Hoping to share a unique experience with a good friend and Steinbeck admirer who was in for the weekend from Los Angeles, my husband and I took him to The Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies. Housed in the Martin Luther King library on the campus of San Jose State University the center is open most days. Having already visited the center in the past for readings, I endeavored to experience this place anew.

My own experience during past visits to this Steinbeck sanctuary included introductions to emerging authors and poets as well as a brief handshake with Steinbeck’s son, Thomas. This visit was one of discovery compelled by my desire to know more about the man so many admire.

Getting to know an author is a complex, involved business. Reading works of literature, poetry or commentary can’t quite give a reader the full understanding of the person. The works will never fully show the author’s method of writing nor the instrument or influences used in the craft.

Walking up to a side table, I noticed a ream of paper sitting there for anyone to pick up and review. Curiosity getting the better part of me, I picked up the stack of paper as the docent walked over to describe the item I was holding. The long, legal sized papers were copies of Steinbeck manuscripts. Holding them up to read, I noted for the first time that John Steinbeck had minute and scribbled penmanship, practically illegible to the untrained eye. The pages are chock full of line after line of minuscule, quickly written prose. Paper was scarce when Steinbeck wrote so he literally filled pages with words creating his masterful stories, allowing only a slight margin on his work pages. In addition, I am told that he wrote in pencil, never pen.

The center is modest in size with two small offices in the corner and a visitor desk welcoming inquiries. High windows, allowing the warming California sunshine into the room also providing ample light for reading and exploring the space. A quiet place, with its worktables, colorful posters and broad bookshelves housing the largest collection of first edition, John Steinbeck works. The collection of books, is augmented by thousands of related materials such as personal letters, photographs, original manuscripts and even a few of the author’s own pencils, giving this archival collection a singularly refined focus.

We are shown by the docent, Steinbeck family pictures as well as pictures prepared by the publisher. Studio posters are available for study as they tout a movie based on the various books. Steinbeck is, after all, an American classic.

A Steinbeck enthusiast would have to make the pilgrimage to this place in order to appreciate the depth of these collected works and artifacts.

The Martha Heasley Cox Center for Steinbeck Studies

San Jose State University

Room 590, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Library

San Jose, CA 95192 0202

T:  408.808.2067

Joyce’s huge masterpiece traces one day from beginning to end, June 16, 1904.  Hence, today, and every June 16th, is Bloomsday.  Marked by celebrations worldwide (check out the James Joyce Center for the Dublin extravaganzas), we can all participate regardless of our location.  My favorites:

• Follow @11ysses on Twitter for blasts of Ulysses.  No worries, the entire book hasn’t been dismantled into 140 character segments.  Volunteers from around the world took a section of the book and creatively condensed it into 4 to 6 twitter blasts which are being sent out in 15 minute increments.  It’s kind of technology meets the Reader’s Digest Condensed Version of Ulysses.
• Listen to an excerpted reading of Ulysses on Radio Bloomsbury, broadcasts can be heard in LA on KPFK starting at 7PM Pacific Time.
• In Los Angeles, attend the Bloomsday event at the Hammer about the women of Ulysses, both the fictional characters and the women in Joyce’s life.

Want to know more?  On September 8th, Literary Affairs will be hosting a master class on Ulysses, watch the website for details.

Happy Bloomsday!

One of my favorite examples of customers supporting their local independent bookstore, and it doesn’t hurt that the customer is Tom Hanks!  Fundraisers with unique events are a wonderful and fun way to celebrate reading, meet fellow reader, and support your local independent bookstore.  Katie at Village Books asked to spread the word about this event, I think it’s sure to be a wonderful experience for everyone.

Palisades Village Book Friends*

invites you to a special screening of

You’ve Got Mail

(You know, the one where the little independent bookstore goes out of business?)

with two-time Academy Award winner

TOM HANKS

Tuesday, May 24

Aero Theater

1328 Montana Ave, Santa Monica

Screening begins at 7:30 PM

$250 - includes a wine and hors d’oeuvres reception with Tom Hanks from 6:00 – 7:00 PM, reserved seating at the film, and the post-screening Q&A with Tom Hanks

$100 ($25 for students) – includes refreshments, the screening, and the Q&A with Tom Hanks afterwards. Doors open at 6:30 PM.  (There is a special deal for authors, so contact Katie at katie@pavillagebooks.com by Sunday night to take advantage of it and be included in the program.)

Seating is limited, so buy your tickets today! Tickets sold at the door will be $125!

