The Elegant Variation: ARC REPORT - THE LOS ANGELES TIMES FESTIVAL OF BOOKS

TEV DEFINED

The Elegant Variation is "Fowler’s (1926, 1965) term for the inept writer’s overstrained efforts at freshness or vividness of expression. Prose guilty of elegant variation calls attention to itself and doesn’t permit its ideas to seem naturally clear. It typically seeks fancy new words for familiar things, and it scrambles for synonyms in order to avoid at all costs repeating a word, even though repetition might be the natural, normal thing to do: The audience had a certain bovine placidity, instead of The audience was as placid as cows. Elegant variation is often the rock, and a stereotype, a cliché, or a tired metaphor the hard place between which inexperienced or foolish writers come to grief. The familiar middle ground in treating these homely topics is almost always the safest. In untrained or unrestrained hands, a thesaurus can be dangerous."

April 27, 2004

ARC REPORT - THE LOS ANGELES TIMES FESTIVAL OF BOOKS

Well, Maud may have CAAF but we have our Literary Man of Mystery, ARC (Anonymous Roving Correspondent), and we thank our lucky stars for having stumbled over his barely breathing drunken sprawl in that Chinatown alley all those years ago ... because he has once again fulfilled his brief with distinction and offers his front line report of the weekend's book festivities at UCLA.

For two days each spring, the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books takes over the UCLA campus. It’s a massive event. About a dozen buildings are enlisted for the panel discussions, which take place in the largest auditorium. Authors read at the half-dozen stages spread across campus, and hundreds of venders set up shop in tents thrown up in orderly rows. There’s even a cooking stage, a quad for kids, the world’s largest crossword puzzle, and porcelain toilets that actually flush.
It’s a democratic affair to be sure. For example, early Sunday afternoon one could choose between a panel discussion with William Gibson and Bruce Wagner on 21st Century Hollywood, a conversation between LA Times journalist Barry Siegel and Elmore Leonard, a panel of women writers from Afghanistan, Israel and Iran, a reading by Neal Stephenson and a sing-a-long by Barney the purple dinosaur that resembles a smiling piece of dung. And that’s only about half of what was available at that particular hour. Demand is huge and there is rarely an empty seat to be found. The LA Times estimates 130,000 people attended, which is really quite remarkable when you consider the beautiful weather, the NBA playoffs, the Dodgers home stand against the hated Giants, the Fiesta Broadway downtown and the million and one other distractions in this fair and fucked-up city of ours.

I attended both days: panels on Saturday and readings on Sunday. Here’s the lowdown. The conversation between Lawrence Weschler and Ricky Jay was the most enjoyable hour of the day. Jay, who plays a casino owner on the HBO series Deadwood, compared writing to sleight of hand because a con is only as good as

its patter, which practitioners think of as a piece with a beginning, middle and end, so that the rube believes what the con artist wants them to believe. In other words, the ear participates in what the eye sees and vice versa. (Question for Mr. Jay: Is this what Joyce was getting at with the modalities of the audible and visible being ineluctable?)
Next I attended a panel called California’s Invisible History, which was mostly about the Big Middle—the part of the state between San Francisco and Los Angeles, that is Central California, which I think I’ve heard of but, I’m not sure. (Isn’t that where all grapes, cheese and Dodger Dogs come from?) The conversation was about a pair of books but I kept getting distracted by the weirdo behind me who blew his nose. In fact, there was an inordinate about of phlegm processing going on in the audience, which was decidedly older. Is this what I have to look forward to in my old age? Reading books about migrant workers and evacuating chest oysters? If so, sign me up for the complete works of Samuel Beckett and a loaded revolver, please.

