The Elegant Variation: LIVE FROM UCLA - LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK AWARDS

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 22, 2005

LIVE FROM UCLA - LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK AWARDS

OK, that's a wrap for us ... the low battery light is blinking (the high speed satelite card eats up a lot of power) ... so we're out of here and in search of a bathroom ... Our ticket grants us (probably mistakenly) access to the reception afterwards, so we're going to pop in, grab some free LA Times food and drink (and perhaps ask Wasserman what the deal is with the white suit ... the unfortunate Tom Wolfe comparisons are inevitable ... we've never understood clothing affectations), and then call it night and recharge for tomorrow's big day. Thanks for checking in ... We'll see you live at the Swink/Vermin booth tomorrow ...

9:40 - So the Robert Kirsch Award for Lifetime Achievement is going to Tony Hillerman ... I don't get it ... You're supposed to save the best for last ... OK, it's appropriate that Jonathan Kirsch - one of my least favorite LA Times book critics - is presenting this one ... although we should be more respectful since the award is named for his late father ... who was principal literary critic of LAT for nearly 30 years ... OK, it's going on a bit up there, too much of a Kirsch family tribute ... Now they've got the long Hillerman bio video running ...

9:33 - Not sure why the felt they needed Evans, who's really phoning it in ... Michael Kinsley is giving the Current Interest award, although he might have to take it for himself, given that even Evans has just acknowledged the op-ed page feud ... Damn, he looks just like he does on Charlie Rose ... go figure ... He's defining Current Interest as being currently interesting, and pounding the joke into the ground ... (I don't know - aren't novels currently interesting ... sounds like a bullshit category to me) ... He just called Michael Dirda "the best-read man in America" ... OK, the most currently interesting book in town is ... Generation Kill by Evan Wright.

9:26 - OK, it's time for fiction... they picked Alice Sebold to give the award, a regrettable choice, but they didn't ask us ... The video includes McEwan ... the fiction writers don't have much to say, at least past winners ... Sebold is already fussing about the lights ... she's complaining about being there ... The nominees are Chris Abani for Graceland ... (He teaches here at Antioch's MFA program ... will the Times play home court advantage?) ... Russell Banks' The Darling (which has gotten mixed reviews for its attempt at writing a female point of view) ... Marilynne Robinson's Pulitzer Prize winning Gilead (will the Times play it safe?) ... Colm Toibin's The Master ... and Joy Williams' Honored Guest (a collection of short stories) ... and the winner is ... Colm Toibin ... He's a slightly stopped over fellow and - to be frank - he's got some great photographers as he looks rather Uncle Fester like just now ... He's acknowledging the scholars whose work informed him ...

9:17- Got a bit excited there when Evans announced the presenter for YA .. We thought he said Jennifer Connelly ... well, it's Donnelly ... And we can't pretend that YA is a category we pay a lot of attention to ... Still, things have come a long way when they are YA titles like Doing It ... Donnelly just said "pathos" ... we knew it had to come, but still ... The winner is ... Doing It by Melvin Burgess ... He's not here but sent a video acceptance ... how did he know?

9:10 - Really have to pee now ... the things I do for my readers ...

9:09 - Neal Gabler is here (his tie's straight!) to announce the biography winner ... this is a pretty good category this year ... with the likes of Ron Chernow competing against Stephen Greenblatt (is he here?) ... against the excellent Richard Rhodes ... "narrative breadth ... thematic amplitude ... " Gabler's deliver is remarkably Shatner-esque ... OK, the winner is ... de Kooning by Mark Stevens and Annalyn Swan (they were sitting beside me, and I heard their exclamation of surprise) ... Stevens seems surprised that L.A. should have an award dedicated to "the written word" ...

9:05 - OK, we're on to poetry, with the award being given by Carol Muske Dukes, whose poetry column in the book review is one of the few things we actually look forward to each week ... She's referencing the NYT piece about Poetry websites and scandals ... and is suggesting the LAT takes a more nuanced look at poetry than its east coast competitor ... We shan't pretend we're remotely familiar with the work under consideration, so we'll take you straight to the winner ... it's Inner Voices by Richard Howard. (He looks like a poet ... and he's wearing WAY too much cologne.)

