Pocket Symphony

With many of my friends out at the Coachella concert in Indio this weekend, I decided to brave the heat for at least a couple of hours and go to the Los Angeles 2008 Festival of Books at UCLA. While it was cool to see some great authors and some neat independent publishers, the one thing that struck me most was how the celebrity of a writer is nothing compared to the celebrity of a television personality, even in a forum that’s theoretically devoted to literature.

I arrived there in the early afternoon, and I decided that the first thing I’d do was go over to the table where Ray Bradbury was signing books. Ray’s a living legend, and at 87 years old, he’s been a hero to several generations of science fiction fans (including me). So when I got to the general area where Bradbury was supposed to be, I made a beeline for the longest line… only to discover that the long wait wasn’t for Bradbury, but for… Valerie Bertinelli! I quickly whipped out my camera for a quick picture (hey, even I enjoyed One Day At A Time) and then found the Bradbury line, which was about a third as long. While standing in line for my signed copy of Something Wicked This Way Comes, I started thinking about the fact that Bertinelli, who has written a sum total of one book (which is a memoir and almost certainly ghost-written) is given the title of “author” just as much as Bradbury. I thought about the kind of things I might say to Bradbury (”You were an incredible influence on my life,” “Your ability to create an utterly believable fantasy world from whole cloth is a constant marvel to me,” “I credit you and a very small circle of your peers with rescuing a literary genre from the trash and raising it up to a new level of critical appreciation as an art form.,”…) and imagined myself saying those things to Valerie Bertinelli. Frightening.

I did finally get up to the front of the line, where I bought my book, said a quick “thank you” - no time for fawning fanboy stuff today - snapped a picture and left to explore the rest of the Festival.

The only other thing I wanted to do that day was to hear Richard Price speak and have him sign a copy of his latest book, but that was over an hour away, so I figured I would just explore for a bit. There was a lot of excitement around the children’s section - lots of publishers and toy companies displaying their wares, in tents which radiated out from a central stage, where kid’s favorites were performing. As I wandered through, I noticed a line that made even Bertinelli’s crowd seem paltry. I walked up to the signing tent and saw that it was for Disney Channel favorites Aly & AJ. The genuine excitement that their young fans seemed to be displaying as they signed their books made a little dent in my cynical heart. I guess if even one of a kid’s treasures is a book, the U.S. literacy rate will continue to stay at a reasonably high level.

Before Richard Price spoke, I went over to the huge Borders tent to pick up a copy of his newest novel “Lush Life”. I’ve been a fan of Price’s work since I was a teenager, and I’ve been excited to read his latest, particularly after the great New York Times review by Michiko Kakutani (which begins: “No one writes better dialogue than Richard Price — not Elmore Leonard, not David Mamet, not even David Chase. Not only does Mr. Price have perfect pitch for the lingo, the rhythms and the inflections of how people talk, but he also knows how to use a line or two or even a single phrase to conjure a character’s history and emotional vibe. He’s as adept as Tom Wolfe at using his journalistic eye for social detail — for how people juggle work and love and money, and navigate the confounding maze of class and social status in big cities today — but he does so without turning his characters, as Mr. Wolfe so often does, into caricatures or cartoons.”). They had plenty of copies of his book there, all for sale at the cover price. Even though I had a “25% off” Borders coupon with me, they wouldn’t honor it, because “We’re not hooked up with the main store.” Their credit card machine seemed to be hooked up just fine, though. I coughed up the full $26 + tax and went over to the tent where Price was going to read. His reading went well, his Q&A was informative and funny, and I was able to get the book signed and even share a brief anecdote with him (almost 20 years ago, when I was working as a clerk in Tower Records in NYC, I recognized him. He had just come back from Hollywood after writing the Al Pacino movie “Sea Of Love”, and he told me about his experience as a novelist trying to break into the movie business. It was a memorable and instructive conversation).

With dinner plans an hour away, and with two signed treasures in my plastic bag, I jumped in my car and headed home.

On the way home, while stopped at a traffic light at Hollywood & Highland, I saw (fake) Snoopy and (fake) Barney having a conversation. Without the bathroom breaks and handlers that costumed folks have in theme parks, I could only imagine how horrible it must have been for them among the tourists in the sweltering heat.