I moved on to more pleasing pastures, if you will, and sat among the young bodies who congregated at the panel about independent magazines, which was presided over by Dave Eggers (McSweeney’s), Tamara Straus (Zoetrope All-Story), Edwin Frank (New York Review of Books Classics) (Hunh?) and Lawrence Weschler (Omnivore). The topic was “Can Independent Magazines Survive” which amused Eggers and perplexed Weschler, who stole the show with his inspired rant against “the reign of the Pavlovian address” that dominates media today with its mission to “jolt, salivate, spend.” Eggers used cheap laughs and easy applause whenever he didn’t feel like giving a straight answer, which was always, and I can’t say I blame him. An independent magazine’s ability to “survive” is a weird question since the last time I looked into the matter, no one trying to kill them off. (A prey without a predator isn’t really at risk, is it?) Whether an independent magazine “survives” is largely a fiscal question (the psychiatric state of those who undertake such ventures notwithstanding). Still, young people laughing is better than old people hacking and we’ll volunteer to sit quietly and gaze at Zoetrope’s blue-eyed editrix any day of the week. That was enough panels for me, and I left UCLA in search of a burrito and a baseball game, and ended up at the public library, which is a little like leaving a demolition derby and rear-ending an uninsured motorist on the way home.

Sunday morning found me sitting in the shade listening to Dana Gioia reading poetry. He won me over right away by reciting a sonnet by Shakespeare from memory and pointing out that poets don’t read enough of other poets’ work at their readings. Gioia has a poet’s voice: rich, rumbling and pleasing to the ear, but he doesn’t look like one. That’s because he happens to be chairman of the NEA. Go figure.

Everyone has been talking about Chang-rae Lee’s new book Aloft, so I went to the Barnes and Noble stage to hear him, and even though he read a bit too quickly and needs to do something about his Rick Springfield hair, it was instantly apparent why Aloft has generated breakout book buzz, and I can’t wait to read it. I wandered around for an hour and made the mistake of cutting through the kiddie quad, aka Strollerville. The people here were nice, but slow, and you have to watch out for those WASPs with the drag racing stroller with the single wheel in front: these women are made of the skim milk of human bitchiness and will cut you off at the knees.

I came back to the B&N stage to see Neal Stephenson, whose Cryptonomicon I go ga-ga over. No one has more fun with a sentence than Stephenson, who looks like a 19th century anarchist but burst onto the scene with a couple of sci-fi novels. Even though his work now seems more concerned with the past then the future, the geeks showed up en masse to make sure he knew they hadn’t forgotten. Pity the man.

While I was taking notes during the Q&A the woman behind me zipped and unzipped every compartment in her backpack as she removed and then put away the program to see where she should go next. The man next to me kept looking down at my notebook to see what was writing, a kid a few rows in front of me draped his jacket over his head and went to sleep. Weschler was right. Without the Pavlovian jolt hardwired to their genitals and/or wallets, the crinklers, expectorators and nosey assholes didn’t quite know how to deal with the information coming in. Where was their sense of wonder? Where was the passion? Maybe the LATFOB is too democratic for its own good.

Posted by TEV at 12:30 AM | Permalink

TrackBack

TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.typepad.com/services/trackback/6a00d834515c2769e200d834567e5e69e2

Listed below are links to weblogs that reference ARC REPORT - THE LOS ANGELES TIMES FESTIVAL OF BOOKS:

» 'Spoken Interludes' gone too from L.A. Observed
Bad day in literary L.A. In addition to Paul Holdengräber's exit (see previous post, below), Mark Sarvas reports at The Elegant Variation that the reading series Spoken Interludes is leaving Los Angeles. The final events will be May 10 and... [Read More]

» Ditch of Iniquity and Tears from Syntax of Things
Los Angeles is a long 100 miles from my point on the map, 100 miles that might as well be 1000 on most days. On more than one occasion I've planned three hours to make the trip to Dodger Stadium [Read More]

» Festival of Books from L.A. Brain Terrain
When the inevitable topic of Hollywood came up, Al [Martinez] got another big laugh by defining scriptwriting as the same as fiction writing only it involves "changing the margins." [Read More]

Comments

Verify your Comment

Previewing your Comment

Posted by: |

This is only a preview. Your comment has not yet been posted.

