Director John Landis has no guilty pleasures--at least not when it comes to movies. The unabashed filmmaker who directed such low-comedy classics as "Kentucky Fried Movie," "Animal House," "The Blues Brothers" and "¡Three Amigos!" not to mention "An American Werewolf in London," Michael Jackson's "Thriller" video and the ill-fated segment of "Twilight Zone: The Movie" during which actor Vic Morrow and two child actors died.
He spoke Sunday at a Festival of Books panel led by Tim Curry. Landis is an unabashed geek who grew up in a house behind the L.A. National Cemetery cemetery in Westwood began indulging his predilections early. At age 12, he would bicycle to nearby UCLA to catch movies at Melnitz, the building that houses the university's film school. "I remember sitting next to this guy who always smoked dope while he watched movies," Landis said. "That was Jim Morrison."
He dropped out of high school and worked as a mail boy on the 20th Century Fox lot, where he remembers watching Bruce Lee practicing his high kicks and teaching martial arts to James Coburn. "Film was only 100 years old, so I was able to seek out and meet people who had created the language. Most of them thought I was weird because I wasn't French."
With a voracious movie-going appetite that spans everything from Walt Disney's "Pinocchio" to Federico Fellini's "La Strada" to Russ Meyer's "Beyond the Valley of the Dolls," Landis still recalls the landmark moment he first realized he didn't have to see every movie that came out. "I was on Hollywood Boulevard with Joe Dante watching an awful movie, and he turned to me and said, 'You know, life's too short.' "
Not too short for "The Brain That Would Not Die," which comes about as close as Landis has to a guilty pleasure. The 1962 picture stars Jason Evers as a doctor whose fiancée gets decapitated in a car crash. He saves her head and then spends the rest of the film trying to find the perfect body, which, of course, necessitates trips to strip joints, beaches, nude modeling classes and the like. Says Landis approvingly, "It's very tawdry."
PS: One of the funniest moments came when Landis was asked he got involved with the "Thriller" video. His response: "Michael Jackson called me up and told me he wanted to become a monster." Long pause. Panel moderator Curry: "Boy, did he."
Elina Shatkin
(Photo: John Landis in New York on Thursday by Will Ragozzino/Getty Images for Tribeca Film Festival)
SoCal lit blogger John Fox and the good people of Red Fence hit the L.A. Times Festival of Books with a camera crew and tracked down some fabulous fictioneers (T.C. Boyle, Shelley Jackson, Lydia Millet among them) to ask them about art and literary pilgrimages.
Where have they gone? Which one ate a page of Shakespeare? Watch to find out.
Left to right: Shelley Jackson, Steve Erickson, David Ulin, Zachary Lazar, Nina Revoyr
Big ideas -- reinventing myth, writing (or rewriting) Los Angeles and the relationship between history and fiction -- were tackled by the Festival of Books panel "Fiction: Alternative Visions" on Sunday afternoon.
In a cool, modern auditorium in UCLA's business school, Zachary Lazar ("Sway") and Nina Revoyr ("The Age of Dreaming") talked about the challenges presented by writing historical figures in a fictional way. Revoyr -- whose book is based loosely on the life of Japanese silent film actor Sessue Hayakawa -- said she started with factual history but quickly departed from it to serve her fiction. Lazar, on the other hand, said he stuck to bizarre real-life events as closely as possible to bring the smaller human moments to life: His book is set in the late '60s and includes Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards, a Manson family member and filmmaker Kenneth Anger.
Steve Erickson's work occasionally includes historical figures ("Tours of the Black Clock," "Zeroville"), but he takes imaginative leaps to create impossible universes; Shelley Jackson, too, creates fictions of pure imagination. Both of these authors also talked about playing with conventional narrative form -- which Erickson did recently in "Our Ecstatic Days" -- to such an extent that he pulled back from that for "Zeroville," his latest. Jackson's projects include the 2006 novel "Half Life" and "Skin," a short story tattooed on volunteers, one word at a time.
Sitting in on these conversations was a little like eavesdropping on a smart dinner party, and the audience, which asked astute questions, seemed to appreciate the level of discourse. The best moment, however, came when Lazar returned to something Jackson had said in passing, that an observation from her past was a terrible idea for a novel but that it then became a part of "Half Life." Lazar pointed out that he was listening to the Rolling Stones when the idea to write about the band came to him, but initially he too thought this was a terrible basis for a novel. He went ahead and wrote "Sway."
"Here's advice for you aspiring writers out there," moderator (and L.A. Times Book Review editor) David L. Ulin said. "That terrible idea? Run with it."
When the moderator of of the Festival of Books panel "Magic in Everyday Life" asked author Aimee Bender, "Why did you write a story about a woman who kept trying to destroy magic potatoes that eventually morphed into babies?" it was panelist and author Alice Hoffman (left) who piped up.
"If you had children, you would understand," Hoffman told Christine Smallwood, associate literary editor for the Nation.
The panelists -- including novelists Yxta Maya Murray (her newest, "The King's Gold," comes out this week) and Alex Espinoza ("Still Water Saints") -- all argued that reading about fantastical worlds teaches us about this one. Bender's story as well as fairytales such as Little Red Riding Hood contain metaphors that apply to reality.
Not only is magic a useful literary tool, it also gives people and things a voice that otherwise might be silenced. Nonfiction literature, they said, is confined to that which is documented. But what about the voice not recorded? Because not all occurrences in history were recorded, they noted, perhaps fiction is more accurate than nonfiction.
Magic and literature, therefore, are inextricably intertwined because the mere act of creating a world out of words is magic in and of itself.
While panelists discussed the merits of fiction and magic, they also made a clear distinction between the unreal and flat-out lying. For example, all four unanimously denounced Margaret Seltzer's fake autobiography about growing up among gangsters in South Los Angeles.
--Melissa Rohlin
(Photo: Alice Hoffman by Deborah Feingold/Random House)
[For the record: A previous version of this post incorrectly said that "Top Chef" was on the Food Network and that Lakshmi is a vegetarian.]
Padma Lakshmi, author, former supermodel, and host of the Bravo's reality show "Top Chef," opened her Culinary Stage act on Sunday by announcing that she was waiting for her mother.
Lakshmi wanted her mom, who was supposedly on her way over via golf cart, to watch the demonstration. She stalled for a few minutes, chatting with the large crowd but then eventually decided to get going on the recipe -- goat cheese and mushroom flautas accompanied by a date/mint/lemon/chili salsa.
The Indian-born vegetarian (who isn't a vegetarian any longer because of her food-tasting role) really hopes to encourage people to try new ingredients, including many of the spices in her latest cookbook, "Tangy Tart Hot & Sweet." She seems to get the biggest kick from having people use these spices to amp up their own favorite dishes.