Tickets can be purchased at Village Books, 1049 Swarthmore Avenue.  Or, send a check payable to Palisades Village Book Friends* to PVBF, P.O. Box 1553, Pacific Palisades, CA 90272.  Tickets will be held at Will Call on the night of the event.  All contributions to PVBF* for this event are tax-deductible. For more information, go to www.palivillagebooks.com Or call Ros Wolf at 310-612-6079 or 310-454-0747

If you can’t make it, but still want to support this special event and very worthy cause, please consider making a tax-deductible gift:

Caldecott Medal – $50  Newbery Medal – $100  Booker Prize – $250  Pulitzer Prize – $500  Nobel Prize – $ _______________(other)

*Palisades Village Book Friends is a non-profit 501 (c)(3) organization formed to promote and support literary events in our community and to ensure the continuation of the tradition started by Village Books of author readings, book signings and other literary events. All donations are tax-deductible to the extent permitted by law.

Thursday, April 28th – The Pale King:  Monologues from an Unfinished Novel

PEN USA (one of my favorite organizations) will host a directed reading of parts of the novel starring Hollywood actors and actresses.  The  perfect way to celebrate the publication of David Foster Wallace’s last book.

Friday, April 29th and Saturday, April 30th – Expressing Motherhood

A cozy show of writers sharing their stories and songs about parenting.  This is writing coming alive.  Oh, and I’m in the show!

Saturday, April 30th and Sunday,  May 1st – It’s Festival Time!

I would just like to get off my chest that I hate the change in location.  It’s for purely selfish reasons, USC is a schlep and it’s hotter there and I don’t know the campus.  I could whine some more, but you get the point.  Not that it really matters, I’ll still go.

Claire will be at the Village Books booth for an hour at 10AM, stop by and say hi, ask her if three of four kids are still home sick.  I’ll be whining to her about the change in location.

The Saturday schedule includes the hot ticket that once again I could not get this year, a discussion with Dave Eggers and Patti Smith.  Nevertheless, I’m happy with my choices:  From the Front Register:  Bookselling Today and American History:  Blood & Backrooms.  On Sunday, I chose Spirituality:  In Search of Solitude and a discussion with Father Boyle.  I just noticed they are the same time.  Maybe I shouldn’t have picked my tickets after a huge Easter meal.  For me, the weekend will end with Fiction:  LA Stories.  I’m hoping they’re not all dark, some author needs to break that mold.

Let me know which panels you’re attending.

As veteran LATFOB attendees know, the panels are just a fraction of the fun, the booths and exhibits and open stages are great so leave lots of time for meandering.  This is a weekend to enjoy being literary in Los Angeles.  Make time to check out the bookstore booths, my post for the CBS Best of LA Blog about LA bookstores went live today, use it as a primer for who to visit at the festival and afterward.

Gin Phillips joined the Cafe Conversation at the Beverly Hills Literary Escape with Ethan Canin, David Ulin and Mona Simpson.  I wondered how she would do as a first time novelist with three authors who have traveled around the book tour block several times.  She more than held her own.  I heard her again at the Saturday historical fiction lunch with Tatjana Soli.  Here are a few of her comments:

• Economic Similarity? Many consider the book timely (even before the Chilean miner crisis) because it is set in and was published during severe economic downturns. Phillips understands the connections people are making but described a much more frightening world in 1931.  The society her characters live in do not have a safety net.  There isn’t Social Security, disability, or Medicare.  If a miner was hurt or disabled the family was facing an abyss of suffering, many were quickly homeless and starved to death.  Occasionally the community could help, but the community couldn’t provide long term assistance.  Moreover, there wasn’t even a minimum wage or a limit on the number of hours in a working day.  Canin quipped “I saw a bumper sticker recently that said “Unions, the people who brought you weekends.”  Her characters lived in a much harsher world.
• Racism.  The mines were the only place in Alabama where black and white men worked together.  Segregation was so strong that the two races rarely mixed which resulted in each race believing the stereotype of the other.  Working together complicated these racist opinions.  Phillips found from her own reading that frequently the South is depicted as a vast lynching ground under Jim Crow laws, or a character shows up akin to a modern day Bill Clinton.  Neither is realistic.  Phillips wanted to portray ordinary people reacting to the evil inherent in racism.
• Mine Life. Phillips’ family originates from small town Alabama, but they were not miners.  Phillips felt she had an understanding of the culture and the era.  Leta, the mother character, is based on the author’s own great-grandmother.  Phillips described her as loving, kind and practical.  She cared for others but didn’t have time to talk about it.  She would find it silly to discuss romance and feelings when there was land to farm, animals to feed and meals to cook.  Phillips needed to research mining life extensively.  She worried that a 100 year old miner would show up at a reading and say she told the story wrong; however, she quickly realized that 100 year old miners don’t attend book readings.  She hasn’t received any complaints, just many reports from people about how her book sparked a memory because it rang true.
• The Baby in the Well. She wanted to write about something that appeared to be irredeemably evil and then see what happened.  My mother asked how she came up with the ending.  Phillips admitted that the woman didn’t show up until she was about halfway through writing the book and she is so grateful that she did!

