My Brooklyn Book Festival Rules of Engagement

The Brooklyn Book Festival, one of my literary high holidays, is this Sunday the 23rd. After picking over the list of events I have once again decided that the best plan of attack is to clone myself so I can attend all the panels, so if anyone knows where I can get that done cheaply, let me know!

Over the past 5 years of attendance I have developed some tips (or as we say in corporate America, "learnings") that have helped me really attack the day and still go home feeling rosy about the state of arts and letters. These rules could probably apply to any litfest in your backyard, and honestly if there is one in your actual backyard, you should go -- but you don't need me to tell you that.

Get there early enough to take in a morning event -- not just because they are often excellent, but also the authors are so grateful that they aren't speaking to an empty room. I'm going to break my own rule and highlight a few from this year's offerings: at 10AM you can hear Thomas Frank and Eric Alterman talk about the election (Brooklyn Historical Society Library), Andrew Blum and Jessica Grose talk about the Internet as/in literature (St. Francis College/ McArdle Hall), or hear Amy Sohn defend herself (or not) on her controversial novel MOTHERLAND (Borough Hall Courtroom). An embarrassment of riches! And as long as you're up, you should treat yourself and
Bring snacks and water, and reading material (of course). Last year for the first time some food trucks either got wise to the goings-on, or were invited, and that was great, but it never hurts to stock up on your own provisions -- especially if you want to eat something besides a processed carb. (I know, why would you?) Don't eat the reading material, though! Use it to ease the waiting in line or lulls between panels. 
Keep your eyes open for authors sneaking into other authors' panels. Writers: they're just like us! (They are fans.)

Take at least one chance on a panel without any authors you know. Of course there are a ton of people you'll want to see, but leave a little room to serendipity. This is an especially good tip in case you...
Leave a panel that is boring, which you absolutely should do if you can do so without upsetting whole rows of people and interrupting the action. I used to never leave panels because I am too ungainly to make a decent exit without falling all over myself and whacking someone in the head probably felt that it was disrespectful, but it's also disrespectful to take a seat and find that you just can't pay attention. That's the time to say "it's not you, it's me." On that note,
The vaguer the description of a panel, the less likely there will be an exciting discussion. I enjoy the kinds of events where authors just read, but the most electrifying festival events I've been to have inspired debate or out-and-out arguments. Panel "chemistry" is hard to judge beforehand, but it isn't usually about everybody getting along.
Bring or buy books to get signed -- but if you're buying, try to buy as late as possible so you don't have to carry too much around (learned it the hard way). Unpopularly, I don't like to buy books on the spot, because I really like to dwell over my purchases -- but I will make a list and take it to my local indie bookstore later.

Anatomy of a successful reading

Last night I went to see Robert Anasi read from his new memoir/ oral history THE LAST BOHEMIA: SCENES FROM THE LIFE OF WILLIAMSBURG, BROOKLYN at WORD Bookstore in Greenpoint.

Anasi lives in southern California now, but he lived in Williamsburg, a part of north Brooklyn parallel to 14th Street in Manhattan, from 1993 to 2008, observing the neighborhood's transformation from an artist's paradise, squatterville and industrial remainder to the hipster epicenter it is now. Reflecting on the place after he left, Anasi interviewed people he knew "back then" to chronicle a now-vanished city -- in his reading, he compared it to Atlantis.

Of all the readings I have been to this year, and there have been a lot, this was the most successful reading in terms of converting me from a curious listener to someone who needed to buy it, now. (And that's just what I did.) I don't mean that cynically -- I was happy that that's what happened. Normally, when I go to readings like Anasi's, I already have my mind made up as to whether I will buy the book or not, and what happens there doesn't sway me either way. (Well, I can't think of a reading where I went prepared to buy and didn't, anyway, but maybe it happened to you.)

In that sense I'm defining "successful" a bit narrowly -- after all, readings can surely pay other dividends beyond cash in hand book sales -- but publishers (in this case, FSG with its new to me "Originals" paperback line) would definitely consider it a metric. So why do I think it was so successful, and what can other authors learn from it?

• He read crowd-pleasing passages, instead of just starting at the beginning of the book. Anasi read a section about a now-defunct Williamsburg bar called Kokie's Lounge, a place I had never heard of (though judging from the knowing laughs around me, some people had) where you could openly buy and do really, really poor-quality cocaine. The two connecting passages Anasi read were funny, unbelievable, detailed and formed a small story in themselves. (Side note: The people who brought their 8- or 9-year-old kid to this reading probably would not agree that reading this passage was a great idea.) 
• He engaged with audience questions, instead of just answering them. Some authors just don't look comfortable doing Q&As, and really, who can blame them? But Anasi welcomed other people in the room to tell their stories of old Williamsburg, and ask the questions that will probably come up at every reading he holds, notably: How did this [the gentrification of Williamsburg] happen? and Can we keep it from happening again? It reminded me a little of the Christopher Bram reading I went to earlier this summer when I heard about the pre-"Stonewall" Stonewall. 
• He added something to the reading that you can't get from the book. Anasi opened his reading with footage from (if I recall correctly) a friend's documentary about Williamsburg, about a five-minute clip. Some of the places were hard to identify, particularly for someone like me who doesn't know the neighborhood extremely well, but the scenes with voiceover about how the neighborhood used to be set the tone for the whole reading -- nostalgic, painful, mystical. Not every author will have access to something like that, but something like reading new work or speaking off-the-cuff before the reading can give it that "something extra" without demanding too much of the author. (Some local reading series have built that "something extra" in, like how Literary Death Match has every reader "compete" for a meaningless title, or how Happy Endings forces every author to "take a risk"onstage.) Sounds paradoxical -- especially if you're selling the book itself, but it was like Anasi invited us into the book before he even started reading it. 