Looking much younger than her age (37), Lakshmi was dressed in jeans, tennis shoes and a tank top. She read a funny story about gathering roses for her mother one Mother's Day from a grouchy neighbor's front yard, and an excerpt on the joy of ice cream -- licking descriptions included. (Could she have learned some writerly tricks from her brief marriage to superstar novelist Salman Rushdie?)
Lakshmi said her culinary career began by accident after she wrote her first book, "Easy Exotic: Low-Fat Recipes from Around the World," the sort a traveling top model would need to stay svelte. She says she also keeps up her figure by jumping rope backstage between scenes on "Top Chef."
--Leslie Anne Wiggins
(Photo: Padma Lakshmi at the Festival of Books by David Livingston/Getty Images)
Finishing a novel produces different feelings in different writers, or so three mighty practitioners of the form said Sunday at the L.A. Times Festival of Books.
Jane Smiley confessed to feeling spent, even a bit shaken, after completing the novels "A Thousand Acres" (1991) and "Moo" (1995).
Smiley's 1988 effort at epic writing, "The Greenlanders," on the other hand, left her feeling so energized that she immediately turned to finish another manuscript she'd set aside.
Ron Carlson was so thoroughly submerged in "Five Skies" (2007), his first novel in three decades (though he produced four short-story collections in the interim), that the experience was perhaps as exhausting as finishing up a quarter of teaching at UC Irvine, where he now co-directs the graduate fiction writing program.
Tobias Wolff, who has written two novels ("Ugly Rumours" and "Old School") and is considered a master of the memoir and short story (including the latest collection, "Our Story Begins"), usually finds himself in a celebratory mood on finishing a work. But he noted that the prolific Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope would finish one book and immediately begin another, adhering to a regimen of writing at least 10,000 words a week.
"If it were me, I'd be at the bar for about a year," Wolff said. Then drolly comparing his output to Trollope's, he added, "You will see there's a flaw in my procedure. It may be the celebration part."
L.A. Times staff writer Susan Salter Reynolds (and moderator of the panel, "Fiction: Serious Prose") also wanted to know their thoughts on the recent flaps about authors who presented elaborate fictions as memoir. (Remember mixed-race author Margaret B. Jones exposed as white writer Margaret Seltzer, who grew up in upper middle class Sherman Oaks, not in a foster family in the 'hood of South Central Los Angeles? And Mischa Defonseca, who admitted that her 1997 book, "Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years," was a work of fiction?)
Carlson quipped: "All the dialog in my novel is 100% accurate!"
Wolff opined that perhaps some of the blame can be laid at the feet of gullible audiences. "Imagine their shock" he said of Defonseca's readers' reaction to her confession after believing that "a little girl toddled off into the woods and was raised by wolves."
Frustration was palpable Sunday among participants in the lone L.A. Times Festival of Books panel discussion specifically aimed at the Middle East. The occupation of Iraq, the now 60-year-old conflict between Israel and dispossessed Palestinians, as well as the vilification of Islam and Muslims in the West -- all have made the region more combustible than ever and our own U.S. democracy that much more tenuous.
"We are one or two terrorist attacks away from a police state in this country," journalist and writer Chris Hedges told more than 200 people in a packed UCLA auditorium Sunday for the panel, "Contentious Ground: The Middle East."
Hedges, a former New York Times correspondent who has covered the wars in Iraq, Kosovo, Bosnia and El Salvador, decried the "gross mischaracterization of Islam as a religion of violence," which has skewed the U.S. public's perceptions about Muslims, the Arab world and the real sources of instability in the Middle East. Citing his experiences while covering the war in Bosnia in the early 1990s as just one example, he said, "Bosnian Muslims were the only peaceful ones in the conflict."
But what does that have to do with sewage, or a refrigerator?
At "Contentious Ground: The Middle East" -- which promised to be one of the more volatile discussions at the Festival of Books this weekend -- the panelists seemed to want to talk about something else. Moderator Zachary Karabell introduced the session Sunday saying: "With so much going on in South America, Africa and all around the world, it’s funny that we still believe the Middle East is the only problem."
And with that, they were off and running.
Amy Wilentz, former Jerusalem correspondent for "The New Yorker," agreed that five years in Iraq has inflated Americans' perception of the entire region. "I can't believe I'm back at this panel, five years later," she replied. But aside from slight tangents veering off to the religious right, activism and the current presidential elections, the panelists resisted temptation and focused on the core subject.
Was it the heat or was it the subject at the "Literary California" panel on Sunday?
The scene was reminiscent of a sweltering Alabama courthouse in summer. I began to stick to the seat, and the audience members were making fans out of newspaper pullouts. I looked up to make sure the panel had water; lukewarm water, check.
Richard Rayner moderated a panel with Anthony Arthur, Philip Fradkin and Judith Freeman--authors who talked about the subjects of the biographies they had written. The stories hearkened back to a golden era of L.A.'s history, a time when the city was growing--thanks in large part to the siphoning of water from the Owens Valley. Is that why the subject may have felt a bit dry?
Freeman spoke about Raymond Chandler, the subject of her biography "The Long Embrace"; Fradkin about "Wallace Stegner and the American West" and Arthur about Upton Sinclair, the subject of his book "Radical Innocent."
Somehow the subject didn't really seem to connect with me--does it connect with the Internet generation?--and sweat began to bead on my eyelids. I struggled to keep my neck from snapping.
I packed up early and opted to watch the remainder of this panel’s discussion from the air-conditioned media center. Viva La C-Span2!
--Brad Wilcox
(Photo: Upton Sinclar, circa 1937, by the Associated Press)
Walter Mosley came onstage with KCRW’s Bookworm host Michael Silverblatt, but Mosley was missing his trademark fedora. Silverblatt assured the crowd: "The hat is here." And that it was, safely on the table between them.
The literary pair were at the Festival of Books on Sunday afternoon to discuss not one, not two, but three new books this year from Mosley. "Blonde Faith" is said to be the last of the much-loved Easy Rawlins mystery series, the most famous of which is "Devil in a Blue Dress."
The series spans from 1939 to 1967, a time in which Mosley feels the life of a black man, such as Easy, changed a lot each year. Unlike other characters, Easy seems different every time, Mosley said. And though the books are set in the past, "I'm really writing about today," he said.
Mosley spoke too about a general sense of melancholy he senses in the American people today, a weariness from promises not being delivered, promises from politicians. He blamed capitalism for the situation -- "capitalism has enslaved everybody" -- and shared that he left his Manhattan apartment when the rent was raised to $6,600 a month.