I loved this book, if you haven’t read it, go get it now.

Sunday morning’s conversation circled around the subject of faith, spirituality and religion.  Dani Shapiro, author of Devotion, Eric Lax, writer of Faith Interrupted, and Michael Krasny, radio interviewer and author of Spiritual Envy mesmerized us with their discussion of belief, unbelief and serious pondering over the meaning of life.  [Loved their conversation, I bought all of their books also.]  About half way through, Robert Goolrick, author of The Reliable Wife, joined the stage. I recalled picking up his book last summer, reading the back and putting it back down.  It wasn’t for me.  I could see how many would, and do like it, I could envision reading it by the pool or on the beach, but I wasn’t going to either of those places, so I passed.  Now I own it.

Before Goolrick joined the group, the conversation was a variation of “I don’t know what I believe about God” or “I knew and now I don’t know” or “I know a little.”   Goolrick told everyone what he does know and that is that the practice of religion, he couldn’t care less which religion, gives a person an internal life.  He described living in NYC years ago, where he felt he lived life very publicly, that everyone did.  Sunday mornings he went to the most upscale Episcopalian church to give himself an hour to consider how close he was to being a good and moral person.  It gave him the space to contemplate his life and actions.  He couldn’t care less how people spend their Sunday mornings, he cares who people are and the practice of religion shapes who people are.

In Goolick’s opinion, goodness is the only thing that matters.  Goodness is the only thing that survives when we die.  He defines good by action.  What acts of goodness and kindness has a person performed?  It’s not an easy question, especially since we don’t see the whole picture of the past and future, sometimes it’s hard to know what is good.  He gave the example of giving a homeless person $1, is that a good act, or not?  In his opinion, a writer can’t start with good characters (later in the day McCann described writing a good character as very hard) and the main characters in The Reliable Wife behave badly and are abused, yet they are trying to get back to some sense of redemption and wonder at life.

Asked what work of fiction he would want on his bedside table at death, he answered Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past/In Search of Lost Time.  He named it the best piece of literature ever written, everything else is just stories.  He found that Proust created a totally complete world that didn’t feel like fiction.

Goolrick sold me.  I can’t wait to read his book.  I don’t even care what it’s about.

When I read the first few pages of Let the Great World Spin, in my head I knew McCann was talking about Petit tightrope walk, but from my forehead down I was reliving the morning of 9/11/2001.  I asked McCann where he was when that morning, he said at 71st and 1st in New York City with his wife and children. His father-in-law worked in the first building hit but the second to come down.  The family didn’t know he survived until six hours later when he appeared on their doorstep covered in dust and debris.  McCann’s daughter ran to him and said “Poppi smells like fire.”  They explained it was from the smoke and she replied “no, he smells like he’s on fire from the inside out.”  McCann’s father-in-law showered and threw all of his clothes away, he never wanted to see that suit again.  However, he took off his shoes at the doorway and they have kept them in the same condition.  The shoes will be part of the 9/11 museum.  Clearly, McCann’s experience comes alive in the opening chapter of the book.

Here are few of McCann’s other comments during his conversation with Julie Robinson:

• Hope in Reality. He used the tightrope to show that we are all on a tightrope either half a mile up or just six inches up like Jasmine’s daughters, or the a mother who sends her son to war, or a mother who witnesses her daughter walk the streets.  He wanted the book to be about recovery and grace, so all the characters chose to live and survive.  While recognizing that the world is harsh, he answers with a so what?  He chose to write a book that embodied how hard life can be, but to imbue it with hope.  He doesn’t find hope sentimental, but tougher to maintain than cynicism.
• Spoiler Alert: One of his goals was to write a ‘good’ character, which is difficult.  He wanted a Catholic character because of the recent bad events in the church.  McCann modeled Corrigan (note his initials are JC, I didn’t catch that, McCann pointed it out) after a true-life radical priest.  McCann didn’t want Corrigan to die and he tried all kinds of scenarios to ‘roll away the stone’ and resurrect him, but it never worked.  McCann mused that for evil to exist it only has to happen once, but for good to exist it needs to occur repeatedly.  The reader experiences repeated acts of kindness with Corrigan.  I think everyone misses him and wishes he didn’t die.
• Tightrope. McCann believes that the tightrope walk will be remembered as one of the great art achievements of the 20th century because it created a moment of fullness and completeness.  Moreover, it can never be replicated.  A little book trivia, McCann changed Petit’s walk in the book from 7:15AM to 7:40AM to match the time the first plane hit. [Correction, he changed the time to 7:47 to sound like a plane.]
• Immigrant Writer with Outsider’s View. McCann praised the embracing nature of American literary society.  No where else is a literary culture as welcoming of people coming from all over the world to live in the United States and then tell their own stories and their experiences in this country.  We allow outsider writers to become Americans, but remain Irishmen or Nigerian or Indian.  He finds it profoundly generous that American readers welcome books from an outsider’s view.

