It’s time for the 20th annual Printers Row Book Fair: So many authors to hear and events to experience, so little time …
In the best of all possible literary worlds, fairgoers would be able to attend every program they fancied or were curious about. They wouldn’t have to decide between events that had overlapping times or were a fair apart. Or worry about finding a good seat in popular sessions.
Welcome to the perfect book-fair visits of Chicago Tribune cultural critic Julia Keller, arts reporter Chris Jones and reporters Robert K. Elder and Nara Schoenberg.
Here are their picks from the more than 120 authors and the 125-plus free programs at the fair, which will be the weekend of June 5-6.
Julia Keller
I look at the list.
Not a dud in the bunch.
That means, of course, one faces the delicious dilemma of picking among gems. A ruby here, an emerald there, a diamond over yonder.
A baseball diamond, that is, since Leigh Montville, author of an audaciously well-written biography of slugger Ted Williams, is among the authors on tap for the 2004 Printers Row Book Fair. (Reading from “Ted Williams: The Biography of an American Hero” 11 a.m.-noon Saturday; Residence Hall, Columbia College Chicago, 731 S. Plymouth Ct.)
At issue, as always, isn’t deciding what to do. It’s deciding what you can live without doing–knowing you must subsequently suffer an inevitable gust of regret, accompanied by teeth-gnashing and curse-purveying.
You do what you can. And if you were I, you would not pass up the chance to be within earshot of the lilting cadences of Irish writer Emma Donoghue, author of the splendid historical novels “Slammerkin” and “Life Mask.” (History & Fiction panel, 4-5 p.m. Saturday; Residence Hall, Columbia College Chicago, 731 S. Plymouth Ct.)
Nor would you dare skip Bill Savage, a witty and outrageously well-informed lecturer at Northwestern University who will be proffering a Chicago literary quiz, designed to test your knowledge of the Second City’s first passion: words. (With David Schmittgens. The quiz is on page 33; take your answers to the Arts & Entertainment Stage at 10:30 a.m. Sunday.)
And you have only yourself to blame should you foolishly decide to skip Elizabeth Berg, the best-selling chronicler of contemporary family life whose stories (most recently, “The Art of Mending”) are suffused with the golden light of Berg’s deep understanding of people. (4-5 p.m. Saturday; auditorium, Harold Washington Library Center, 400 S. State St.)
Don’t come crying to me if you take a pass on the dapper James Atlas, whose gargantuan biography of former Chicagoan Saul Bellow (“Bellow: A Biography”) is still kicking up a fuss in literary circles. (It was published in 2000; the paperback came out in 2002.) (Chicago Stories panel; 12:30-1:30 p.m. Saturday; auditorium, Jones College Prep High School, 606 S. State St.)
Rove amid these and other treasures, mind ablaze and thoughts abuzz, keeping an ever-lengthening list in your head of what you must, must, MUST go right home and read, before the good Earth grows a minute older.
Chris Jones
I’ve been going to the Printers Row Book Fair for years–listening to panels, chairing the odd discussion, getting lost in the tents, spending too much money. It’s one of those rare Chicago events where place and function seem perfectly at one. The height, age and history of the looming and bookish buildings on South Dearborn Street give the events on the street just the right touch of literary claustrophobia. For the book lover, the packed streets are better than any park. Books are best browsed on asphalt.
Here’s what caught my eye this year:
When I last heard Dave Eggers read in Chicago from his “You Shall Know Our Velocity!”–a book in part about his own sexual confusion–he started out by describing one of his early kisses and ended up providing a full, topographical description of a middle-school mouth. Eggers’ autobiographical landscape was upstate New York in an age of Spandau Ballet, Joe Cocker and other such telling iconography. Few have emerged to tell the tale of such a gilded age with comparable eloquence. (Reading 2-3 p.m. Saturday; Residence Hall, Columbia College Chicago, 731 S. Plymouth Ct.)
Ana Castillo, a Chicago poet and novelist, is an exquisite writer. Her dramatic work “Psst … I Have Something to Tell You” was one of the highlights of the Latino Theatre Festival at the Goodman Theatre last year. Equally at home in prose and poetic forms, the prolific Castillo is perhaps Chicago’s most-overlooked literary treasure. She writes with eloquence and beauty on such themes as the plight of the victims of government oppression, the human fallout of international conflict and the ability of people of faith to survive pain. (Reading from new and selected works, including the forthcoming “Watercolor Women and The Opaque Man,” 1-2 p.m. Sunday; Residence Hall, Columbia College Chicago, 731 S. Plymouth Ct.)
There’s no question that rural communities have fueled the conservative revolution, even if those folks are voting against their economic interests. One reason for this cultural hegemony is that most liberal institutions have concentrated all of their efforts on big coastal cities, which they wrongly regard as the repositories of sophistication, intelligence and culture. This is so much nonsense, as many Midwestern small-town dwellers will attest. I’m interested to hear how Thomas Frank, a shrewd and witty former Republican turned progressive cultural analyst, tells the tale of the conservative takeover of flyover territory. Liberals have much to learn. (“What’s the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America”; Challenging Conventional Wisdom: Sex and Politics panel, 1:30-2:30 p.m. Saturday; Multipurpose Room, Harold Washington Library Center, 400 S. State St.)
