blog. Anyway, smart gal. I look forward to reading this.
