So this weekend may have been the national observance of some smallpox-bearing Italian dude, but it was also a celebration of something much more entertaining than native displacement: the New Yorker Festival.
Despite missing out on tickets for the festival's marquee Jon Stewart/David Remnick duet, Jacob and I managed to score tickets for other appealing events. The first of these, part of "Fiction Night," was a standard-structure reading with authors Lorrie Moore and Julian Barnes. Sadly, both writers were too nice to turn it into a literary throwdown, but what are you gonna do? Ms. Moore was a bit of a revelation, actually. She read a semi-autobiographical piece about middle-aged divorce. I wasn't expecting her personal style to be as sweetly twisted as her prose; and the NPR-ready voice was surprising as well. The piece itself was probably as rough as she claimed it to be, but her word choice is always so sharp and right that it was easy to miss the flaws, especially with the reading done aloud. (I totally fell for her style last year when I realized that her story "People Like That Are the Only People Here" sounded every bit as good as it looked on the page.)
Julian Barnes went next. I'm not familiar with Mr. Barnes at all, 'cept for a nagging feeling that I've seen him somewhere before, probably flogging a book on TV somewhere. He did an even more autobiographical piece than Moore did, but began with the smart memoirist's caveat: all memories are probably fake anyway. He was amusing and the story was enjoyable (though kinda long), but the clipped British thing discouraged real engagement. He never stopped being Julian Barnes reading Julian Barnes. Afterward, the audience questions/requests were surprisingly not bad--or at least no worse than the average event. The crowd was relatively young and hipsterish, so there wasn't as much open fawning. Just the usual call for writerly advice and and obligatory "let's be whimsical and make you think on your feet" question, this time about which music the authors would take with them to a desert island. This is less random than it sounds, since the topic in general was brought up by Barnes earlier, but it's still kinda cruel to put people on the spot like that. At any rate, neither Moore nor Barnes slipped up and said that they'd take the Spice Girls or anything, so the outcome was bittersweet.
Sunday's event, a preview of Man of the Year, proved to be educational. For instance, did you know that Lillian Ross is still alive? I certainly didn't. I've been reading her assembled New Yorker anthologies for a long time now, and just assumed that someone hired by the magazine's founder would have gone to the great editorial board in the sky by now. Anyway, the still-kicking Ms. Ross led a small panel after the movie, asking a few introductory questions of Barry Levinson and a newly sober Robin Williams before Williams completely took over with his high speed impressions and political punditry. Ross might not be so spry anymore, but she's still pretty sharp--more so than most 80-somethings, I'd bet. And back in the day, she had an intriguing relationship with former New Yorker editor William Shawn. So we'll forgive her for suggesting that Robin Williams actually run for president. To be fair, Williams deferred by saying that his past would make Clinton look like a nun (or something to that effect). Just as well that he won't be vetted in the press--I don't think we really need to know just how much cocaine a standup could ingest in 1983 before heading out onstage. But the movie was good, the post-film conversation was entertaining, and the French Alliance theater did not serve crepes. Also a bittersweet outcome.
All in all, the festival (at the events and at its Union Square headquarters) had a quality literary buzz. Of course, we didn't make it to the one event that could have killed said buzz: the New Yorker dance party. I think we're better off that way. Lots of bookish fun was had in the name of Harold Ross's brainchild, and I can't wait for 2007's. Next year in Union Square!
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