Book Report

I have now learned after two years in a row of attending the LA Times Festival of Books that it is a safe bet that the weather will always be unseasonably warm the weekend of the event. It was really, really hot on the UCLA campus with the sun beating down on the miles of vendors’ booths, and my friend and I gave out sooner than we would have liked on Saturday and never made it back at all on Sunday. She has written a novel and we both went mostly to see if we could do any research on possible publishers for our respective works, but the grounds were such a jumble that we did not get far in that regard. Note to festival organizers: It would really be helpful if you would group the vendors’ booths by category so that it’s easier to find all of the poetry publishers, the book agents, etc. The layout seemed more organized last year, but it was a total mess this time, with no apparent rhyme or reason to where anyone was placed. We spent a lot of our afternoon just wandering around like desert mystics looking for God, which was not entirely unenjoyable, but also wasn’t terribly productive. We attended two scheduled events, including a panel discussion about poetic voice, and a presentation of some selected readings from PEN fellowship winners. Neither of those was really captivating, so we hit the booths to see what we could learn. I did pick up a few publishers’ catalogs and a literary journal that looked interesting, and we hit the stalls with free religious books. We scored free Korans, a huge pile of Buddhist books and free research versions of the Old Testament. My friend and I are both into religion and theology, so we were pretty happy. We missed my other friend James; he got there early, and the heat was just too much for him by early afternoon. After a few hours baking in it, and the promised Taco Bell pit stop, we decided to call it a day for the fair. My friend is part Iranian in heritage and she wanted to visit Persian bookstores on Westwood Blvd. We fueled ourselves with Persian ice cream (orange blossom, yum!) and went to three stores. The most useful one for us was Ketab, a large store with texts in Arabic, Farsi and a few in English. I didn’t see those at first and mostly just roamed around looking at the pretty Persian art in the store, but I found the English section in the back. I love to study Sufism and I found a number of books that were really interesting. I pulled one off the shelf, called The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism by Henry Corbin (http://www.amazon.com/Man-Light-Iranian-Sufism/dp/0930872487/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1209413486&sr=8-1). I held it up and showed my friend, and she freaked out – it turns out she has been looking for that book for a really long time. Yaay, me! She bought a copy and so did I. It’s a theological analysis that incorporates alchemy, Sufism and the development of the highest Self of man, all topics I groove on constantly. We went to two more Persian bookstores, but they were much smaller, so we decided to call it quits and went home. It was a day of wandering; we ended up roaming about trying to figure out where to eat, and ended up at a hole in the wall kimchi house on the western edge of Koreatown. We were the only non-Korean people there, and when we walked up to the door and asked for a table, they seemed astonished that we wanted to eat there. The waitress’ attitude was sort of like, “Well, ok, if you really want to, we won’t stop you.” They dug out one dusty old menu with English translations and we perused it. I decided to skip the spicy goat bowl and the funky octopus. I am adventurous with many things, but not always so much with food. I like spices, but not crazy hot things or weird rubbery textures that seem like a cooked alien or organ meats or things that are just downright macabre, like fish with the eyes still in. I ordered spicy potato soup, which sounds vegetarian, right? - but when it came, it had a heap of bones in it, beef as far as I could tell, though I am really not sure. I am not a vegetarian, but I wasn’t in the mood for meat and don’t really eat red meat or pork anyway, so I just spooned out the potatoes and broth and left the bones in the bowl. Dealt with like that, it was really good. They had asked us how spicy we wanted our food, and I think we got the baby spice for sissy Westerners, and it was still plenty hot. I am not a natural at chopsticks, but I was motoring through my sticky rice and feeling proud of myself, when the Korean proprietor came over and asked compassionately if I wanted a fork. I said no, and he seemed surprised. He kind of shrugged and walked away, and I was a little sad. I guess what felt like progress to me looked like hopeless flailing to him. My friend was mesmerized by the goofy ballroom dancing shown on the big screen TV. I was mesmerized by how tired I was. We ate a lot of food, and went home and chatted until about midnight, when I finally had to pack it in. I had been running around since 8 am and I was just beat. We were still planning to get up early the next day and head over for more panel discussions, but after a big breakfast, we never made it out of the house until early afternoon, and even then not to the festival. We were still sunburned, bug-bitten and worn out, and we just got some soda and sat around and talked some more. My housemate’s friend stopped by and joined us on the back patio, and we all had a fun, relaxed conversation. My friend also shared some online Arab culture with me, including pictures like I have never seen in my life before – they were taken inside the Ka’aba! I did not know anyone could go in there except the very highest imams or shaykhs, and I never would have dreamed they would let anyone take photos of it, since Islamic culture is often strict about representational images. The pictures were amazing. There are footprints that are said to belong to Abraham in the interior of the shrine, with a lovely green silk prayer pillow set in front of them. There were also pictures of the men who make the black draperies embroidered with Koranic verses that hang on the outside of the building. We were happy to see that the wheelchair-bound were abundantly represented in the employees engaged in that undertaking – way to create jobs for the disabled! That seems like a perfect embodiment of the ideal of Muslim charity and compassion. My friend had to leave around 2 pm to avoid traffic going back to Orange County, so I saw her off, greeted my roommate returning from Coachella, and then took a two-hour nap.

Overall, the book festival was another publishing event that did not entirely give me what I was looking for, but I had a great time with my friend, and it always encourages me to see so many people come out on a hot day for books. If I do self-publish, I may try to rent a small stall there next year. An audience of twenty thousand book lovers is an audience I want to reach. And I am pleased with the progress I made by using this event as a goal to finish another book draft. I am going to try to complete the current readthrough by the end of the month, and make the additional changes. Then I will read it yet again and see what I think.