8:56 - Patricia Seidenbaum, widow of Art Seidenbaum - founder of the LAT Book prizes - has taken the stage to award The First Fiction Award ... She's giving a lovely speech about her husband's search for unknown and new writers ... recalling the first award ten years ago ... The descriptions of the books are better written than in the other categories ... Harbor ... Natasha and Other Stories ... Rear View (short stories) ... Eve Green ... and A Girl Becomes a Comma Like That ... And the winner is ... Harbor by Lorraine Adams ...

8:48 - OK, big one coming up ... they're getting ready for the first fiction award, which has gone to Arthur Phillips, Rachel Seiffert and Mark Haddon ...

8:47 - A general note on the acceptance speeches ... they've been brief, appropriately self-deprecating and in generally good taste ... A cell phone is ringing off the hook .. into its 7th ring ... Welcome to Los Angeles.

8:44 - Sally Ride gets to give the Science and Technology Award ... Evans is lurching more slowly toward to stage, as though he's a bit bored already ... The videos, by the way, are celebrating the 10th anniversary of the book awards, and include interviews with previous winners ... Ride's not much of a speaker but she's working from shitty, canned remarks ... OK, the winner has been announced ... It's The Whale and the Supercomputer by Charles Wohlforth ... (Ron will be delighted to learn that Lauren Slater did not win for Opening Skinner's Box.)

8:39 - Clipping right along ... T. Jefferson Parker has announced the mystery winner ... it's Tijuana Straits by Kem Nunn ... You'll have to ask Sarah if it's deserved ... By the way, they show these videos between awards of the nominations ... Let's just say they lack Oscar production values. (Nominee Old Boys sounds amusing to us ... )

8:31 - Douglas Brinkley has announced the winner in history ... it's Perilous Times by Geoffrey R. Stone .... His tie's crooked too (Brinkley's, not Stone's) ... what is it with these guys?

8:25 - Evans decries "the tyranny of numbers" ... complaining about ratings ... sales ... profits ... seconds of the sound bite culture ... We just noticed his tie is crooked ... He's told a rambling anecdote about unprofitable books from his Random House days ... "joined in a great community of writers and readers" ... He's now honoring the librarian who refused the FBI requests ... the room applauds ...we would, if we could ... He's talking about imprisoned writers ... about Rushdie ... "there are no losers tonight" ... (Check back with us on that an hour from now ...)

8:20 - Harold Evans has taken the stage ... he's a wee sprout, and he's already dropped Dominick Dunne's name ... and felt the need to explain the term "ladies who lunch" to L.A. audiences ... because of course, we have none of those. He just slipped and referred to authors nominated since "1880" ... Some platitudes about books and literature ... nothing you haven't heard before ... We already have to pee ... Not good.

8:17 - Kenneth Turan has taken the stage. He looks nothing like I imagined. I close my eyes and it's like listening to NPR ... He's talking up the judges right now, reading all the judges in all the categories ... David Ulin is one of the fiction judges ...

8:12 - They've just gotten on the PA and asked us to sit our asses down. Silverblatt just wandered by again.

You can follow the nominees here ... The editor of the Times is now welcoming us in ...

Posted by TEV at 08:09 PM in Events | Permalink

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In case youre in the area, please dont forget the Los Angeles Times Fesitval of Books this weekend, held over Saturday and Sunday at the UCLA campus. It is a blast. There are book authors of various types and genres being celebrated as t... [Read More]

Comments

I dunno harv, why don't we just read about it in the paper tomorrow?

Posted by: Paul Terwelp | April 22, 2005 at 09:02 PM

Nice job Mark. I enjoyed it not too much late than live.

Enjoy,

Posted by: Dan Wickett | April 23, 2005 at 03:52 AM

And once again we benefit from your obsessive-compulsive nature. Thanks for this.

Posted by: Justine | April 23, 2005 at 09:46 AM

Oi, leave Colm alone, there's a good blogger. His work on the peculiarities of the Irish has been very useful (among other things).

Posted by: genevieve | April 23, 2005 at 04:22 PM

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April 22, 2005