Nov. 1, 2008
The book festival is always an exciting blend of well-known authors, lesser known writers who are great speakers, and the beautiful surroundings of the Capitol.
I went to four sessions and enjoyed them immensely.
The War over American Ideals
Moderator: Historian and author Douglas Brinkley (Editor: The Reagan Diaries, Author: The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast)
Panel:
• Pres. Clinton speechwriter Ted Widmer (Ark of the Liberties: America and the World)
• NY Times reporter James Traub (The Freedom Agenda: Why American Must Spread Democracy [Just Not the Way George Bush Did])
• New Yorker writer Jane Mayer (The Dark Side: The Inside Story of How the War on Terror Turned into a War on American Ideals)
• Fred Burton, who helped create and lead the counterterrorism division of the Diplomatic Security Service (Ghost: Confessions of a Counterterrorism Agent)
This session was held in the House Chamber to discuss how the war on terror has altered many historically American ideals. What made this session especially interesting is that the authors were Washington insiders and/or had access to people and papers within the past four administrations.
Notes:
The US has been promoting “freedom” since the birth of the country, but the definition has changed. Our Founding Fathers were split on whether to promote freedom in the French Revolution or to work within the US to create something meaningful here. In later generations, “freedom” was often used as a synonym for “freedom to have slaves.”
The Bush administration has co-opted the words from the civil rights marches in the War on Terror. “Freedom is on the march” was meant to connote a grassroots movement, but this backfired, instead calling to mind a military invasion (which it was).
Bush has moved away from Reagan’s ideals, from no nationbuilding to extreme nationbuilding, from spreading democracy ”without a shot begin fired” to invading sovereign nations to “spread democracy”. His administration has championed the idea that the “internal state” of a country can be reason for invading it, not just the external aggression factor.
Brent Snowcroft (Bush Sr’s Secretary of State) pleaded with his mentee, Condi Rice, not to try to apply the European principles of ending the Cold War to the Middle East. Colin Powell also famously fought to explain that Eastern European countries have a much more orderly view of government and nationalism than the tribally-based Middle East. Of course, this sage advice was ignored in the panic that followed the 9/11 attacks.
The US sacrificed many of its core values in the War on Terror. All of a sudden, the Terrorist Suspect prisoner category was created with no rights, contrary to the American value that all people are “endowed by their creator with inalienable rights.” And the Geneva Conventions that had separated “honorable” countries from rogue nations were thrown out the window. “Extraordinary Rendition” became the phrase for kidnapping terrorist suspects, disappearing them to foreign dungeons, and torturing them. Many of these people turned out to be innocent; they simply had a similar name to the suspects on the “list”. Dozens of CIA and FBI officers stood up against this policy, but in so doing forfeited their careers. The CIA was so embarrassed by these mistakes that they hushed the whole thing up.
Working for the tiny, newly created counterterrorism division of the Diplomatic Security Service in the mid-1980s, Burton was the liaison among the FBI, the CIA, and a network of covert informants "to find out the how" of terrorist attacks and to prevent repeat events. Even though Middle East terrorists were attacking US targets (embassies, the USS Cole, the first World Trade Center attack), very few resources were allocated to the office. Burton feels horrible that he didn’t have the resources to “jump on” the terrorist cells before they could do further damage.
All in all, this was a really discouraging look at how the US has handled the War on Terror. We can only hope cooler heads will prevail.
Reading the Classics for Pleasure
Michael Dirda, NY Times book reviewer and author
This was a fun session. Michael Dirda is obviously passionate about books and takes a light-hearted approach to “reading outside the bestseller list”. He says bestsellers are entertaining and great for airplane trips, but he cites many other authors who write engagingly and have had immense influence on Western literature. (He focuses only on Western lit as his area of expertise because not much minority or Eastern lit has been available in the West until the last couple of decades.)
Dirda implores us to “not be sheepish about reading” – challenge ourselves to read outside of our normal picks.
