carolyn kellogg

So I made it there at 1pm, late, amazed that they let book fair attendees park right across the street at the Pacific Design Center for free. This is West Hollywood, people, and there was free parking. That’s a goddamn miracle. Reason enough to go.

And if you didn’t go, well, you weren’t alone. This is no LA Times Book Bonanza, with so many authors on so many topics that anyone within 50 miles who reads seems irresistably drawn to Westwood. This one is, well, cozy, with stages bucking up against each other, delicious barbecue smoke blowing across the entrance, and small-to-moderate-sized audiences. But the attendees were phenomenally diverse, a reminder that this is not your average small-town book fair. The details after the jump.

I caught a few minutes of Neil Gaiman‘s
interview. He is charming, funny and even handsome, no small feat for a
science fiction writer. No wonder he was the megawattage of the day.

Standing-room-only around the Neil Gaiman tent.

I opted for the Free Speech Post-9-11 panel instead. The LA Weekly’s Erin Aubry Kaplan moderated, although between lawyer Stephen Rhode’s spirited cries for 1st Amendment defense and Robbie Conal‘s nervous energy, handling the panelists was a little like herding cats. Rhode, also an author
and activist, was there for the legal perspective; Conal, who’s come
under fire for his midnight postering, repped for the visual arts; and
David Ulin, who starts a new job
tomorrow, spoke for the written word. Rhode was all about "the
book burning is now! stand up!" which is admittedly too true, but Ulin’s
giving voice to the idea that there is a kind of economic censorship in the
consolidation of publishers, distributors and booksellers was far more
interesting. If only the drunk guy hadn’t started asking me about where
Bill Maher was going to sign books, I might have caught more of it.

The Free Speech panel, from L: Stephen Rohde, Robbie Conal, David Ulin, Erin Aubry Kaplan

Then it was a mad dash between the literary and the pulp: a panel of writers in the new short story collection  Women on the Edge
and writers of chick lit. Now chick lit doesn’t typically make me sit
up and take notice — in fact, I can barely make it through Jane Austen
without throwing the book at a wall — but writer Liza Palmer, who will soon be a guest here, was a whiplash-fast moderator who kept the discussion lively. Panelists Mary Castillo, Jennifer Coburn and Tamara Gregory
spent some time on the bad blood between chick lit and literary lit,
and decided that the angst is on the lit lit side. All the chicks kind
of agreed that as long as they’re selling books, they don’t care what
genre their writing is called, or who finds them respectable.

The literary ladies included editors Samantha Dunn and Julianne
Ortel and contributors Lisa Glatt, Rachel Resnick, Lisa Teasley, Mary
Rakow, Aimee Bender, and someone wearing a great skirt from Irvine who
I think was Michelle Latiolais. I suppose the
fashion commentary might be more appropriate for the chick lit panel, but it was an exceptionally pretty
skirt. Anyway, a conversation ensued with the literary ladies about the
difference between LA and NY. Lisa Glatt talked about going to NY for
grad school and being surprised to run into East Coast supremicism: "Nothing good ever comes out of Los Angeles," she was told.
Today, at the panel, she shrugs about NY. "We just don’t think about you that
much," she tells us, and we agree. We agree that LA has no rivalry with
NY, but NY has some kind of attitude, about LA writers in particular.

I think this is not much different than how the chicklitters feel about the literary writers.

One last thing: OK, so you founded Television and The Voidoids. So Malcolm McLaren copped your look and gave it to the Sex Pistols. So uber-bassist Mike Watt is smiling at you from the audience. If it’s 30 minutes past the time your panel is supposed to end, stop reading. Really.