Jo-Ann Mapson

An Oasis in Los Angeles:
Part One of a Two-Part Report from the LA Time Festival of Books

Every year on the last weekend in April, the Los Angeles Times Book Festival is held on the UCLA campus. Unless I'm on book tour, I go. I tell everyone it's because of publicity opportunities, and the chance to expand my mind. But the truth is, I go for the gossip, the star sightings, the VIP tag, and the chance to spend an entire day feeling like writing books is worthy of a festival. It's Writer's Day! Where are the balloons and party favors? Who gets first crack at the piñata?

The basic itinerary is that when the writer checks in, she is given a tote bag with a huge ceramic coffee mug bearing the Festival's logo, some bookmarks, and the all-important VIP tag which hangs on a chain like a rapper's necklace. It's not like Oscar night, alas, with fancy gowns and diamonds from Harry Winston's, but then writers aren't all snappy and gorgeous like actors must be. We eat cookies for inspiration. Working out for us is trudging to the mailbox to see if any checks have arrived.

You're supposed to wait around until it's time for your panel. Waiting can be done anywhere, and UCLA is a beautiful, park-like campus, but I prefer the inner sanctum of the Green Room. which is reserved for writers only. No press allowed! They have their own room where I imagine they crack the bones of new writers with their oversized molars and suck out the marrow. Well, not really. Just the ones who like to write mean reviews. Who really ought to think about karma.

Back to the Green Room. Linen-covered tables offer cornucopias of fresh fruit, imported cheeses, breads, sandwiches, salads, desserts, and so on. It's a tad ironic, due to the fact that light eating is a California mandate. The coolers filled with soft drinks never have enough Diet Coke, so I sometimes bring my own. Generally there are chairs and couches to sit on, though last year there was a distinct lack of seating-maybe they wanted us to mingle. As a rule writers aren't great minglers. We do excel at eavesdropping. There's a patio off the Green Room, but for some reason it's always cold there, in the shade.

Checking out the scene is my favorite perk. New York editors are easy to spot because they are incredibly thin and dress in black. LA Times Book Review Editor-in Chief Steve Wasserman is hard to miss in his Tom Wolfish ice cream suit. There are writers I'd know anywhere-Wanda Coleman, California's poetry groundbreaker, looking as regal as a queen in her braids and bright colors. I remember the first time I read a Coleman poem, how it filled my heart with pride and passion. I followed her rise as a writer and cheered her all the way. It never occurred to me that the day would come when I would be the same room with her, having reached designated writer status. Anyway, when I see her, I have to give her a hug for inspiring me all these years.

Television celebrities go to the Bookfest to promote their diet and lifestyle books, such as Taxi's Marilu Henner, whose clothes are perfect and tiny, as is her body. In fact, even her feet look great. Her children weigh more than she does. No lie. Cybil Sheppard once passed through, surrounded by security so all that was visible was the top of her "I'm worth it" L'oreal blond head. Remember when she wore tennis shoes to the Oscars and that was a big deal? Now it's Manolo Blahniks with spiky heels and dagger toes. Speaking of tennis shoes, my puppy Henry woke me up this morning with my chewed up Reebok in his mouth. He stood on my chest and wagged his tail, looking so proud that I couldn't yell at him, particularly since the last time I wore those shoes was five years ago.

My favorite famous people spied at Bookfest last year were the hip-hop singers dressed in outfits that looked like they'd jumped off the page of a Dr. Seuss book. How amazing the world would be if we dressed like that. Imagine George Bush in a Cat-in-the-hat chapeau. I'm sure that would be the end of this crazy war with Iraq business. One year I chatted with Malachy McCourt, brother of Frank of Angela's Ashes fame while we waited for our panels. It was raining. Malachy's memoirs are funnier than his brother's. Twenty-some years ago he was on a soap opera called "Ryan's Hope" that featured an Irish Catholic family in New York City. I watched it from episode one. He told me it was too smart a program for network TV. He was right.

But mostly there are writers that only other writers will recognize. I try to peer unobtrusively at their nametags and match faces with books. Was the bearded guy Salman Rushdie? What if the nondescript old man fishing in the beverage cooler is really J.D. Salinger? And then Isabel Allende walks through, or more accurately, she seems to glide with grace and elegance and good writing all in one package, and I'm instantly jealous. If I stick around long enough I can make myself feel really second-rate.