Your comment could not be posted. Error type:

Your comment has been posted. Post another comment

The letters and numbers you entered did not match the image. Please try again.

As a final step before posting your comment, enter the letters and numbers you see in the image below. This prevents automated programs from posting comments.

Having trouble reading this image? View an alternate.

Post a comment

RECOMMENDED

Nobility of Spirit: A Forgotten Ideal by Rob Riemen

This slim volume by the president and founder of the Nexus Institute, a European-based humanist think-tank, stands as the most stirring redoubt against the ascendant forces of know-nothingness that we've come across in a long time. A full-throated, unapologetic defense of the virtues of Western Civ – in which "elite" is not and never should be a dirty word – this inspiring exploration of high art and high ideals is divided into three sections: The first looks at the life of Riemen's great hero Thomas Mann as a model for the examined life. The second imagines a series of conversations from turning points in European intellectual history, populated with the likes of Socrates, Nietzsche and others. The final section, "Be Brave," is nothing less than an exhortation to dig deep, especially in times of risk. The notion of nobility of the spirit might strike some modern ears as quaint but it seems more desperately necessary than ever before, and there are worse ways to read the accessible Nobility of Spirit than as a crash refresher in the Great Thinkers, free of academic jargon and cant. As a meditation on what is at stake when the pursuit of high ideals is elbowed aside by the pursuit of fleeting material gain, however, Nobility of Spirit might well be the most prescient book we've yet read on what's at stake in the current election cycle and in the developing global situation. Agree or disagree with Riemen's profound, ambitious and high-minded plea, you will be thinking about his words for a long time. It's been ages since a work of non-fiction moved us this way. Read it. Discuss it. Argue about it.
Netherland by Joseph O'Neill

With rave reviews from James Wood, Michiko Kakutani and Dwight Garner, it might not seem like we need to tell you to drop everything and go read Netherland, but we are telling you, and here's why: The way book coverage works these days, everyone talks about the same book for about two or three weeks, and then they move on and the book is more or less forgotten. Whereas a berth here in the Recommended sidebar keeps noteworthy titles in view for a good, long time, which is the sort of sustained attention this marvelous novel deserves. A Gatsby-like meditation on exclusion and otherness, it's an unforgettable New York story in which the post 9/11 lives of Hans, a Dutch banker estranged from his English wife, and Chuck Ramkissoon, a mysterious cricket entrepreneur, intertwine. The New York City of the immigrant margins is unforgettably invoked in gorgeous, precise prose, and the novel's luminous conclusion is a radiant beacon illuminating one of our essential questions, the question of belonging. Our strongest possible recommendation.
Dictation: A Quartet by Cynthia Ozick

"History," wrote Henry James in a 1910 letter to his amanuensis Theodora Bosanquet, "is strangely written." This casual aside could easily serve as the epigraph of Cynthia Ozick's superb new collection Dictation, which concerns itself with lost worlds evoked by languages -- languages which separate and obscure as readily as they bind. It can be risky to look for connective tissue between stories written years apart and published in magazines ranging from The Conradian to The New Yorker. But themes of deception, posterity, and above all, the glory of language -- at once malleable and intractable -- knit together this quartet, recasting the whole as the harmonious product of Ozick's formidable talent. Read the entire review here
Diary of a Bad Year by J. M. Coetzee

Now, on the one hand, you scarcely need us to alert you to the existence of a new J.M. Coetzee novel, or even to have us tell you it's worth reading. But we can tell you - we insist on telling you that Diary of a Bad Year is a triumph, easily Coetzee's most affecting and fully wrought work since Disgrace. Formally inventive, the book intertwines two narratives with the author's own Strong Opinions, a series of seemingly discrete philosophical and political essays. The cumulative effect of this strange trio is deeply moving and thought provoking. It's increasingly rare in this thoroughly post-post-modern age to raise the kind of questions in fiction Coetzee handles so masterfully - right down to what is it, exactly, that we expect (or need) from our novels. It's telling that, for all of his serious pronouncements on subjects ranging from censorship to pedophilia to the use of torture, it's finally a few pages from The Brothers Karamazov that brings him to tears. Moving, wise and - how's this for a surprise - funny and lightly self-mocking, Diary of a Bad Year might well be the book of the year and Coetzee is surely our essential novelist. We haven't stopped thinking about it since we set it down.
The Indian Clerk by David Leavitt