With a new president imminent, he feels confident that things will change. Mosley admits that he would like Barack Obama, a (fellow) black man, to be president, but adds a white woman wouldn't be bad either.
In response to a question, Mosley said that he's never felt threatened by being outspoken about his views. "I try very hard to be sensible in my arguments." A practice to take to heart.
--Leslie Anne Wiggins
(Photo: Walter Mosley in Brooklyn, N.Y., by Robert Caplin )
If there was a literary equivalent of the youth vote, it was on hand in the basement of the Fowler Auditorium on Sunday at the festival's "Unconventional Voices" panel.
Authors Lydia Millet, Ben Ehrenreich, Yannick Murphy and Keith Gessen joined Jacket Copy blogger Carolyn Kellogg for a discussion that involved various topics such as sex, violence and Googling oneself.
"We all do it," confessed Lydia Millet, author of (most recently) "How the Dead Dream." "It's like masturbation."
Responding to a question from Kellogg, Ben Ehrenreich mentioned how he chose to play with words and language as a way of getting through the often tedious process of writing. Fittingly, his novel "The Suitors" proves itself trippingly difficult to define; it mixes Homeric themes with modern warfare, and includes a cast of characters nearly equal to Donald Antrim's "The Hundred Brothers."
Although Murphy and Millet agreed that playfulness with language was necessary, Keith Gessen stressed that he didn't play with his writing—that he was more concerned that "there's so much to tell already about the world as it is." An editor of the New York City-based critical journal "n+1" and a freelance book critic, Gessen leaned forward and continued, "It is my hope that what I write remains factual sociologically."
"What do you mean you 'don't play?'" asked Millet.
Gessen evaded any personal answer to the question, offering instead examples from Millet's novel that he'd found to be affecting.
"I'm not sure what 'the world as it is' means," Ehrenreich responded, perhaps thinking out loud. "And I'm not sure what that has to do with writing fiction."
Earlier, Gessen had read a passage from his first novel, "All the Sad Young Literary Men" in which the bookish character of Mark spends days looking at amateur porn on the college library's computers.
"This passage isn't going to be appropriate for children," Gessen warned before he began. There were no children in the audience.
-- George Ducker
(Illustration for Ben Ehrenreich's "The Suitors" by Beppe Giacobbe)
Eli Horowitz, managing editor and publisher of the Dave Eggers'-founded publishing concern McSweeney's, came down from San Francisco to participate in Saturday's panel "West Coast Publishing: Rethinking The Model."
Known for the Rectangulars Series of books, along with their eponymous, richly packaged literary magazine and monthly culture mag The Believer, McSweeney's has helped put L.A.'s northern cousin at the forefront of independent book publishing and also lavished much attention on the Garamond 3 font.
We caught up with Horowitz, the enthusiastic, inconceivably young man who's edited Salvador Plascencia's "The People of Paper," Yannick Murphy's "Here They Come" and 90-year-old first-time novelist Millard Kaufman's "Bowl Of Cherries"—to name a few.
Jacket Copy: So we missed yesterday's panel. Fill us in. Is West Coast publishing a specific force unto itself or is it simply one aspect of the larger world of indie publishing? Is it just New York publishing versus non-New York publishing? Or is there some specific West Coast sensibility?
Eli Horowitz: (Laughs) There was no real conclusion or answer to the question.
JC: But doesn't existing on the West coast imply the act of cutting yourself off from the heart of media that exists in New York?
EH: Right. I think that part is definitely true. But, what if your company is set up in Pittsburgh? You're still not going to the cocktail parties, even if you are physically closer to them.
JC: But once you publish a book, it becomes a hard and fast fact. It's out there to be bought and read. But I guess that's where the publishing "push" comes in.
EH: Yeah, but there is certainly a cocktail party thing that happens. When a book gets on the cover of the New York Times Book Review, especially when it's a debut novel … how does that process happen? I mean, I have no idea how that happens (laughs), but I know it's not going to happen to us. Editors don't just happen to read a book. They hear a book from one person and then they hear about it from two more and the book starts to take on it's own life. It's not a random. I don't mean to make it sound like a big conspiracy.
Los Angeles Times columnist Steve Lopez reads the novel "Birds of Paradise" that he "wrote" with readers. The author of Chapter 7, Renee Holland Davidson, above, reads her portion of the book during the 2008 L.A. Times Festival of Books. Click here to check out the whole book, in which Lopez wrote the first and final chapters.
There weren't too many rooms at the Festival of Books where tank-tops and flip-flops were deemed proper attire for the discussions. But with "word up" being tossed around at the "Surf Culture" panel, the attire really did fit the topic.
Steve Hawk, Steven Kotler, Kem Nunn and David Rensin addressed the topic of surf culture to an audience half-filled with readers and half-filled with surfers.
Jokes were made about what exactly surf culture is. Rensin, for example, compared surf culture to the musical styling of Yanni. He took a pause for laughter and then said both have mystical viewing powers. Moderator Antoine Wilson then jumped in and said both can also be embarrassing.
All four addressed the issue of the "Spicoli effect," named after the Sean Penn character in "Fast Times at Ridgemont High"--which refers to the tendency to portray surfers as unintelligent slackers. All four are breathing examples of how unfair that is.
Kotler, for example, spoke about the neurological effects of surfing, noting that more endorphins are released during surfing than in any other sport. Hawk touched heavily on ecological problems that affect oceans and how those factors can be mitigated. Nunn and Rensin used their experiences growing up in the 1960s and 1970s to discuss the transition of how surf culture changed from the ranks of jobless young-adult wave searchers to mainstream, employed surfers ranging in age from 7 to 85.
They all agreed that surf culture is distinct from anything else in the world, and the language and behavior pushes to be unique.
When a member of the audience asked how surf culture can get past negative stereotypes, the four frustrated the questioner when they jokingly responded that they do drugs. But the four are clearly living testaments to the enigmatic surf culture that wants to get past stereotypes--but still wants to be rebellious.
--Joshua Sandoval
(Photo of Kem Nunn by Glenn Koenig / Los Angeles Times)
The L.A. Times Festival of Books is for adult readers and young adult readers and children who read and like picture books -- and also for our best friends.
Julie Andrews took to the Target Children's stage on Sunday and fielded the inevitable umbrella question from the underage crowd.
Can she still fly?
"As I get older it gets harder … but sure I can!"
Andrews appeared to promote her latest children’s book, "Simeon's Gift" (written with her daughter Emma Walton Hamilton with illustrations by Gennady Spirin), and took written questions from the audience ... some of whom perhaps couldn't write yet, some of whom let their parents do the honors.
After an energetic performance by the children’s music group Doodlebops, whispers of excitement rippled through the crowd, with the names "Julie Andrews" and "Mary Poppins" used interchangeably.