The Book Festival is much more than star sightings and name-dropping. There are acres of rows of booths set up from various bookstores and publishers. I like to stop and say hi to my friends John and Susan Daniel of Daniel & Daniel Publishers in Santa Barbara, California. And check out the plein-air bookstores for something new to read, some writer I haven't heard of and the bookseller is excited about. If the sun's out, I'll walk through Publisher's Row, and buy a Dove bar and try to eat it without getting chocolate on my black, stretchy travel clothes. The year it rained, there were mad dashes from building to building. Rain in California is cause for celebration, so tempers remained cheery. I love umbrellas, and have worn several out. One favorite blue umbrella had a duck's head, but now I'm using my Celexa (anti-depressant) drug company promo umbrella I bought on E-bay.

Author panels run all day, ranging from mid-list writers like me to heavy hitters like Ernest Gaines. My VIP pass gets a guest and me into any panel I want to see, whether it's sold out or standing room only. Then there's the Poetry Stage, where I once sat and listened to Jim Harrison read his work. He was just as grizzly and politely spoken as I'd imagined. Above his signature, he drew a rooster inside the book I bought. I teach his novellas in the MFA Program, and he's one of my favorite male writers, but I still couldn't introduce myself as a fellow scribe.

By the time my panel rolls around, I'm anxious and worried I might have to pee in the middle of things. I get there early and stand backstage feeling like a fake. My panels have run the gamut from writing about the West, Why We Love Cowboys, Family Life, Writing Love and Sex, and several times simply called "The Art of Fiction." This year I'm on one called "Survival Fiction," which I pray doesn't involve eating spiders and immune challenges and that Jeff Probst guy who always looks like he just stepped out of the salon while the contestants look dehydrated and stinky. Is it really worth a million dollars to eat a grub and get bitten by bugs? I don't know about the world these days.

Sometimes I've been a regular little chatterbox; other times I stayed quiet. Last year I was very bad and when asked what it is I loved about cowboys, I said, "Nothing much. Too many of them are cruel, drunks, and mean to animals." Sara Davidson was the moderator, and she responded, "Another myth shattered."

But the most memorable panel I was on included Janet Fitch, author of White Oleander, a book that was a bestseller, an Oprah pick, and most recently, a major motion picture. Liz Hailey moderated. Amy Ephron was there, and I forget who else. When it came to the Q&A, a reader accused Lily (from The Wilder Sisters), of being a slut. If someone had said that to me one on one, I probably would have laughed. Here, in an auditorium full of readers, I tried valiantly to defend my character's healthy appetite. Lily? A slut? I wanted to shield my character from harsh words and judgments. No matter how flawed they are, I love them all. So of course who should walk in while I'm stumbling over my words but Oprah.

My power of speech seemed to evaporate. When people began to notice, the panel fell to pieces. I knew she was there to see her old pal Janet, and that my moment to make a good impression was adios big time. Nevertheless, I made myself shake her hand, and thank her for her book club (before that dopey Jonathon Franzen went and wrecked it for us). Oprah didn't ask me to be on her show, but I did get to act as a human shield as she made her way through the crowd of autograph seekers, one small hand against my back. It must truly suck to not be able to go out in public without everyone picking on you. But I bet it sucks a lot less than being on Survivor.

In the old days, writers had the Algonquin round table in New York City. It seemed like they all knew each other, and behaved nicely. I'm sure they were petty and jealous from time to time, but there were just so darn fewer of them, they had to know each other. Today, as my friend Wilton Barnhardt so eloquently puts it, "You can't throw a rock in New Mexico without hitting a writer." The same holds true of LA, and even Anchorage, to a certain extent. Last week Bret Lott was up as a visiting writer, and there were writers crawling out of the woodwork to speak to him. Well, it is a lonely business. And somehow we all believe the other writer is the one with the magic juju, the answers, and the truth.

My truth is that going to the Book Festival has allowed me to meet terrific writers, people whose books I've spent many an intimate hour with. They include: Gretel Erlich, Kent Haruf, Leslie Marmon Silko, Whitney Otto, Ernest Gaines, Susan Minot, and others mentioned above. They won't remember me introducing myself, but what do I care, so long as they keep writing books I can read? The Book Festival is a desert oasis, two days at a spa for the psyche, a warm wind blowing through the sacred halls of education. It leaves me refreshed before I head back into what sometimes feels like the desert of my everyday writing life.

Right now in Alaska it's a whopping minus two degrees-a cold front has moved in. There isn't any snow, but that could change. From now until I leave for the Festival, I'm reading graduating students' thesis manuscripts, teaching my classes, and trying to make my rewrite deadline of April 1 on Good-bye, Earl. Now and then when I look out the window, I spy green grass under the winter browns, and I think, soon, California, palm trees and camels, and that VIP tag.

More later,
Jo-Ann

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