If you look real close, you might be able to see Manny Ramirez at bat.
It was the last Dodger game of the season! Of the post-season, even! And what great seats! And I got to see Manny hit a home run!
But of course the Phillies won. Savor it while you can, gentlemen.
My review of “Abortion & Life” by Jennifer Baumgardner, out on Akashic Books, is in today’s LA Times. It opens:
THE COVER is striking: a very pregnant blond with her arm around a dark-haired woman whose T-shirt reads “I had an abortion.” The dark-haired woman’s hand is on the other’s belly; the women look at each other, smiling. With the acrimonious arguments over choice, this photograph, this moment, seems almost impossible. Can two women who’ve made opposite choices about pregnancy really talk to each other?
It is a foggy morning here in LA, but I’m sure the sky will clear by the time the West Hollywood Book Fair gets underway. Mark Sarvas’ panel is at 10:30am; I’m on one at 3pm. And there are many, many in between.
Yesterday I went to the LA Observed party at the Formosa, with the help of Veronique, of LA Now/Here in Malibu blogging fame. There were some bloggers there I recognized — host Kevin Roderick and Michael Schneider from Franklin Avenue, for instance. Just like the old days! Except there were lots and lots and lots and lots and lots of other people there, too. Lots more than back in 2006.
I had just introduced Laurie Pike (LA Magazine) to Denise Hamilton (LA Noir) when a woman pulled me aside. She’d been staring at me. “Are you,” she asked, “Are you that comedienne? With the TV show?”
“No,” I said, “thanks, but no, I don’t have a TV show.”
“Oh.” She looked skeptical. “You have very good posture. Like her.”
For a moment, I was flattered. Imagine, me, with a TV show! But — which comedienne did she mean? Not Mary Tyler Moore — too tall. Not Lucille Ball — too dead. Oh… wait.
Let me just say that I am not now, nor have I ever been, Kathy Griffin.
It hit while I was working away at my kitchen table. My building, which dates back to the 1920s, is 14 stories tall, with a brick exterior and 18-inch concrete floors. Yes, it shook. It kept shaking. I stood in the doorway between kitchen and living room and thought, geez, these concrete floors mean I never hear my neighbors, but there are 11 stories of them above me. I hope they stay there.
Everything held, except for one overloaded shelf which shook itself loose and dropped onto the stuff below.
I’d had this semi-paranoid fear that LA was due for an earthquake and figured that a major one would hit while I was away at grad school in Pittsburgh. If only I’d stayed for the full 3 years, instead of finishing in 2, I would have been right.
I was going to upload my pics from the Northridge quake but I need a scanner to do it. Got any economical scanner recommendations? Got a mac-compatible one you’re not using and feel like offloading? All scanner contributions accepted.
I will not store my scanner below overloaded shelves.
At Jacket Copy, we’re talking about Denis Johnson’s serial Nobody Move again; the second installment appears in the new Playboy.
And Sunday I went to see Mark read (wonderfully, BTW) at Tongue & Groove and shot this video there, asking attendees what books they’re reading.
Vermin on the Mount will be at the Mountain Bar in Chinatown this Sunday in LA at 8pm. Featuring work from four independent presses, celebrating its fourth birthday and magnificent host Jim’s 40th, with cake.
Jim provides these details about the literary festivities:
JIM KRUSOE: His fiction workshops at Santa Monica College are legendary. Here’s your chance to listen to him read from his weird and wonderful new novel Girl Factory (reviewed for the LA Times by me) from Tin House Books.
SEAN CARSWELL: Novelist, short story writer, and publisher extraordinaire reads from his latest, Train Wreck Girl from Manic D. Sean always puts on a good show — don’t miss it!
TOSH BERMAN: The publisher of Tam Tam books will regale us with the demented genius of Boris Vian whose “masterpiece of noir-gone berserk” The Dead All Have the Same Skin was recently reprinted by Tam Tam.
DICKY MURPHY: Writes for television and will read from his hilarious collection World Cup Eagle. Dickie is hard at work on his next collection, The Civil War is Funny, based on his experiences in the Civil War.
See you there. Unless current deadline circumstances prevent my appearance.
One of the things I love about Los Angeles is the way we get all the good book stuff. Take Sunday: Nam Le read at Skylight Books in Los Feliz from his debut collection, The Boat. He read part of the first story, which has a character that appears to be himself; this has confused some people, who think this makes the story nonfiction. They should pay attention to the way Le is deliberately playing with literary conventions and expectations. At one point in the story, he introduces a gun, which, shortly later, is fired; if this isn’t a literalization of Chekhov’s dramatic principle (“If in the first act you have hung a pistol on the wall, then in the following one it should be fired. Otherwise don’t put it there”), I’ll eat the ARC of your choice. All I know of The Boat is what I heard in that story, and I can tell that Le is a writer who is aware of expectations and works to disrupt them — or at least to churn them up a little.
Le went to the Iowa Writers Workshop and a huge posse of his classmates and friends showed up at the reading. I had no idea so many Iowa MFAs had come to Los Angeles. There are great writers everywhere here, camouflaged as all sorts of normal people.
Not that going to Iowa makes one necessarily a great writer. But it is a motherfucker of a program.
That there is Salman Rushdie on the right and Carrie Fisher on the left. I had a question about something she said in during the interview, so afterward I talked briefly to Ms. Fisher. She was surrounded by Sharpie-carrying, memorabilia-wielding StarWarsGeeks, and she nicely signed a bunch of stuff, but still they kept shuffling slowly along behind us as we walked and talked, like so many partially-sated zombies.
Rushdie had a long line of people waiting for him, too.
They also clutched memorabilia — copies of The Enchantress of Florence — and, come to think of it, they were also hoping for signatures. But somehow it wasn’t quite as creepy.
Sunset Magazine has published a series of do-it-yourself books. I had (and de-acquisitioned) vintage books on making mosaics and building outdoor furniture. The one book I kept was the one above on building bookshelves; its contents are useful, but mostly unstylish, even for 1974, when it was published.
So when I found the Sunset booth at BEA, I was excited. They’ve updated many of the DIY books, and Book Expo would be a great place to promote one on building bookshelves. The place was filled with book lovers, many of whom were lugging around bags stuffed with dozens of advance copies of books — copies that have to go somewhere when they get home.
The booth’s staff was puzzled. What book was I asking about? No, they weren’t familiar with a bookshelf book. Would I like to see a bathroom book? It’s a brand new, very beautiful bathroom book, they told me. No, I replied, bathrooms are not great places to store books.
(That’s why we call them bathrooms. Not libraries).
Finally they came up with an upcoming book about built-ins. They showed me a one-inch high picture of its cover; it seemed to be geared for built-ins to hold TVs and media (but books could go on those shelves, too, they shrugged).
How sad that nobody at Sunset — a publishing company whose products are books — has thought to create a lovely new bookshelf book. I’d buy it.
I can’t keep up with book expo! Please stay tuned. And enjoy this photo of the very nice Michael Silverblatt at BEA.
Pretending to pose unnaturally.
