Keith Gessen imparts an 'unconventional vision'

Taking my seat at the "Unconventional Visions" panel on Sunday, I listened intently as the guy on my right discussed his "man crush" on Ben Ehrenreich, author of "The Suitors." Supposedly he was getting over his crush, but he still spoke with favorable fervor about a particular short story Ehrenreich wrote about a squid.

"It’s about this man who keeps going down to this aquarium to meet up with this squid, but also this woman he’s been seeing; it's a love story," the man said.

I was half-intrigued by what he was telling me and half-desperate to ingest as much information as possible from the panel that included Ehrenreich, Keith Gessen, Lydia Millet, Yannick Murphy and moderated by Jacket Copy blogger Carolyn Kellogg.

As the panel got underway, I found myself immediately drawn to Keith Gessen ("All the Sad Young Literary Men"), who looked like Billy Zane -- as he looked in "Titanic," not "Sniper" -- but with a gentler, self-deprecating demeanor.

Gessen started by taking the audience on a virtual journey through his evolution as a writer, which correlated directly with the book. While he worked on the book, he supported himself as a freelance book critic and lived frugally.

During this time, his vision began to change, and then so did his approach to his writing. The passage he read aloud was sexually explicit, but emphasized his perception of how perverse simple life can become when infused with modern technology.

He also admitted that he took some heat from fans who said the ending of the book was too sentimental, saying, "and I don’t care." OK, that's in keeping with "Unconventional Visions"...

Brad Wilcox

(Photo by Carolyn Cole, Los Angeles Times)