David Leavitt's magnificent new novel tells the story of the unlikely friendship between the British mathematician G.H. Hardy and Srinivasa Ramanujan, mathematical autodidact and prodigy who had been working as a clerk in Madras, and who would turn out to be one of the great mathematical minds of the century. Ramanujan reluctantly joined Hardy in England - a move that would ultimately prove to his detriment - and the men set to work on proving the Riemann Hypothesis, one of mathematics' great unsolved problems. The Indian Clerk, an epic and elegant work which spans continents and decades, encompasses a World War, and boasts a cast of characters that includes Bertrand Russell, Ludwig Wittgenstein and Lytton Strachey. Leavitt renders the complex mathematics in a manner that resonates emotionally as well as intellectually, and writes with crystalline elegance. The metaphor of the prime number – divisible only by one and itself – is beautifully apt for this tale of these two isolated geniuses. Leavitt's control of this dense, sprawling material is impressive – astonishing, at times – and yet despite its scope, he keeps us focused on his great themes of unknowability and identity. The Indian Clerk might be set in the past but it doesn't resemble most so-called "historical fiction." Rather, it's an ageless meditation on the quests for knowledge and for the self – and how frequently the two are intertwined – that is, finally, as timeless as the music of the primes. (View our full week of coverage here.)
Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris

Joshua Ferris' warm and funny debut novel is an antidote to the sneering likes of The Office and Max Barry's Company. Treating his characters with both affection and respect, Ferris takes us into a Chicago ad agency at the onset of the dot-bomb. Careers are in jeopardy, nerves are frayed and petty turf wars are fought. But there are bigger stakes in the balance, and Ferris' weirdly indeterminate point of view that's mostly first person plural, underscores the shared humanity of everyone who has ever had to sit behind a desk. It's a luminous, affecting debut and you can read the first chapter right here.
Christine Falls by Benjamin Black

Coming to these shores at last, John Banville's thriller, written under the nom de plume Benjamin Black, has drawn rave reviews across the pond since it first appeared last October. Those who feared Banville might turn in an overly literary effort needn't worry. Influenced by Simenon's romans durs (hard stories), Banville unspools a dark mystery set in 1950s Dublin concerning itself with, among other things, the church's trade in orphans. At the heart of the book is the coroner Quirke, a Banvillean creation on par with Alex Cleave and Freddie Montgomery. Dublin is rendered with a damp, creaky specificity – you can almost taste the whisky.
The Paris Review Interviews, I by The Paris Review and Philip Gourevitch

Scanning our Recommended selections, one might conclude we're addicted to interviews, and one would be correct. If author interviews are like crack to us, then the Paris Review author interviews must surely be the gold standard of crack (a comparison Plimpton might not have embraced). The newly issued The Paris Review Interviews, Volume I (Picador) rolls out the heavy hitters. Who can possibly turn away from the likes of Saul Bellow, T.S. Eliot, Ernest Hemingway, Jorge Luis Borges, Dorothy Parker, Robert Gottlieb and others? The interviews are formal and thoughtful but never dry and can replace any dozen "how-to" books on writing. What can be more comforting than hearing Bellow, answering a question on preparations and conception, admit "Well, I don't know exactly how it's done.” The best part of this collection? The "Volume I" in the title, with its promise of more volumes to come.
Above Paris

