So, You’re One of Those…

Tommy Trojan - USC mascot -
surveys readers at Festival of Books

In the summer before I turned ten director George Pal cast a novice Australian actor named Rod Taylor as George, the time traveler in the screen adaptation of H.G. Wells classic novel, The Time Machine. George travels from his place in time at the turn of the twentieth century past our place at the start of the twenty-first and a few thousand years further to find the eloi. Looking very much like a utopian world with all the residents basking in the sun, wearing white fabric that billows in the wind, the most memorable scene is when George discovers they have a room full of books but when he reaches to take one off the shelf it disintegrates, and when he reaches further for books about this society all of them turn to dust.

As brilliant as Wells was I guess he just failed to see electronic books with Kindles and iPads as an alternative to the leather bound paper variety common to the two centuries he straddled. Certainly, I never saw it coming. With television and cinema growing at the speed of light more and more people I knew were heard to say when a new book arrived in the bookstores that they would simply wait until the movie came out, or failing that, until it became a weekly television series. Not too surprisingly the bookstore has gone the way of the milkman and dials on phones.

An actual reader talking to an actual writer.

A couple years before I arrived in Southern California, the Los Angles Times and USC decided to put together an annual event called The Festival of Books. When a few friends who didn’t always wait for the latest novel to become a hit movie found out I still read books, they recommended I attend. Maybe I wanted to be as cool as those who read this blog, or I just didn’t want people thinking, so you’re one of those. Then, this year it dawned on me; I don’t have to be regarded as one of those because now I’m a writer. All right, so my novel hasn’t been published, yet. My writing teacher at the University of Wisconsin told me I was a writer when I received my first rejection; I’ve received plenty of those…so, now if anyone asks I’m one of those.

Blurry photo (taken with my iPhone)
 of Pat Morrison (with hat) moderating
talk with Joyce Carol Oates

Clear photo of author, writer and teacher
Joyce Carol Oates

Last Sunday, I was unable to convince Debbie, who reads many more books than I do, to get up and go with me, but I did manage to get a seat to hear Joyce Carol Oates, one of the most prolific authors who, as Pat Morrison who moderated the presentation reminded us, is constantly on everyone’s best seller list. While authors are generally known for being dull speakers, Oates turned out to be quite witty and lively. She claimed her latest novel, which is set in 1905 near the Princeton campus had a president at the time who boasted the school offered no new ideas. It probably would have horrified parents to realize the vanguard of polite society would allow women on their campus in only slightly more than a half century. Worse still would be the nightmarish thought that a wide-eyed liberal thinker, such as Oates, would be teaching their a few years later.

David Francis talks with Elinor Lipman
(photo taken with my iPhone)

Before walking around the USC campus and surveying the tents filled with vendors and exhibitors of a wide range of books and literary materials, I attended a panel discussion moderated by author David Francis. The writers: Elinor Lipman, Christina Schwarz, Lisa See and Tatjana Soli, talked about their books, what it was like to be a writer and an author, and their process. When I got up to leave I realized, yep, I’m one of those.