With the Catholic Church applying new litmus tests to its members who get involved in politics, this is an ideal moment to think about the church’s longtime struggle between traditionalism and reform. The Second Vatican Council (1962-65) is an apt crucible to consider this issue. Rev. Andrew Greeley’s contention is that it’s new wine–watery as it may have been–burst the old wineskins, which then re-formed with even greater strength than before. Few know as much about this topic as Greeley, a complex commentator who has been writing about American Catholics for years. (“The Catholic Revolution: New Wine, Old Wineskins, and the Second Vatican Council”; Exploring Religion panel 3:30-4:30 p.m. Saturday; 1st floor, Grace Place, 637 S. Dearborn St.)
Alex Kotlowitz needs no introduction after his “There Are No Children Here,” a book that had a great impact on me. His latest book, out in July, is “Never a City So Real: A Walk in Chicago.” I guess I have a never-ending interest in my hometown’s cultural iconography–its soul, its contradictions, its defiant spirit, its irritating prejudices, its beating heart. And for a walk in this city, Kotlowitz is the perfect, clear-eyed guide. Never a city so real, indeed. (Reading 3:30-4:30 p.m. Sunday; auditorium, Jones College Prep High School, 606 S. State St.)
Nara Schoenberg
For compulsive readers, the book fair presents a quandary: Do you get out there and enjoy the cultural riches or just stay home with a good book?
My argument against doing the latter would start with David Maraniss, author of the dazzling Bill Clinton bio, “First in His Class.” “First” offered real insight into perhaps the most puzzling of our modern presidents and helped establish Maraniss as a guy who knows where the skeletons are buried. I want to hear what he has to say in his book on the Vietnam War–or just about anything else. (Reading from “They Marched into Sunlight: War and Peace, Vietnam and America, October 1967,” 11 a.m.-noon Saturday; 2nd floor, Grace Place, 637 S. Dearborn St.)
I’m interested in “The Mommy Myth: The Idealization of Motherhood and How it Has Undermined Women.” But as a new mom myself, I might be too tired on any given day to hear about how hard it is to do this. (Susan Douglas will be on The Mommy Myth panel, 10-11 a.m. Saturday, 2nd floor, Grace Place, 637 S. Dearborn St.)
Instead, I’d choose the bracing cynicism of Laura Kipnis, who in “Against Love: A Polemic,” dares to entertain the notion that much of what we hold sacred in relationships–marriage, monogamy, lifelong romance–is a bunch of hooey. (Challenging Conventional Wisdom: Sex and Politics panel, 1:30-2:30 p.m. Saturday; Multipurpose Room, Harold Washington Library Center, 400 S. State St.) Kipnis may be wrong, but she’s no whiner.
Robert K. Elder
My perfect day at the book fair goes like this:
Chuck Palahniuk and I went to the same college and journalism school at the University of Oregon, and “Fight Club” remains one of my favorite films. He’s handed out fake severed limbs at previous readings–how could I not go? (Reading from “Stranger Than Fiction: True Stories” 11:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m. Saturday; Barnes & Noble Stage.)
Jules Feiffer’s 1965 essay “The Great Comic Book Heroes” contended that superheroes were junk, and junk was good, vital and possibly even necessary. A longtime fan, I’ve never seen Feiffer in person, so how could I let this opportunity go by? (Harold Washington Literary Award winner, 10-11 a.m. Saturday; auditorium, Harold Washington Library Center, 400 S. Sate St. Also reading from “The Daddy Mountain,” his latest children’s book, 1-1:30 p.m. Saturday; Target Reading Chair Stage.)
OK, so I did not live through the Cold War. I know next to nothing about Nikita Khrushchev, but after five minutes on the phone with William Taubman, I was enthralled. His “Khrushchev: The Man and His Era” won the Pulitzer Prize and National Book Critics Circle Award this year for biography, which should be reason alone to catch him. (3:30 to 4:30 p.m. Sunday; Winter Garden, 9th floor, Harold Washington Library Center, 9th floor, 400 S. State St.)
I’m unfamiliar with Julie Andrews’ long, respectable career as a children’s author. But I do remember her as Mary Poppins from my childhood. Her work shines. One cannot pass up the opportunity to see a living legend. (Answering questions with her daughter, Emma Walton Hamilton, about their books “Dumpy’s Apple Shop” and “Dumpy to the Rescue!” 1-1:30 p.m. Sunday; Target Reading Chair Stage.)
Young Chicago Authors/RedEye Poetry Slam: New voices, new screams. Will this junior competition hold a candle to the Green Mill throw-downs? I’m curious to see. (3-4:30 p.m. Sunday; Arts & Entertainment Stage.)