See, we’re not all literary fiction here. Princeton Architectural Press’s absolutely breathtaking Above Paris is very much the kind of thing we’re eager to bring to your attention. Between 1950 and 1972, pilot and photographer Roger Henrard recorded more than 350 images of Paris from the seat of a single-engine Piper cub, documenting Paris from its outskirts to its center. His photographs show not only Paris's famous landmarks - they also give you a sense of the way the city is interconnected: the tight-knit medieval districts as well as the expansive geometry of the grand boulevards. Maps at the beginning of each chapter and fine captions and essays by Jean-Louis Cohen help you navigate the City of Light as never before. Just glorious.
The Dead Fish Museum: Stories by Charles D'Ambrosio

The best short story collection we've read since ... well, certainly since we've started this blog. And we might even say "ever" if Dubliners didn't cast such a long shadow. The short story is not our preferred form but D'Ambrosio's eight brilliant stories are almost enough to convert us. Defy the conventional wisdom that short story collections don't sell and treat yourself to this marvel. (We're especially partial, naturally, to "Screenwriter".)
The Mystery Guest by Grégoire Bouillier
*Now in Paperback*

What would you do if the woman who’d left you high and dry ten years ago called out of the blue to invite you to a party without any further explanation? If you’re French, you’d probably spend a lot of time pondering the Deeper Significance Of It All, which is exactly what Grégoire Bouillier does for the 120 hilarious pages of The Mystery Guest. This slim, witty memoir follows Bouillier through the party from hell, and is a case study in Gallic self-abasement. Before it’s all done, you’ll set fire to any turtleneck hanging in your closet and think twice before buying an expensive Bordeaux as a gift. But fear not – just when it seems that all is, indeed, random and pointless and there is no Deeper Significance, salvation arrives in the unlikely form of Virginia Woolf, and the tale ends on a note of unforced optimism. Parfait.
Ticknor by Sheila Heti

When George Ticknor's Life of William Hickling Prescott was published in 1864, it received rapturous notices, and reviewers were quick to point out that the long-standing friendship between Prescott and Ticknor made the latter an ideal Boswell. Sheila Heti has pulled this obscure leaf from the literary archives and fashioned a mordantly funny anti-history; a pungent and hilarious study of bitterness and promise unfulfilled. As a fretful Ticknor navigates his way through the rain-soaked streets of Boston to Prescott's house ("But I am not a late man. I hate to be late."), he recalls his decidedly one-sided lifelong friendship with his great subject. Unlike the real-life Ticknor, this one is an embittered also-ran, full of plans and intentions never realized, always alive to the fashionable whispers behind his back. Heti seamlessly inhabits Ticknor's fussy 19th-century diction with a feat of virtuoso ventriloquism that puts one in mind of The Remains of the Day. Heti's Ticknor would be insufferable if he weren't so funny, and in the end, the black humor brings a leavening poignancy to this brief tale. But don't let the size fool you — this 109-page first novel is small but scarcely slight; it is as dense and textured as a truffle.
The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers by Vendela Vida

No, your eyes aren't deceiving you and yes, we are recommending a Believer product. Twenty-three interviews (a third presented for the first time) pairing the likes of Zadie Smith with Ian McEwan, Jonathan Lethem with Paul Auster, Edward P. Jones and ZZ Packer, and Adam Thirwell with Tom Stoppard make this collection a must-read. Lifted out of the context of some of the magazine's worst twee excesses, the interviews stand admirably on their own as largely thoughtful dialogues on craft. A handful of interviewers seem more interested in themselves than in their subjects but in the main this collection will prove irresistible to writers of any stripe - struggling or established - and to readers seeking a window into the creative process.
The Sea by John Banville

