Authors Share Views With Fans on Final Day of Book Festival
The self-described Las Vegas card-counter who calls himself Barfarkel was sitting in the shade at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books on Sunday, munching on a sandwich as he waited for novelist Elmore Leonard to take the stage for a conversation about his craft.
Barfarkel -- who for obvious reasons refused to give his real name -- said he admired Leonard's work. But he had also come to soak up some of the details of the publishing game, seeing as how his memoir of life at the tables, "You've Got Heat," is due out soon from a little publisher in Alabama.
This last detail was too much for a stranger, who quipped that Barfarkel seemed more like an Elmore Leonard character than an Elmore Leonard fan.
The man took a thoughtful chew of sandwich. "Thank you," he said.
Sunday was the second day of the annual Festival of Books, where -- amid balloons and barbecue and rock singers -- the real draw was the promise that the barriers between reader and author would temporarily dissolve.
The authors argued, compared notes, signed autographs and talked about their politics and passions. Approximately 60,000 readers came to the UCLA campus to join them, bringing the two-day attendance for the ninth-annual event to an estimated 130,000.
The fair offered household names, up-and-coming niche writers, the gravest of foreign policy matters and the lightest of children's confections. Attendees learned about rotisserie chickens and African American politics. They studied the ways to construct biographies and crime fiction. And they sang along with Barney, the purple dinosaur.
One of the most popular events was the debate on the Iraq war with pundits Mark Danner, Christopher Hitchens, Michael Ignatieff and Robert Scheer. The event filled the 1,800-seat Royce Hall.
Danner, a writer for the New Yorker magazine, argued that the invasion and occupation of Iraq was a flawed endeavor that was "based on a series of dreams" -- including a misunderstanding of the complications that would be involved in handing over sovereignty to a new government.
Scheer, who writes a weekly column for The Times, insinuated that the Bush administration lied in justifying the war. Raising the specter of Vietnam, he warned that "once they realize they're being lied to," the American people would cease to support the military effort.
