Pearl Abraham @ Festival of the Book, pt. 3

(Another dispatch from Pearl Abraham, living the literary life in Charlottesville, Virginia...)

Saturday morning, at the early hour of 7:30 a.m., Steve Stern (The Angel of Forgetfulness) brought me a super-size cup of coffee from the Mudhouse, and I promised to meet him in the hotel lobby within half an hour since he had been awake since 5:00 A.M. and was ready for breakfast. However, the lobby, when I arrived, seemed to have been occupied by the local millennial association, with posters for books titled The Power of the Gospel Revealed, The Bishop's Prophecy and Dianetics.

I finally found Steve waylaid by the author of The Alzheimer’s Widow and learned that these were self-published authors associated with Infinity Publishing, a partner in the UVA Festival of the Book. A multitude of flyers and postcards made their way into our hands though we didn’t ask for them, and then there were no garbage receptacles anywhere in the lobby, therefore we really did take the printed matter with us to our rooms. With so much pitching and selling going on, it was not easy finding your volunteer driver scheduled to take you to your scheduled panel, but amazingly every writer eventually wound up where he or she was expected.

We breakfasted at Cubano Café, which serves the best coffee I've had, along
with excellent eggs with salsa and tortillas. Then we visited the used book stores on the Mall, easily a "best of Charlottesville" feature, among many bests. At Blue Whale Books, I found a beautiful 1955 edition of Isaac Babel's Collected Stories, complete with Lionel Trilling's introduction, and Steve and I agreed we couldn't leave it there. Since he already owned a similar edition, I purchased it (it was only twelve dollars), and added to the weight of my already book-crammed, carry-on suitcase.

After which we were due to meet Razel Solow, our Uber-moderator, to talk for a few minutes about our upcoming panel, "Odysseys, Illuminations, and Forbidden Tales: Fantasy in Jewish Literature." We talked, we agreed to be way earlier than on time since a huge crowd was expected (Jonathan Safran Foer was on our panel), and then went to catch Meg Wolitzer (The Position), A.J. Jacobs (The Know-it-All), and Matthew Friedman (Moving) talk about the how-tos of screenwriting. This panel took place in the Omni Ballroom which seats at least 200, and there weren't any empty seats. The organizers of the festival clearly know what the audience wants. I admire Meg's and A.J.'s writing, I don’t know Matthew's, but I think they would all agree: This discussion about the nitty-gritty of getting your book onto the screen was not worthy of them; I left after fifteen minutes.

I hurried upstairs to change my shirt and get my book, met the others in the lobby, and we were on our way. Traffic was slow, the parking lot, the largest one in all of Charlottesville, was full, but we were still half an hour early. We checked in with Razel and went around the corner for coffee. I believe Steve was on his tenth cup of the day.

There were no seats left, and no standing room, and no aisle space. We couldn't see all of our audience and many of them couldn't see us, but they could hear us, thanks to a good PA system. We read, we kibitzed, we answered questions, including some difficult ones. When I was asked about my inclination in The Seventh Beggar to break down the language to alphabetic parts, I found myself talking (with Steve's help) about Kabbalah's (and literary theory's) idea of the destruction before creation, of God's contraction or held breath, which started all the trouble. So your yoga teacher is right: breathe in and out. Steve convinced the audience that he was not Jewish at all, but Lutheran, since he was confirmed and not bar-mitzvahed in a Reform synagogue. Jonathan, well, though he really didn't have to do anything at all to sell his books, he agreed to disagree with one of his fans.

Steve and I signed some books and then went to have drinks with his friends, and mine now as well, John Bensko (Sea Dogs) and Cary Holladay (Mercury), both of them from the University of Memphis. We left Jonathan to tend to his long line of fans, and promised to meet up with him later, at the authors' reception at the UVA President's house.

The sun went down and it was a beautiful Charlottesville evening, just cool enough to remind us that it wasn’t spring yet. We drove and walked through the lovely campus and listened to Cary's sing-song drawl pointing out the sights (Edgar Allan Poe's house), the daffodils. We were greeted rather grandly at the entrance of the President’s House by the hosts, Tony Horwitz (Confederates in the Attic) and Nancy Damon, the Director of this impressive festival. As soon as we found the buffet, we realized that we were weak with hunger. We filled our plates with poached trout, grilled vegetables, and rice, and went to find a place at the long formal dining room table.

Two hours later, we were all exhausted, but Jonathan and Esmeralda Santiago (draped in a shawl to avoid a chill), still had work to do, a reading at the Culbreth Theatre. Since the event already had an audience of 200, Steve and I made our way back to the hotel, settled onto stools at the hotel bar, ordered drinks, and talked about Yiddish literature, the one question Razel had promised but didn’t get to. We tried to stay up for Jonathan, but finally couldn’t. And we found we were hungry again. We stepped outside to Christiana's and joined the collegiate crowd, ordered a slice each, and ate gratefully. After which sleep, but sleep doesn't come so easily, and I didn’t get there until 2:30 a.m.