Texas Pages

OK, this place is reaching a critical mass of zooiness. Star Wars characters are walking around; I just saw a storm trooper leading a life-size R2D2 around by remote control (say it ain't so, 3PO). John Hodgman of The Daily Show is signing his book More Information Than You Require, which pretty much sums up this whole glorious shebang. A few booths down, Vincent Bugliosi is signing copies of The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder. And in a few minutes, the New Press will be serving chilled shots of Swedish Vodka in honor of Henning Mankell's The The Eye of the Leopard.

UPDATE: The new Mankell translation is actually The Pyramid, a collection of mystery short stories featuring a patrolman named Kurt Wallander originally published in 1999 (Eye of the Leopard was his last one). And yes, they were serving shots of Swedish vodka at the New Press booth (you even got to keep the shot glass). There's a lot of afternoon drinking going on here: Cambridge University Press was serving beer (Bud and Sierra Nevada) and wine to promote it's new book Grape vs. Grain. Never let it be said that writers don't like to imbibe.

I've always had a thing for the university presses, maybe because I'm one of those perpetual college student types. So I quickly gravitated toward the university booths at Book Expo, where I found workers who were happy to explain their upcoming titles as the big boys of publishing grabbed maximum attention a few aisles down. Here's some of what I discovered, and what I'm looking forward to in the coming months.

For those of you who like sports and fabulous photos -- here's Rick Pitino signing Rebound Rules.

Why covering BEA is like covering 26,000 blind men describing an elephant:

I was chatting at the Ecco booth this morning. A publicist there told me he thought the show was slower and more relaxed this year, compared with the relative chaos and crowding of New York last year.

A few minutes later, I was checking out the offerings at Oxford University Press. There, the crew agreed - this year is much livelier than what they saw in New York last year.

For the record - given the LA Convention Center's slight more managable layout, the smaller crowd and the fact that the air conditioning here actually works, I would have to agree - it is less chaotic this year. Or maybe it's just that mellow California vibe working on me.

For those of you who come here for the fabulous photos, here's Ariana Huffington signing Right is Wrong: How the Lunatic Fringe Hijacked America, Shredded the Constitution, and Made Us All Less Safe.

The literary star of the breakfast panel was Andre Dubus III, whose new book The Garden of Last Days has generated some attention here. Mr. Dubus - who left the University of Texas at Austin with a degree in sociology in 1981- gave insight into what makes a writer tick when he talked about his upbringing. Yes, he was the son of a famous short story writer, but that, he noted, meant the family was poor. And after a divorce, his family moved a lot - something he says is common in many writers he knows. He became angry, and learned how to fight, and began to seek out situations where he could pick a fight with someone he thought was a bully.

I popped in -- just a bit late -- to a breakfast panel with Alec Baldwin, Magic Johnson, Philippa Gregory and Andre Dubus III this morning. Caught just enough of Ms. Gregory to understand why she packed 'em in at Arts & Letters Live in Dallas earlier this year. She's devastatingly funny, repeatedly using Mr. Baldwin as a foil as she spoke about marriage, love and some of the acrimonious marriage habits of the royalty she writes about. Each dig got increasingly louder laughs from the audience of several hundred.

"Would you like to take a break for a moment?" he suggested after one snarky aside.

"If you have any objections," she returned, "Mr. Johnson will represent me outside."

There you go, folks -- a look at some gen-u-ine literati. Who are all these people? Beats me. I'm just a humble books editor in Dallas.

Actually, these folks at the Knopf party Friday night (at Comme Ca in West Hollywood) were practicing the time-honored BEA ritual of party-hopping. This particular scene featured some very big names that mean a lot to people in publishing (Sonny Mehta) and at least one new author that anyone would recognize (Barbara Walters.) Anne Rice and Arianna Huffington were allegedly on site as well but remained unspotted by me. I did enjoy conversing with Amanda Boyden, author of the forthcoming Babylon Rolling, however.

Later in the evening, we headed to The London, for a cocktail party thrown by The New Yorker. Among those in attendance were chipper Starbucks-selected author Garth Stein (Art of Racing in the Rain), New York Times Book Review editor Sam Tanenhaus and author Salman Rushdie.

The biggest, hottest ticket in town was the secret party that Prince was throwing at his rented home up in the hills to promote his 21 Nights. Here are two words of advice for anyone attempting to attend a "secret party" in the hills of Hollywood:

I was reminded this evening that the highly buzzed Heretic's Daughter is by Kathleen Kent -- who is, indeed, a Dallas resident.

Grabbing galleys -- that is, pre-release, roughly bound copies of forthcoming books -- is a popular game for many BEA attendees, and Knopf certainly has its share of them this year. (They also have one of the hottest parties of the weekend; more on that later.)

Knopf publicity director Nicholas Latimer said that The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo had been popular, based on a Publishers Weekly story that deemed it an official "galley to grab." PW also anointed Toni Morrison's A Mercy, which comes out in November. And look for John Updike's The Widows of Eastwick in October.