The Sunday Salon: Post-Book Fest Wrap-Up Edition

2009 at 1pm     Posted by Rebecca Schinsky

How to begin this post?  I spent the day yesterday at the National Book Festival in Washington, D.C., and it was pretty much one of my favorite things ever. Like, for real. There’s no way to talk about all of the awesomeness without sharing the details (and we all know I’m not very concise anyway), so settle in, friends. The geeking out is about to begin.

Hubby’s roommate from college, who is still one of our very best friends, lives just outside D.C., so I drove up Friday afternoon and crashed with him that night. We got an early start yesterday and headed into the city, where we snagged a quick lunch and scurried over to the National Mall. As we were sitting outside the Fiction & Fantasy pavilion, Jennifer from The Literate Housewife found us, and I had my first meeting-bloggers-in-real-life-and-kind-of-freaking-out moment. It was superfantastic.

This was around noon, and the first author I really wanted to see—John Irving—wasn’t scheduled until 2pm, so we figured we’d be on the safe side by getting seats in the tents a little early. We headed inside and heard Sabiha Al Khemir discuss her novel The Blue Manuscript.  I didn’t know anything about her prior to the book fest, but I really enjoyed listening to her speak about her writing process and the importance of language and structure. Her talk made me very interested in reading her book, which certainly seems to be one that is much more about the writing than the story (I love that!), and I’m glad Jennifer bought it so I have a review from a trusted reviewer to anticipate.

Next up was Julia Alvarez. I’ve heard extensive and effusive praise for her novels, particularly In the Time of Butterflies and How the Garcia Girls Lost Their Accents, but I haven’t read any of them, and that is definitely going to change. Alvarez began by expressing how delighted she was that we were gathered together to “celebrate the liberating power of reading and writing,” and she presented the book festival as the exact opposite of an event like 9/11.  Much of her talk focused on the ways in which reading is

a practice that promotes compassion and human understanding [because] when we read, nothing human is alien to us.

And that’s when I started wondering if it would really be that inappropriate to jump up and shout “Amen, sister. Preach on!”

I didn’t really know anything about Julia Alvarez before her talk began, and I was a little bit in love with her by the time it was over. Simply amazing and inspiring.

Then came what was, for me, the MAIN EVENT. John Irving.  Isn’t he handsome?

This is what my notes say about Mr. Irving.  John Irving: So awesome he doesn’t have to wear real pants.

What do I mean by that? I mean that John Irving rocked the National Book Festival wearing ADIDAS track pants. And I loved every minute of it.

While most of the authors gave talks about their writing and their upcoming books, Irving was interviewed by a writer from The Washington Post. They began by discussing his practice of writing the last sentence of a book first and working backward from there. He also discussed the ways in which his writing has become more autobiographical as he’s grown older and gained more distance from his childhood and adolescence. He also emphasized the idea that repetition of thematic material is unavoidable “when you have something worthwhile to say” and that “the things that recur are things you don’t want to write about but that you have to write about.”

Irving has been rather outspoken about his feelings about book critics and made it quite clear that he finds it laughable when reviewers are irritated by thematic repetition because it is the development of those thematic ideas over the span of a writer’s body of work that serves to define him. Having read almost all of Irving’s novels and really appreciated the development of some of his recurring themes, I had a great time hearing it straight from the man himself.

Irving also discussed the ways in which is lifelong experiences with wrestling have affected his writing, saying that sports require discipline, and the discipline he gained from wrestling enable him to do the revising and rewriting necessary for his success.

Wrestling has in common with writing one very boring thing: if you don’t like repetition and doing the same small thing over and over again, you shouldn’t do it.

Irving’s new novel Last Night in Twisted River comes out October 27th.  It is a story he’s been thinking about for more than twenty years, and it’s all I can do not to pick up my ARC right now and spend the rest of the day curled up in his wonderful writing.

I had high hopes for John Irving’s talk, and he didn’t disappoint, though I would have preferred a straight author talk over the interview format that was used.

After John Irving came the unexpected highlight of the day, made awesome only by its incredible awfulness.

I’m talking about Nicholas Sparks, people.  More than you ever wanted to know about Ol’ Sparky after the jump! Read more