With the sun beating down, sunscreen applications were of utmost importance. Andrews, herself the mother of five, spoke on endearing subjects perfect for her kiddle audience: how to walk like a princess, a nod to the famous scene in "The Princess Diaries," in which she attempts to teach a gawky Anne Hathaway how to walk. She gave a demonstration, waving included, and a humorous "how not to," slumping across the stage.
During the noonish event, Andrews impressed all by saying supercalafragalisticexplialadocious backwards. She went on to answer that yes, she does keep in touch with the "Sound of Music" children. She answered everything positively and got cheers of approval, especially from a crowd of little boys who squealed with the mention of her possible involvement in a rumored "Shrek 4" film.
Then when Deedee Doodlebop thanked Andrews for coming out, rather than quickly rushing backstage, Andrews took about 10 more questions from a row of adorable children in the very front of the stage, repeatedly saying "two more," but unable to resist responding to the polite raised hands and young inquiring minds.
Andrews was asked the definition of supercalafragalisticexplialadocious. She thought a moment, then said: "Superb, smashing, terrific …" Today's classy performance confirmed that Andrews is in fact all of that too.
Leslie Wiggins
(Photo: Children pepper Julie Andrews with questions at the Festival of Books, by Tom Politeo)
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"...
For a discussion that covered Hurricane Katrina, the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti, the Scopes Monkey trial and the life of Martin Luther King Jr., there was a surprising amount of laughter coming from the "Moments That Shaped America" panel Sunday morning.
Panelists Bruce Watson ("Sacco and Vanzetti: The Men, the Murders, and the Judgment of Mankind"), Edward Humes ("Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion, and the Battle for America’s Soul"), Michael Eric Dyson ("April 4, 1968: Martin Luther King Jr.'s Death and How It Changed America") and Douglas Brinkley ("The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast") each had his own way of keeping the audience chuckling.
Speaking to a largely white, over-50 audience, each author addressed his topics and how they related to the "moments that shaped America" -- a phrase that moderator Elizabeth Taylor (not the actress but the editor of the Chicago Tribune's magazine and books section) "maybe one of the most overused terms" in academic parlance.
The authors spoke in chronological order of their topics, starting with the execution of Saco and Vanzetti in 1927 and ending with the breaking of the levies in New Orleans on Aug. 29, 2005.
Dyson spoke about how King rates an entire month of celebration and contrasted that fact with the recent acquittal of police officers who shot and killed Sean Bell in Queens, N.Y. And Watson compared what he considered the false incarceration of Saco and Vanzetti with the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay.
The Q&A portion, though, was not as lighthearted as the discussion -- and listeners started filing out to catch another event. Questions from the audience centered on the reconciliation of religion and science, and the lack of critical thinking in current society -- at least that's what one questioner felt.
--Lauren Williams
(Photo: Bartolomeo Vanzetti, left, and Nicola Sacco from Peter Miller's 2007 documentary "Sacco and Vanzetti")
Aimee Mann and Julie Andrews? Can Coachella top that? OK, so they weren't on the same stage, but they did both appear at the L.A. Times Festival of Books on Sunday.
Aimee Mann, above, and Joe Henry with interviewer Steve Almond kicked off the second frying day of the fest with a 10:30 a.m. panel titled "The Lyrical Line: Conversation & Music."
And Julie Andrews took the children's stage at noon to talk about that very thing: the intersection of literacy and the arts. Andrews, who was introduced as Julie Andrews Edwards, talked about "Simeon's Gift," the children's book she wrote with her daughter Emma Walton Hamilton with illustrations by Gennady Spirin. A musical adaptation of the book will be performed July 18 and 19 at the Hollywood Bowl.
"I come from a culture that dreams are a part of," Kingston told the audience about the power of the unconscious imagination during a chat at Schoenberg Hall on Sunday. The novelist who lives in Oakland was awarded the Robert Kirsch Award for Lifetime Achievement on Friday night as part of the L.A. Times Book Prizes. The award honors authors with a connection to the American West whose works have made a substantial contribution to American letters.
These dreams have driven works like "Woman Warrior," and most recently "Veterans of War, Veterans of Peace." Not to be fooled by her small 5-foot frame and quiet voice, she dreams big -- and she shared a few of her visions with Times books editor David Ulin. Ulin said that despite all the Chinese mythology and imagery, he sees Kingston’s work as American.
Kingston, who is Chinese American, said: "When people say these are Chinese writings ... they are looking at the myths I write." Kingston seemed calm and downright motherly during the question-and-answer period. She said she uses mythology and stories that were passed on to her to try and capture the feeling of other myths.
"It was a myth that was already out there; I was like Columbus." Her use of Chinese mythology and dream-like writing has garnered her a reputation for changing the definition of her writing. "I never defined the genre. I just called it a book," Kingston said. "I described China like the one in our imagination."
Kingston said she follows the tradition of passing stories on orally or "talk the little story ... I wanted to see in a written language, if I can gather those powers."
I thought I'd read my program carefully, but I missed the fact that James Ellroy would be signing books at the Mystery Bookstore booth Saturday afternoon. Somehow, I ended up talking to him -- well, he was talking to my friend and I butted in, fangirl that I am.
Ellroy is all bluster and charm, more than I could possibly capture in a blog post. But I can tell you:
When I was relating what happened in a panel I'd been to earlier that day, he stopped me cold. I was not, he instructed me clearly, to use the word "like" in conversation. (Apparently, I'd been saying "and then he, like, and then, like, she..." It wasn't deliberate. I had no idea I spoke like that.) And I was not to use the word "really," especially not as a query, or the word "totally." Sloppy and improper usage make the speaker sound unintelligent. Indeed. Score one for Ellroy.
Then -- to demonstrate precise language, I suppose -- he recited most of Auden's "In Memory of W.B. Yeats." I was stunned -- was I really listening to James Ellroy recite poetry? Indeed I was.
Is criticism an elitist profession? You bet it is. And that's not necessarily a bad thing.
This afternoon, four cranky critics spoke on the "Critic's Voice" panel about their profession -- or rather the apparent demise of it. The speakers were Alex Ross of the New Yorker, Richard Schickel of Time, Albert Mobilio of Book Forum and author Nicholas Basbanes.
Inevitably, there was some of the doom and gloom that have become unavoidable when talking about the state of criticism today. But there was also a good deal of irascible contrarianism that made for a particularly lively discussion -- and offered a ray of hope for aspiring reviewers of all stripes.