McCann closed by noting that the last chapter of the book is a metaphor for President Obama and that fact that we elected as president a man who would have been viewed as “other” only 40 years ago.  I didn’t catch that on the first reading, now I have the pleasure of going back to look for it.

In closing, here’s one of my favorite quotes from the book:

Corrigan told me once that Christ was quite easy to understand. He went where He was supposed to go. He stayed where He was needed. He took little or nothing along, a pair of sandals, a bit of a shirt, a few odds and ends to stave off the loneliness. He never rejected the world. If He had rejected it, He would have been rejecting mystery. He would have been rejecting faith.

The book is the tale of O’Neill’s two grandfathers.  His Irish grandfather was an extreme activist, heavily involved in the IRA.  In contrast, O’Neill described his Turkish grandfather as an extreme bystander, someone who felt he could continue on with business ignoring the implications of the brewing world war.  Both views landed them in jail during WWII.  The Irish grandfather was imprisoned for his IRA involvement.  The Turkish grandfather travelled to Palestine to pick up a crop of citrus fruit to sell in Turkey and was arrested as a spy for the Axis countries.  O’Neill used both characters to ‘bore a hole through history.’  He recommended people discover their ancestors to learn more about their family and the bits of history that cling to them.

O’Neill admitted that as a result of the book tour, he was thinking about connections between Netherland and Blood-Dark Track.  The writing of Blood-Dark Track organized a lot of his political thoughts that otherwise would have spilled out in Netherland.  Without Blood-Dark Track, Netherland would have been a different book.  While Netherland is a post-9/11 book, he feels Blood-Dark Track is also.  It shows how his family dealt with a dramatic event, WWII, and the confusion caused by evaluating what they believed in and were willing to fight for.  He sees a connection in the books concerning how we view ‘the other’ or whether we see them at all.  His Turkish grandfather was alive during the Armenian genocide, yet his family said they ‘didn’t see it.’  O’Neill argues that they created a life that resulted in ‘not seeing.’  O’Neill consciously used cricket as a metaphor for the American vision, how far are we willing to see others who engage in activities were are completely unfamiliar with.  How we create lives so that we don’t interact with ‘others,’ and what the result can be of our unseeing.

O’Neill doesn’t think he could write Netherland now because he has lost his outsider view.  He described the advantage of being an ‘insider’ is the access to information, but the upside to being an outsider is that the person doesn’t have blinders on.  O’Neill’s lived here a few years and what stood out to him in the past is now just part of the scenery.  Although, he said he is still surprised by American politics, many of us in the audience commented that we have lived here our entire lives and we’re still surprised also.

One of the themes for the Beverly  Hills Literary Escape is the status of the American Dream.  O’Neill questioned how real it ever was, but putting that aside, whatever is was or is, he described it as mainly economic.  America provides a large and receptive consumer base allowing the opportunity for outsiders with something to sell and the desire to work hard to succeed.  He wonders if with globalization that now other areas of the world are economically permeable and that economic opportunity isn’t as special to America anymore.  Concurrently, 9/11 demonstrated that we’re not invincible.  He also questioned our supposed social mobility.  He referred to a report that there is more social mobility in Britain than in the US; however, there is also more social snobbery in Britain so it doesn’t feel as fluid.

It will be interesting to compare O’Neill’s views with those of other authors this weekend at the Beverly Hills Literary Escape.  Check out our discount code if you haven’t bought your tickets yet.

On Saturday, October 9th, Larry is commandeering a chartered bus, picking up 50 bibliophiles in Harrisburg and Lancaster, and dropping them off at Washington Square Park with a map locating 23 area bookstores.  Larry’s description of a few of the stores:

The stores include everything from the Strand, which advertises 16 miles of shelf space, to Bonnie Slotnik Cookbooks, just a few blocks away, which is the size of a living room but has a worldwide reputation.  (No lie, she carries cookbooks from all the way back in the 1700s and has chefs and collectors from all over the world calling her.)  Some other favorites:  Three Lives & Company, Housing Works Bookstore Care, Books of Wonder, Partners & Crime . . . I could go on and on.  Some new stores on the list:  the Scholastic Store, the Taschen Store, and Idlewild Bookshop.  It’s a fantastic mix of new, used, and specialty bookstores.

The bus leaves at 7PM giving the participants 8 hours of bookstore shopping time.  This is the blueprint for my perfect day!

If you’re interested in joining this tour or learning about future tours, contact Larry through his website, via Facebook, or via Twitter.