Pearl Abraham @ Festival of the Book, pt. 2

(Pearl Abraham sends another dispatch from Charlottesville...)

The Omni, official hotel for the UVA Festival, is right beside an outdoor mall, a long brick-paved avenue lined with used book stores, coffee houses, and restaurants. UVA students in bare legs and flip flops line up at Christiana’s pizza and Mudhouse. Checking in at the desk in the Omni, I found Melvin Bukiet (Nothing Makes You Free), waiting for the volunteer to arrive and take him to the airport. He had an hour to spare and we went to Miller’s for a chef’s salad for me, wine for him. We sat in the sun and watched the scene. Alix Strauss (The Joy of Funerals), another writer/survivor on my delayed flight, walked by and waved. The scoop on the festival from Melvin: There are real audiences here. More than a hundred people attended the panel he shared with Aryeh Stollman (Dialogues of Time and Entropy) and Tova Mirvis (The Outside World, and, miracle of miracles, they even sold books.

I was due at the UVA bookstore for my first panel (Found in Translation) an hour later and since traffic in sunny Charlottesville was said to have come to a standstill, we got going early. On the way, I met my co-panelists: hot pink (see yesterday's dispatch) Vyvyane Loh (Breaking the Tongue) and Esmeralda Santiago (The Turkish Lover), who wouldn’t shake my hand. As it turned out, she thought she had a flu and a cough and worried that she wouldn’t be able to read, but she was determined to be there. The event went off without a hitch, um, cough. Attendees with Asian interests lined up for Vyvyane’s books, Spanish speakers lined up for Esmeralda’s, and, what can I say, there weren’t many in the audience interested in Yiddish, which was declared a dead language even when I.B. Singer was writing in it. One, a student at Smith and member of an Amish family, took pity and purchased a copy of The Seventh Beggar.

Vyvyane and I (Esmeralda went out with a local friend) made it back to the Omni, thanks to Saskia, our volunteer driver. Alix Strauss was back from her event as well, and she reported that they too had attracted a good-sized audience. And then, there was Steve Stern (The Angel of Forgetfulness), just in from Saratoga Springs, getting advice on real estate decisions from his friend E. Ethelbert Miller (How We Sleep on the Nights We Don’t Make Love). Seeing as this poet had advice to give, I asked for some as well. How to sell books? It’s all in the packaging, he declared. We promised to try and get to his panel (Books in the Garden).

Steve Stern and I cruised the mall, looking for a place to eat. We were famished, but one place was too pricey, the next too noisy, the third too family-oriented; we finally settled on Blue Light Grill, which turned out to be perfect since they served fish and chips and a local ale. We stayed late. And talked and talked. Steve is very anxious about his excellent reviews due Sunday in The New York Times and The Washington Post, proof that a writer’s anxiety is, well, a permanent feature.

(Editor's Note: Looks like WaPo put the review off for now, but here's last week's equally enthusiastic take from The Los Angeles Times.)