In an online world glutted with opinionators, critics can cut through the white noise with the fine blade of expertise. "We spend our lives doing this," bellowed Schickel, who was in particularly fine (and boisterous) form. His argument boiled down to a simple point: Not all opinions are created equally -- e.g., the critic who spends his or her career thinking about literature usually has more valuable things to say than the anonymous Amazon power-user or random blogger.
There's no question that critics have a bad rep -- we're arrogant, out of touch, snobbish, crotchety. And of course, elitist. But aren't those the traits we want in journalists? (And, yes, we critics are journalists despite what some people -- and editors -- would have you believe.) We serve our readers best by refusing to talk down to them, which is to say by challenging with difficult and sometimes unpopular points of view.
What will the critic of tomorrow look like? Will there even be critics? I think Alex Ross provides the best prototype: an expert in his domain (classical music) who writes for a high-ish-brow publication but who also maintains a blog. He is platform agnostic; it's the ideas that count, not the medium.
The days of the public intellectual -- that's what some of us critics like to call ourselves -- may be numbered, but as the panel participants said, it's too early to say the profession is going the way of the dinosaur. Critics who can adapt will survive, which doesn't necessarily mean selling out or dumbing down what we do. As Ross has demonstrated, even critics of marginal art forms can find mainstream success and new readers.
And if I can end with my own mini-thought: What's lethal to criticism isn't elitism or the Internet or a shortage of good art; it's the critic's own lack of optimism.
-- David Ng
Photo: Alex Ross; credit: Seth Wenig / Associated Press
"Doing good police work is the most fun you'll ever have," says cop-turned-cop-novelist Joesph Wambaugh. But for those of us who lack an inclination to enter law enforcement, listening to Wambaugh's charming and frequently profane anecdotes runs a close second. (He later amended, "I have had more fun, but not since they outrageously raised the price on phone sex.")
A nonstop raconteur and something of a ham ("Aristotle said that 3,000 years ago -- then he married Jackie Onassis"), Wambaugh couldn't tell a boring story if he tried. And sitting down with the other reigning king of the American cop novel, Michael Connelly, Wambaugh was in fine form.
Serious and reserved, Connelly described his literary alter ego, detective Harry Bosch, as the offspring of Wambaugh and Raymond Chandler. "You never know," Wambaugh quipped. "At my age, I might try it."
More interesting for die-hard Bosch fans (of which I am one), Connelly revealed that in his upcoming novel, "The Brass Verdict" (due Oct. 14 from Little, Brown & Co.), his other protagonist, lawyer Mickey Haller, will cross paths with Bosch. Though they have only a passing connection in the course of the novel's central investigation, Haller will be revealed as Bosch's occasionally alluded-to stepbrother.
"The cool thing about the craft of writing," said Connelly, himself known for his generosity in advising other writers, "is that you can be a mentor from far away. Joe has been my mentor for 30 years, 25 of those before I met him."
To that end, Wambaugh repeatedly emphasized the importance of character over plot. "The best crime stories are not about how cops work on cases but about how cases work on cops," Wambaugh said. He still conducts hundreds of interviews as research for each book.
"A cop's life is anecdotes," he said. "I am not a thriller writer. I've never written about flamboyant criminal masterminds. I write about lowlifes. But sometimes a lowlife can commit a big crime." In fact, the previous night he had invited Connelly to join him in some research at a local bar. "I didn't take as many notes as I should because I had three vodkas before you arrived," Wambaugh said to Connelly.
Wambaugh also revealed that he's in negotiations with Sony to turn his "Hollywood Station" book(s) into a series of movies. He had previously tried to set up a deal with TV producer and writer David E. Kelley, but that deal fell apart because of "creative differences -- and the fact that he wouldn't let me have dinner with Mrs. Kelley," Wambaugh said, referring to Michelle Pfeiffer.
-- Elina Shatkin
Photo: Michael Connelly, left, and Joseph Wambaugh; credit: Tom Politeo
A full house of poetry lovers sat and sweated through the "Poet's Voice" panel in the deep well of UCLA's Humanities Hall this afternoon. Maybe it was the heat, but they didn't have to wait long for the fireworks.
The panel, featuring poets Eloise Klein Healy, Mark Doty, Amy Gerstler and Albert Goldbarth, took a turn for the contradictory when Goldbarth, the 60-year-old author of "Kitchen Sink: New and Selected Poems," gingerly removed his microphone from its placeholder and grinned, "This is how Mick Jagger must feel."
He was referring to the act of holding the microphone, rather than leaning forward to speak into it. The comparison proved to be apt, if unintentional.
Responding to the panel's starter topic about when and how the poet's voice is discovered, Goldbarth went on to declare that he doesn't think about such things. "I wouldn't want to be the archeologist, seismologist or cosmologist of my own writing. I think it may be the case that the question placed before this panel today is counterproductive."
Cue collective gasp; cue college student giggles.
"Writing is a private matter," Goldbarth went on. "I've already written the poems and they can answer these kinds of questions better than I can. Mark and Eloise and Amy are up on this stage right now, and between them, there are dozens of books of poetry that I urge you to go buy when you leave here. The words are there. Go read the poems; don't listen to this ... up here," he said, using a well-placed expletive.
Gore Vidal was true to form today during his Book Festival chat with Jane Smiley.
First he jabbed at the late neoconservative William Buckley by slyly hoping that "it wasn't too hot" in Buckley's final resting place. Then he jabbed at himself a bit. "I’m in a chair you see, and I have a cane," he hollered to the audience.
And with that, he veered into a long story about how one of Franklin D. Roosevelt's young aides panicked when the president's wheelchair jammed. Not sure what to do, the frightened aide quickly pushed the president into a room used to store carbon copy paper. FDR later quipped, according to Vidal: "I don’t fear assassination, no. I guess I’m the first president to be filed."
The heat-weary crowd that packed the auditorium at Royce Hall responded with hollers during the hour-and-a half discussion peppered with non sequiturs and political zingers. The 82-year-old Vidal looked every inch as weathered as his photos on the back of books from "Lincoln" to "The City and the Pillar" to "Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace." Still, he looked dapper in a navy-blue linen shirt and matching blazer.
Moderator Smiley called Vidal a man who has been reviled in every town he’s lived in, with his pronouncements about an "imperial presidency" that has "become the unfortunate lay of the land" in the post-World War II world. "Once you smash the Constitution, there's absolutely nothing to fall back on," he said.
He was asked whether he saw any future in a third party as a realistic option for America. "That requires too much thinking," Vidal quipped, concluding that he only hoped it could happen.
Smiley asked Vidal about a statement in which he called the United States a country where a dictatorship was "implicit in our beginnings." "Has no one read the Federalist Papers?" he responded. Then he invoked the words of the country's forefathers, who he said implicitly knew that "cursed is a nation that has a standing army."
