PEN WORLD VOICES WRAP-UP

Event:  Mixing Art and Politics
Participants: With Dorothea Dieckmann, Almudena Grandes, Janne Teller, Saul Williams; moderated by Sam Tanenhaus
Attendance: Strong - 50+.
Logline: On the impact - and relevance - of politics in an author's work and in assessing his/her legacy.
Impressions:  A smart, spirited event.  We arrived a bit late but none of the panelists were shy, although they agreed with one another a bit too much for Tanenhaus's taste (and ours).
Highlights:  Poet Saul Williams suggesting that an artist claiming to be non-political is coming from a position of privilege ... and describing the Bible, Koran and others as "books of poems" ... Panel agreed that serious writing cannot avoid political engagement, at which point Tanenhaus asked how, then, to consider the work of a Pound, whose work we consider great and whose politics we find repellent ... Saul wondered whether he should be dancing to Dr. Dre or not ... but the panel seemed to agree that language finally trumps politics ... The political theme did bring out a few angry, ranting questioners, which does bring up our one pet peeve about this sort of thing - dump the Q&A ... They are seldom edifying and more often excruciating as apparently lonely questioners simply want someone to talk to ... Had we spoken up - we had to leave to catch another event - we would have reminded the panel of Robert Hughes's remark - that Guernica did not shorten the Franco regime by a day - and ask for their rejoinder; which works have exerted real political weight?  Next time ...

Event:  Conversation: Tatyana Tolstaya & David Remnick
Participants: Tatyana Tolstaya & David Remnick
Attendance: Strong - Around 100 or so.
Logline: Russian-accented literary conversation.
Impressions:  We admit we were as curious to see Remnick as we were to see Tolstaya.  He's terribly well-versed in the subject matter so, unsurprisingly, it was an interesting event.  Tolstaya reminds us of most of our relatives, with that Slavic tendency toward absolutes.
Highlights:  She's essentially supportive of Putin, which didn't seem to draw enough of a challenge from Remnick, especially given PEN's concerns ... but she doesn't really "know who he is" and invoked The Matrix, that there are those worse than Putin and it's the Matrix that controls things ... She observed that the New Authoritarians don't care about literature, which is why they persecute journalists, instead (invoking Tom Stoppard's idea that the greatest time to be a poet was when the Soviets would kill you for it.)  She's convinced that all the Modern Russian is concerned about is money ... Finally, the pair shared their love of Pushkin, who, according to Tolstaya, "created language, created archetypes, created sound, created Russian literature" but is finally "unexplainable ... a mystery."  (The stupid Q&A curse continued with the first questioner inquiring whether her two sons got along.)

Event:  A Believer Nighttime Event
Participants: With Niccolò Ammaniti, John Hodgman, Uzodinma Iweala, Miranda July, Yasmina Khadra; and Eric Bogosian
Attendance: Completely packed - standing room only.
Logline: An orgy of twee.
Impressions:  We've come a long, long way concerning the Believer (the magazine), which has gotten much better and much more serious over the years.  But their public events are a different story and this one betrays the awful strain of cute that threatens to creep and poison the whole enterprise.  (We should note, in fairness, that we're clearly the crabby minority, as the audience seemed to love the shennanigans.)
Highlights:  Nothing for us, really ... but it's a matter of taste ... If watching Miranda July auction off audience-donated Ricola cough drops or literary speed dating with the likes of Uzodinma Iweala and Yasmina Khadra turns your crank, then this is the event for you ... But if we never have to endure another minute of Eric Bogosian's jumped-up-invective-as-performance-art, we'll die happily, indeed.  But - and we mean this - the magazine is another, more impressive story altogether ... And the underlying idea that literary events can be fun and needn't be moribund affairs is absolutely fair game ... A question of taste, that's all.

Overall summary: The best literary event of its kind we've attended ... We're sorry to have missed the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books but this one was an easy call ... If you missed out this year, don't make the same mistake next time around.  And thanks for the patience as we've struggled to get these dispatches up for you.

Comments

[Coll B. Lue]

I thoroughly enjoyed this post on Mixing Art & Politics especially about dumping 'the Q&A part of the event,

'which does bring up our one pet peeve about this sort of thing - dump the Q&A ... They are seldom edifying and more often excruciating as apparently lonely questioners simply want someone to talk to ...'

and

'(The stupid Q&A curse continued with the first questioner inquiring whether her two sons got along.)'