His picks include:
• Arthurian tales (defined physical and spiritual love for Western society)
• Dracula and HP Lovecraft stories (set the standard for horror stories)
• Georgette Heyer (historical novelist, witty, “almost as good as Jane Austen”)
• MR James (English ghost stories)
• Philip K. Dick (mainstream scifi)
• Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner, James Hogue
• The Decameron, Giovanni Boccaccio
• Holy Living and Dying, Jeremy Taylor
• Farrigan’s Retreat, Tom McCale
• The Sea, John Danforth
• Olive Kitteridge, Elizabeth Strout
He was such an entertaining speaker that I’m interested in checking out his publications:
Readings,
Book by Book,
Bound to Please,
Open Book,
Classics for Pleasure and his online column for the Washington Post: “Dirda’s Reading Room” (coming soon).
Click: What Millions of People Are Doing Online and Why it Matters
Bill Tancer, Hitwise Co., author of book title above
This session was full of fascinating tidbits about what people are searching for on the Internet and other web behavior. Basically, you need to buy the book and read about it; I can’t begin to recreate the intriguing information he discussed. My notes:
• His company, Hitwise, supplies competitive information on internet behavior to hundreds of clients: www.hitwise.com and the blog: www.ilovedata.com.
• Check out “The Science of Search” column on Time.com. I didn’t find the column listed separately, but if you go to time.com and search on Bill Tancer, you’ll find his articles.
• The #1 “how to” search in the US is “How to tie a tie”.
• Prom dresses are a fascinating area of research.
• The online video watching session time has moved from 3 minutes in the early 2000s to 20 minutes in 2006 and has stayed there.
• The viewing of porn sites has decreased some since the rise of social networking.
• There has been a correlation of tax stimulus check payments being used to pay adult entertainment sites. Psychologists say that in tough economic times, people turn to diversions. This is supported by data that shows that last year people in the highest economic strata spent most of their online time at investment sites, but in the last few months, they’ve been at online gaming and celebrity gossip sites.
• He sees the future hot sites as those that review or filter enormous amounts of available information for targeted niches, including search engines that provide suggestions based on your interests.
This talk was so interesting that a group of people followed him like the Pied Piper to his booksigning and, I assume, bought lots of books!
Writers on Reading
Ann Packer, The Dive from Clausen’s Pier, Songs without Words
Daniel Wallace, professor of creative writing at UNC, author: Big Fish, The Watermelon King
This was an extremely fun session with two very entertaining authors. Daniel Wallace was hilariously self-effacing and, by the end of the session, we all wanted to take his classes at UNC-Chapel Hill.
Notes:
Reading groups/book clubs have become extremely important to authors and to the publishing industry over the last 5 to 7 years. If the book your club is reading doesn’t have discussion questions in the back, check the websites of the publisher. After ALL members of your club have read the book and you’ve discussed it as a group, these authors said to contact them or their agents for a possible phone conversation during your club meeting.
They both mentioned that book clubs often pick up on metaphors or overarching themes that they themselves hadn’t been aware of as they wrote the book sentence-by-sentence. I loved the analogy Ann Packer made, “Writing is like driving a car in the dark and you can only see as far as your headlights.” Daniel Wallace said, “I write to find out what I’m writing about.”
When someone asks Ann Packer what something in her book means, she says, “It’s your book now. You get to decide.”
An audience member asked for advice for writers. They noted:
• Put the best stuff at the beginning. If you can’t pull the readers in, they won’t get far in the book.
• The way to evoke sense of place is to write about what you know. Both of them write only about settings they are familiar with, deciding that the story is universal and they can best describe the locales they know.
• Writing groups are great for seeing how people react to your work. Forget about the specifics and just concentrate on whether your points are getting across. After your writing group has critiqued the piece, go back and work on it to portray the desired feelings and issues to your readers.
The authors were asked what made for a good reading group book and what were some of their favorite books. Their responses:
• Disagreement leads to the best discussions, so look for books with strong characters and a lot of ambiguity that is open to interpretation and raises questions about morals or ethics.
• They both preferred to read short stories. Their favorite authors include Alice Munro, Tobias Wolff (great characters), Charles Baxter, Lorrie Moore, Ray McCarver, and the fiction column in the New Yorker magazine.
In addition to the great discussion, Vintage/Anchor gave each of us a book bag and three books they are releasing in the next few months. Score!
Copyright 2008 Beth Schrader