Toward the end of the session, Vidal talked about movies too. He said he hated the film "There Will Be Blood." "How could a book called 'Oil' be turned into a bloody murder?" Vidal said. "I guess two more generations of kids can get out of reading Upton Sinclair." And then he just rolled his eyes.
-- Shazia Haq
Photo: Gore Vidal with the L.A. Philharmonic last year. Credit: Alex Gallardo / Los Angeles Times
On a day when the heat's pushing into the 90s, nothing sounds less appealing than a hot bowl of greasy, breaded Chinese food. Or how about a big, greasy hamburger? The food court here at the LAT Festival of Books offers a fairly typical (and fairly unappealing) array of street fair food, but if you're willing to take a short walk, you'll find the best and probably the healthiest deal on campus.
Head northeast past the FOB tents to LuValle Commons. Skip the salads, sandwiches, pastries and thick-crusted pizzas (or don't), and buy a tall (maybe 16-ounce?) cup of cold, fresh-sliced watermelon and pineapple for $3.49. Sure, that's a bit spendy for what you get, but unlike almost everything else for sale, it won't make you feel logy and bloated while waiting in line for book signers.
Head north from LuValle to the sculpture garden, where students love to take lazy afternoon naps, and relax away from the crowds. The only problem is that once you're resting on the grass, the scientific axiom about a body at rest tending to stay at rest kicks in. But it does get you that much farther away from the Not Ready for Naptime Players. (No offense, but if you don't have kids, there are few sounds more ear-curdling than "children's music.")
If you don't feel like hiking away from the FOB, recommended edibles include: the $5 cups of fresh-squeezed lemonade (very sweet but still quite tasty), the slow-roasted nuts and, of course, the churros. It's hard to go wrong with fried dough sticks coated in cinnamon and sugar.
At his midday panel, Gay Talese (shown here at a past Book Festival) spent the better part of an hour talking with Los Angeles Times writer Tim Rutten about his memoir "A Writer’s Life" and about coming up through the bustling newsroom of the mid-century New York Times.
Twenty-three years old when he started working for the New York Times, Talese described the news room of the 1950s as "an enormous open space. With no cubicles." Telephones were "the new technology" and he recounted that the first thing his editor told him was to "never use them."
Nattily dressed as always, Talese entered the room wearing a dark gray suit, red shoes and a creamy, black-ribboned hat, probably identical to the one pictured above. Sadly absent, however, were the thin-rimmed, fire engine red-colored reading glasses he’d worn to emcee Friday night’s Book Prizes at Royce Hall. It’s a safe bet that the glasses matched the shoes.
Word also circulated that Talese attended last year’s Festival of Books dressed in a full suit of white with a white straw hat, perhaps stealing a cue from the bleached-out style of Tom Wolfe.
"One thing I always had going for me was good tailoring," Talese quipped, his elbow resting on the table, cozying up to the microphone. Born into a family of Italian tailors, Talese spoke about the importance of a reporter who shows up well-dressed. "If you show up in a three-piece suit with a hat, and you look like you might have taken a bath recently, they don’t kick you out as fast."
Talese spoke about what he described as the "art of hanging out." Never one to show up with a tape recorder, he addressed the fact that a writer’s life is often concerned with keeping one's own hours even though sometimes "those hours give nothing back to you."
Much time was spent recounting the origins of Talese’s famous article for "Frank Sinatra Has a Cold." The result of four weeks spent in the Beverly Wilshire Hotel, far away from his native East Coast, Talese interviewed members of the Tommy Dorsey Band, Sinatra stand-in Johnny Delgado, Sinatra’s toupee carrier, even a mid-20s Harlan Ellison in cowboy boots; nearly everyone except Sinatra.
Sinatra, the world-famous crooner, it was said, couldn’t be interviewed because he had a cold. Now regarded as a classic of wayward reportage, Talese noted that, at the time, big waves were not made. "I didn’t get any fan mail for the piece, and I certainly never heard from Sinatra again."
Steve Erickson, it is said, has "that rare and luminous gift for reporting back from the nocturnal side of reality" -- said by no less than the elusive Thomas Pynchon. Erickson, who runs the writing program at CalArts, is a native Angeleno and often sets his novels in parallel, distorted versions of Los Angeles. Hollywood gets his unique treatment in his latest, "Zeroville." This Sunday he'll be at the Festival of Books on the "Alternative Visions" panel at 1 p.m., with Zachary Lazar, Nina Revoyr and Shelley Jackson, moderated by Times Book Editor David Ulin. Not to be missed.
Jacket Copy: In "Zeroville," your most recent novel, movies shape the way the main character perceives the world. Are there any books that do the same for you?
Steve Erickson: I'm not sure there's a difference between books that affected the way I see the world and books that influenced me as a writer. The first books I remember having an impact on me when I was a kid were L. Frank Baum's "Oz" books, which were much stranger than the movie, at once rather whimsical and really dark. Later Faulkner's novels made sense to me for the way time was never literal, the way it seemed hot-wired to memory rather than experience, and Henry Miller's early work was revelatory for the way it so willfully assaulted all the formalist notions about literature that get taught in English classes. There was something very punk about Miller's juxtaposition of the transcendent with the primal, the sky with the gutter. When I was 25, during one scorching summer when I was house-sitting for a buddy, I read Emily Bronte's "Wuthering Heights." Dostoevsky is considered the first "modern" writer, but I vote to Emily -- one of the most subversive novels ever made, with a sexually obsessed main character whose object of desire is a dead woman, an utterly unreliable narrator, a structure built on a psychological interior that shifts like a house with moving walls. I had fever dreams that whole month. Gabriel Garcia Marquez influenced me for the way he applied Faulkner to his own landscape. All of these books, I think, were most influential in that, as far-flung as they were, there was something in them I instinctively recognized, something about them that confirmed what I already knew about the world but didn't know I knew.
JC: Los Angeles is often at the center of your books. How do you connect with the city physically -- do you stay in your car, or go to the beach, or take public transportation? Or does L.A. come to life more powerfully for you as an idea?
SE: Uh, yes, in answer to your second question. I rode the buses in L.A. until I was in my early 30s, and there's something about driving or riding through L.A. after sundown, when the Utopian city goes into hiding and another city comes out, more Doors and less Byrds. I think that's when the L.A.-as-idea that you mention comes to life, which is an L.A. that's constantly in transformation, a mind-scape of moving parts, which certainly is the L.A. I've written about. So pretty much everything you've mentioned in your question is applicable, except the beach part. Don't do beach. The ocean, that's something else -- that's a big presence for me. But the beach is very beachy. JC: What are you looking forward to at this year's Festival of Books?