My Williamsburg is a place where, in some muddled moment in 2008, I went from "too young and naive to belong" to "too old and staid to belong." Hearing about the neighborhood long before I was first exposed to it (2004? I think?) still isn't old to me, and I'm looking forward to reading THE LAST BOHEMIA. 

New York's own Little Free Library

On Sunday I walked over to the Saint Marks Little Free Library, the newest book-related establishment in my neighborhood. Like the marriage of Bookmooch and Etsy, the Little Free Library movement encourages individuals to better their communities by building micro-libraries (or glorified take-one-leave-one shelves, if you will) in their towns. As the frequent beneficiary of such shelves, I am in love with this idea, but would people really respect it? New York's only Little Free Library is a wooden box like an extra-large birdhouse, but mounted on a pole at pedestrian height like a mailbox, in the rapidly gentrifying neighborhood of Prospect Heights in Brooklyn. Spotting it from the corner of Saint Marks Avenue and Vanderbilt, I was surprised, for some reason, that no one was at it at the time; in fact a few of its neighbors watched me approach it without comment. The stash inside when I visited was mostly children's books, of the early-chapter-book variety; there was also a copy of Carl Hiassen's YA novel HOOT and a few Patrick O'Brians shoved in on the left side. The box was almost full already. To test the waters I left a few good hardcovers in there with a note suggesting the takers email me. We'll see if it works -- probably nothing will come of it. The feeling of peeking inside that tiny house as if I were getting away with something can't be matched anyway. I'll definitely check inside the box again -- it doesn't hurt that the site is around the corner from one of the Heights' best dessert vendors, Ample Hills Creamery. (Get the salted crack caramel. You're welcome.) My only other excursionary note is that on my walk to the Little Free Library I saw a man in, I swear, a Westish Harpooners T-shirt with "Skrimshander" on the back. I should have stopped to ask him about it but I was too bowled over to say anything. Who are you, person with clear good taste in literary shirt?

My Brooklyn Is Boring*

There's already been so much discussion and a measure of controversy over Amy Sohn's portrait of Brooklyn "regressives" -- parents who adopt teenagerish habits as coping mechanisms for what they see as very staid and stable existences -- that I hesitate to add my two cents. Just kidding, this is the Internet, why wouldn't I?

Not only do I live in Brooklyn, I'm in the same general geographic area as Sohn (although I haven't been there as long). I have really, really liked living there for the year and a half-ish I have been in residence. I accept the stereotypes about our shared neighborhood, that it used to be grittier and cheaper and more diverse, that we all eat too many bespoke cupcakes and hang out in bars instead of our living rooms, that young families abound and the streets are safe at 3AM.

No online publication outlet in the universe would publish my account of that time, even though in my view it has been filled with as much confusion and exuberance as Sohn describes in hers. That's because compared to her I am one of those monks who sit on a mountain for 27 years without speaking.

"Moms (and dads) who are crazier than they seem" is just an angle, as produced as the New York Post's pieces on secret Upper East Side bondage aficionados, or the TIME cover with the breastfeeding lady, or THY NEIGHBOR'S WIFE, or... I could go on. It's a great place from which to promote a book! That doesn't automatically make it more authentic than the place I live in.

*positively exciting enough for me

Overheard in the cafeteria

"So how's your new apartment?"
"We have a six-bedroom place."
"Six bedrooms!"
"We have a library."
"Whoa, that's so Brooklyn."

Brooklyn Authorati Gather On Area Woman's Stoop For Some Reason

But be careful, some of them bite!

For a good time, Photoshop yourself into this Conde Nast Traveler portrait of a number of (though by no means all of) the borough's finest and pretend they all showed up to talk shop with you.

Check out the original via Jami Attenberg. (Also, that's not my stoop, although if you have an inkling of where it is...)

"The upwardly moral children of the bourgeoisie are obsequiously, uncompromisingly virtuous. They ride bikes everywhere. They never eat meat. They refuse to watch television. They eat with wooden chopsticks. They only read books by authors named Jonathan who live in Brooklyn. They themselves are named Jonathan and live in Brooklyn. That is because everyone who is good and just and whip-smart and special in this society lives in Brooklyn."

Joe Queenan in the Wall Street Journal.