John Banville's latest novel returns him to the Booker Prize shortlist for the first time since 1989's The Book of Evidence. In The Sea, we find Banville in transition, moving from the icy, restrained narrators of The Untouchable, Eclipse and Shroud toward warmer climes. Max Morden has returned to the vacation spot of his youth as he grieves the death of his wife. Remembering his first, fatal love, Morden works to reconcile himself to his loss. Banville's trademark linguistic virtuosity is everpresent but some of the chilly control is relinquished and Max mourns and rages in ways that mark a new direction for Banville - and there's at least one great twist which you'll never see coming. Given the politicized nature of the British literary scene, Banville's shot at the prize might be hobbled by his controversial McEwan review but we're rooting for our longtime favorite to go all the way at last. UPDATE: Our man won!
Here Is Where We Meet by John Berger

We've been fans of Booker Prize winner John Berger for ages, and we're delighted to have received an early copy of his latest work, Here is Where We Meet. In this lovely, elliptical, melancholy "fictional memoir," Berger traverses European cities from Libson to Geneva to Islington, conversing with shades from his past – He encounters his dead mother on a Lisbon tram, a beloved mentor in a Krakow market. Along the way, we're treated to marvelous and occasionally heart-rending glimpses of an extraordinary life, a lyrical elegy to the 20th century from a man who - in his eighth decade - remains committed to his political beliefs and almost childlike in his openness to people, places and experiences. There's no conventional narrative here, and those seeking plot are advised to look elsewhere. But Here is Where We Meet offers a wise, moving and poetic look at the life of an artist traversing the European century from a novelist whose talent remains undimmed in his twilight years.
Home Land by Sam Lipsyte

In his recent TEV guest review of Home Land, Jim Ruland called Sam Lipsyte the "funniest writer of his generation," and we're quite inclined to agree. We tore through Home Land in two joyful sittings and can't remember the last time we've laughed so hard. Lipsyte's constellation of oddly sympathetic losers is rendered with a sparkling, inspired prose style that's sent us off in search of all his prior work. In Lewis Miner's (a.k.a Teabag) woeful epistolary dispatches to his high school alumni newsletter ("I did not pan out."), we find an anti-hero for the age. Highly, highly recommended.

SECOND LOOK

The Bookshop by Penelope Fitzgerald

Penelope Fitzgerald's second novel is the tale of Florence Green, a widow who seeks, in the late 1950s, to bring a bookstore to an isolated British town, encountering all manner of obstacles, including incompetent builders, vindictive gentry, small minded bankers, an irritable poltergeist, but, above all, a town that might not, in fact, want a bookshop. Fitzgerald's prose is spare but evocative – there's no wasted effort and her work reminds one of Hemingway's dictum that every word should fight for its right to be on the page. Florence is an engaging creation, stubbornly committed to her plan even as uncertainty regarding the wisdom of the enterprise gnaws at her. But The Bookshop concerns itself, finally, with the astonishing vindictiveness of which provincials are capable, and, as so much English fiction must, it grapples with the inevitabilities of class. It's a dense marvel at 123 pages, a book you won't want to – or be able to – rush through.
The Rider by Tim Krabbe

Tim Krabbé's superb 1978 memoir-cum-novel is the single best book we've read about cycling, a book that will come closer to bringing you inside a grueling road race than anything else out there. A kilometer-by-kilometer look at just what is required to endure some of the most grueling terrain in the world, Krabbé explains the tactics, the choices and – above all – the grinding, endless, excruciating pain that every cyclist faces and makes it heart-pounding rather than expository or tedious. No writer has better captured both the agony and the determination to ride through the agony. He's an elegant stylist (ably served by Sam Garrett's fine translation) and The Rider manages to be that rarest hybrid – an authentic, accurate book about cycling that's a pleasure to read. "Non-racers," he writes. "The emptiness of those lives shocks me."

The Elegant Variation

A Literary Weblog.
A Guardian Top 10 Literary Blog * A Forbes "Best of the Web" Pick * A Los Angeles Magazine Top Los Angeles Blog
"Really brave ... or really stupid" - NPR

MY NOVEL

WORTHY READINGS

BEST SMALL PRESSES

Barking at the Moon

TEV DEFINED

SEARCH ME

Other Stuff

About

April 27, 2004