SE: Well, for a writer the Book Festival is interesting because you bump into all these other writers whose work you know, whose names you know, and you have a chance to put a person with the name and the work. There's something so oxymoronic about writers who are antisocial by nature -- which is how they became writers -- socializing on a mass scale that it can't help being fascinating, and often I get to see people I haven't seen in a long time.
JC: And where's a great place in L.A. to grab lunch, and why?
SE: Musso & Frank [Grill] is a great place to lunch because it's Old Hollywood and you can get a martini and steak and think about all the writers from Fitzgerald to Chandler who used to get sloshed there. Haven't been in a long time, but Yuca's out in Silver Lake used to serve the best pork tacos in the city and I'm assuming that hasn't changed. I like the Border Grill in Santa Monica because they're the only people in L.A. who make a better margarita than I do (I'm realizing this is becoming a very liquid recommendation), and Serenata across the street has even better food for those who are actually into the eating thing. Actually, for those who are actually into the eating thing, there's also Angelini on Beverly Boulevard. If you go with Michael Silverblatt, they have a table in the corner for him, the way Ma Maison used to for Orson Welles.
Tommy Lasorda hasn’t managed a baseball game since he coached the United States team to the gold medal in the 2000 Summer Olympics, but when he talks, you get the feeling that he still thinks he’s in the dugout. At the Festival of Books today at UCLA, it didn’t take long for Lasorda to lean forward in his chair and treat the entire front row as if they were the players on one of his Dodger teams.
The 80-year-old former Dodger manager was interviewed by Mark Langill, the team historian, who has authored several books about the Dodgers. Langil didn’t have to do much to work up the former Dodger manager because the audience did it for him, starting with unison of claps while they grew impatient for the discussion to start.
After he received a standing ovation from a crowd filled with Dodger caps and T-shirts, he regaled the crowd with seldom-told stories about his playing and coaching career. Like his first game as a manager with the Dodgers in the minor leagues, and when he got his first bench-clearing brawl out of the way on his first day on the job.
Then there was the time he was making the transition from third base coach to manager, and announcer Vin Scully asked him if he was worried about replacing the legendary Walter Alston. In typical Lasorda humor, he told Scully he was worried about the person who had to replace him as the third base coach.
Lasorda ended his talk by lowering his boisterous voice, leaning forward in his chair and urging the crowd to let kids enjoy their Little League days because they'll learn lessons that will serve them well in adulthood.
Shelley Jackson, David Kipen, Lee Siegel, James Marcus
No matter how hot it might get later, it was still cool this morning. I hustled off to the panel on technology -- getting lost along the way -- and arrived to discover moderator David Kipen sitting on the stage, despite it being a bit early, soliciting questions from the audience. Eventually one woman piped up and admitted she was panelist Shelley Jackson. She's got green bangs. I'm cool with that.
They talked for a while about her works, which include the hard-to-describe novel "Half Life" and the "skin project," a novel in tattoos.
The two other panelists showed up late. Lee Siegel has written a book that Kipen calls "a critique of the Internet." Siegel explained that he saw the Internet as something to be stopped -- "I want to be that figure between you and the tank in Tiananmen Square." His eyes kept returning to me, the only person in the room typing on a laptop. I guess that made me the tank.
The final panelist, James Marcus, has accomplished much, but the James Marcus in Resident Evil is not him. He is the the voice of the-Internet-isn't-so-bad on the panel, and said he goes up and down on its possibilities. Which seems measured and sane. The conversation moved forward interestingly.
But then Siegel was openly critical of the anonymity of posting on the Internet, which is strange ground, if you know his history. The conversation turned as the idea of what can be communicated through the written word was debated, heatedly. Jackson said communicating through words is the business of writers. "Surely you distinguish between blogging and writing," Siegel said, raising his voice. A murmur swept through the audience. I think a couple of people walked out.
But I was typing, and wasn't watching closely. Soon things calmed down. Kipen cooled off the panelists and brought up the Kindle, Siegel interrupted to ask if you can electrocute yourself if you drop a Kindle while reading it while indisposed. Oh no, another panel going into the toilet. (And then resurrecting itself in the end.)
The ceremony has just ended at UCLA's Royce Hall, and the winners of the 2007 L.A. Times Book Prizes are:
Novelist Maxine Hong Kingston won this year's Robert Kirsch Award, which honors a living author with a connection to the American West whose works have made a substantial contribution to American letters.
Biography: Simon Sebag Montefiore, "Young Stalin"
Current Interest: Elizabeth D. Samet, "Soldier's Heart: Reading Literature Through Peace and War at West Point"
Fiction: Andrew O’Hagan, "Be Near Me"
Art Seidenbaum Award for First Fiction:Dinaw Mengestu, "The Beautiful Things That Heaven Bears"
History:Tim Weiner, "Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA"
Mystery/Thriller: Karin Fossum (translated by Charlotte Barslund), "The Indian Bride"
Poetry: Stanley Plumly, "Old Heart: Poems"
Science & Technology: Douglas Hofstadter, "I Am a Strange Loop"
Young Adult Fiction: Philip Reeve, "A Darkling Plain (The Hungry City Chronicles)"
After writing a collection of essays about living (not-so-large) in New York, and a novel about living (differently) in Nebraska, Meghan Daum wound up -- where else? -- in Los Angeles. Now a columnist for the L.A. Times, she will be on the Festival of Books panel "Nonfiction: Laughing Between the Lines" on Sunday at 2:30 p.m.
Jacket Copy:Your memoir and novel both evoke a clear sense of place. Now that you've lived in Los Angeles for a while, what do you think of the city? How do you talk about it to your friends back in Nebraska?
Meghan Daum: I've lived in Los Angeles for about six years now and I love it. Sometimes I even have an irrational exuberance about it. I love landing at LAX. I love driving on the freeway. I love the magic hour light and the air after it rains (I realize I may have just unintentionally quoted a '70s soft rock song.) What I love most is my neighborhood in the hills of Echo Park. I bought a house here four years ago and I couldn't possibly have picked a better spot.
That said, I'm very loyal to Nebraska and I miss it all the time. I have many Nebraska friends I talk to regularly. I'm also going there in June to teach a master's class in nonfiction writing at the Nebraska Summer Writers Conference in Lincoln.
JC:Can you tell us about your latest project?
MD: My next project? It's always my next L.A. Times column. But I'm also working on a book about real estate and identity, which will be out from Knopf in 2010.
JC: What books have you read lately that got you energized, in either a good way or a bad way?
MD: I read and loved Katha Pollitt's "Learning to Drive." It's a beautifully written, honest, rigorous and self-deprecatingly hilarious book that too many people associated solely with one controversial essay. There's so much more to it than that. She's equal parts poet and a social critic. You don't see that too often.