I suppose the next question on someone's list of questions would be,

'Who or what inspired you to write the book?'

[Coll B. Lue]

I thoroughly enjoyed this post on Mixing Art & Politics especially about dumping 'the Q&A part of the event,

'which does bring up our one pet peeve about this sort of thing - dump the Q&A ... They are seldom edifying and more often excruciating as apparently lonely questioners simply want someone to talk to ...'

and

'(The stupid Q&A curse continued with the first questioner inquiring whether her two sons got along.)'

I suppose the next question on someone's list of questions would be,

'Who or what inspired you to write the book?'

[Coll B. Lue]

Question and Answer sessions seem to bring out the worst in people for some uncanny reason:

I remember going to the Writers Evening, organised and held at The Poetry Library in London, about 4 years ago, (to re-open June 07) featuring a Swedish author from a small village in Sweden.

One member of the audience piped up:

You mentioned you liked smoked reindeer, is that a delicacy in that part of Sweden you're from?

The author, happily at home discussing reindeers and the like, went into details of smoking a reindeer (in his shed), which he reiterated was a delicacy enjoyed by Swedes. He then proceeded to take a brown block of meat from his bag and offered the audience a chance to taste it at the end of the Writers' session.

I learnt, then, that reindeer could be eaten smoked.

[a cup of tea]

Thanks for your wrap-ups. I still can't believe I missed so much. I was at the Tolstaya/Remnick event too, and I agree with you about getting rid of the Q&A. Made me embarrassed for people. I did have a question, never asked, but I could have found Tolstaya and asked her the question later if I couldn't live without knowing the answer.

Without the Q&A though, we would have missed Rushdie's question on the relationship between Russian writers and writers from other former Soviet countries, and Tolstaya's truthful answer: "No one cares about them. Freedom means no one cares about you." Which I certainly thought gave us something to ponder, especially at an festival whose aim is to give more attention to neglected writers.

[Jack Pendarvis]

Gosh, aren't we being sort of hard on people? Isn't participating in a Q&A pretty much like "blogging" without a computer? It's the poor man's blog! No equipment necessary. Nothing against blogs, especially this one, which I read every day! Maybe I'm just mad at myself. I really need to stop posting comments on blogs.

[Jack Pendarvis]

I had some more interesting thoughts on the subject! Like, that one guy (above) says Q&As bring out the worst in people, but then he tells an awesome story about getting to eat smoked reindeer! And the next guy says he agrees that Q&As should be eliminated but goes on to cite a good Q and compelling A. Finally, what's the harm? Q&As don't bother anybody except some percentage of the tiny group of people in the room during a panel. Blogs, as far as I can tell, will still be around when the earth melts. Not that there's anything wrong with that! But hooray for the people and their desire to ask questions, or even to make some sort of connection deemed by others as sad or pitiful. Is there any other kind of connection? Yes, probably. Okay, no more posting comments for me!

[tao lin]

"...this one betrays the awful strain of cute that threatens to creep and poison the whole enterprise."

good job articulating that.

[Coll B. Lue]

Actually I'm a female, fair and square but I'm just promoting a talented writer friend's website, a good friend of Irving Layton, Leonard Cohen and Allen Ginsberg, to name but a few literary greats - the comments are extremely entertaining - tears are rolling down my cheeks for sheer brilliance!

[Coll B. Lue]

By the way, the comments were so good I missed out the most important part of my last comment, the 'smoked reindeer' part, which was something I bypassed, just didn't feel the urge to try it regardless of whether it tasted like rabbit or chicken I think he mentioned (not my cuppa somehow).

[denise hamilton]

Re stupid Q&A, Tod Goldberg has a handy solution to weed out two of the more inane questions authors get lobbed. I've paneled with him at LATFoB (it ain't really that bad, Mark, and often it's downright great) for several years and he always announces that two questions are off limits and will result in questioners getting violently wrestled out of the room by burly men with earpieces and sidearms:
"How did you get your agent?" and "Will you read my manuscript?"

[Coll B. Lue]

I can just imagine it - A would-be writer getting geared up for his/her big moment of being spotted as by a talent scout at such major events and hey presto like a magic wand and magic dust they get a publisher wanting to publish them just like that - if all things were so sugary and spiced etc...

[Andrew Berardini]

Whatever happened to your Believer vs. n+1 battle royal?

[Andrew Berardini]

Whatever happened to your Believer vs. n+1 battle royal?