JC: What are you looking forward to at the Festival of Books?
MD: The chocolate fondue fountain at the reception after the awards ceremony.
JC: Why do you think they schedule the Festival of Books for the same weekend as Coachella, year after year?
MD: Same weekend as Coachella? I didn't even realize. That is how old and out of it I am. But if you told me it conflicted with the Police reunion tour I'd say "an outrage!"
JC: And finally, what's a great place in L.A. to grab a beer or cocktail, and why?
MD: Best place in L.A. for a beer or cocktail? My patio! Alternatively, the lounge of Taix in Echo Park. Also, let's face it, the lobby of the Chateau Marmont. But only if you're feeling OK about your hair.
But across town at USC, elementary school students at the 32nd Street/USC Performing Arts Magnet school (perhaps winners in waiting?) will gather to read some of their original poetry.
OK, so they had some help from writers Cecilia Woloch and Aimee Bender; it's still a great opportunity to hear what's on the minds of L.A.'s fourth-graders.
Denise Hamilton writes bestselling crime novels featuring reporter EveDiamond ("Prisoner of Memory," "Savage Garden"), although her next book (due July 1) is going in a new direction (back in time -- see below). Hamilton also is the editor of the anthology "Los Angeles Noir." At the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, you'll find her in conversation with Harlan Coben on Saturday at 2:30 p.m.
Jacket Copy: Your upcoming novel, "The Last Embrace," is set in 1949 and, like Raymond Chandler's mysteries, begins with the search for a missing person who soon turns up dead. Was Chandler a reference for you? Was it fun to enter that world?
Denise Hamilton: Chandler's shadow looms large, sure, but my postwar L.A. is a more optimistic place than his, and the protagonist is a dame -- a former OSS spy -- so it's filtered through a girlie lens. The book is edgy and twisty, with shadows and secrets, but I also wanted to write about friendships between actresses in a Hollywood boarding house and the Golden Age of stop-motion animation. 1949 was a fascinating, transitional time: The euphoria of winning WWII is fading, the Cold War and the fears of nuclear annihilation are upon us, the Hollywood Blacklist is stirring, the Golden Age of Hollywood is ending, TV is brand new and -- perhaps most important for my novel -- the women who fought and held jobs and experienced independence have been laid off, decommissioned and are heading for the suburbs and the conservative 1950s, which created some interesting dynamics.
JC: Are there any places in Los Angeles that, for you, evoke 1949? Did you visit them when you were writing?
DH: Alas, so many of the places that evoked 1949 are gone. I'm talking of places like Ciro's, the Cocoanut Grove at the Ambassador Hotel, the Garden of Allah, the Dunbar Hotel on Central Avenue, Slapsie Maxie's (said to be owned by gangster Mickey Cohen), the ubiquitous lunch counters and soda fountains throughout the city. Places that remain like Musso & Frank's, the Pacific Dining Car and the Formosa Café have almost become clichés, so I wanted to stay away from them. I did visit the Egyptian Theater and the Pig 'n' Whistle next door, an old Hollywood eatery/watering hole where I set a scene. Some of the apartment buildings and hotels around MacArthur and Lafayette Park still hearken back to 1949. The Valley was mostly agricultural then, but reading Kevin Roderick's book, "The San Fernando Valley, America's Suburb," helped me evoke a mood, as did many oral histories and memoirs of the era.
I also drove around Hollywood at odd hours a lot, just looking at the streets, the houses, the odd triangular buildings and alleys where the electric cars used to travel. The old Barlow Respiratory Hospital in Echo Park/Elysian Park is also old L.A., and I set a scene there.
My biggest disappointment was that the Hollywood Hotel is gone. It was a sprawling Spanish-Deco hotel at Hollywood and Highland boulevards that was built in the early 20th century by and for actors because they weren't welcomed at the city's posh hotels. Many actors kept permanent suites there. It was lush, with tiled pools, archways, tropical plants. The dining room walls had stars with actors' names that hung above the actors' favorite tables. If the Hollywood Hotel were still around today, it would be a shrine. But it was torn down in the '60s, and we all know what's at that intersection now!
JC: Will there be another "Los Angeles Noir" collection?
DH: I hope there will be, but the initial "Los Angeles Noir" is still going strong, so I haven't yet discussed it with Johnny Temple, publisher of Akashic Books, which does the city noir series. If it follows the pattern of the "Brooklyn Noir" series, the next collection might comprise classic L.A. noir tales for which we've gotten reprint rights, then a volume of true L.A. crime stories. At any rate, there's no shortage of material and talented writers here. The hard part is winnowing it down to 16 or 17 selections.
JC: What parts of the Festival of Books are you looking forward to?
DH: I tend to be very isolated, reclusive and almost antisocial when I'm in writing mode. The festival is when I come blinking, lemur-like, into the light. It's like the L.A. Times throws a big party, and I get to catch up with many author friends and go all fan-girl on authors I admire but have never met before. This year I'd love to meet Sarah Shun-lien Bynum and Kelly Link.
JC: And finally, where would you go in L.A. for a 1949-style dinner? Or a 1949-style burger?
When the moderator of of the Festival of Books panel "Magic in Everyday Life" asked author 
Finishing a novel produces different feelings in different writers, or so three mighty practitioners of the form said Sunday at the L.A. Times Festival of Books.
Was it the heat or was it the subject at the "Literary California" panel on Sunday?
Walter Mosley came onstage with KCRW’s 
If there was a literary equivalent of the youth vote, it was on hand in the basement of the Fowler Auditorium on Sunday at the festival's "Unconventional Voices" panel. 
Maxine Hong Kingston was dreamy.
I thought I'd read my program carefully, but I missed the fact that James Ellroy would be signing books at the 
Is criticism an elitist profession? You bet it is. And that's not necessarily a bad thing.
A full house of poetry lovers sat and sweated through the "Poet's Voice" panel in the deep well of UCLA's Humanities Hall this afternoon. Maybe it was the heat, but they didn't have to wait long for the fireworks. 
He was referring to the act of holding the microphone, rather than leaning forward to speak into it. The comparison proved to be apt, if unintentional.
After writing a collection of essays about living (not-so-large) in New York, and a novel about living (differently) in Nebraska, 
Denise Hamilton writes bestselling crime novels featuring reporter Eve Diamond ("Prisoner of Memory," "Savage Garden"), although her next book (due July 1) is going in a new direction (back in time -- see below). 
Book Editor, Los Angeles Times
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Assistant Editor, Los Angeles Times Book Review
Assistant Editor, Los Angeles Times Book Review
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