Rick Simonson

Showing Up
June 19, 2008

Last evening - Wednesday, June 18 - brought novelist Sasa Stanisic (sorry, this is sans accents) to Elliott Bay, he of the wondrous debut novel, How the Soldier Repairs the Gramophone (Grove). More on him, the book, and the evening had ... perhaps tomorrow.

For here a little other musing: in greeting him we were saying hello once again to a writer first met five months earlier - back in Louisville at the ABA Winter Institute. Yes, it was winter there then. And here? Even with the rarely sighted (this June) blue skies of last evening, it was still, as Sasa put it, cold. 

For Grove, back in Louisville, Sasa and Leif Enger were authors brought in, both for some nicely hosted dinners, and for general meet and greet signing. It was interesting for there to have been that much time between that seed-sowing occasion and the book's being out and read for now. (Ironically, other authors from there and then such as Ethan Canin and Andre Dubus III, are also out and about as this is written.)

Talk of that gathering - Winter Institute - its scale and proportion leads to other things read and heard, especially since this year's BEA. To wit: that perhaps the one (Winter Institute) is cannibalizing the other (BEA) for bookseller interest, attendance, sense of purpose.

This year was the first Winter Institute I attended of the three there have been: I did enjoy the scale, the ease in spending more time with booksellers, meeting more from stores where I might have known one or two, but not others. The authors there: they were few enough that you got to take who was there in, what books they were there for. And the educational sessions - both what happened formally and where there was room for general banter: all of that was also good and valuable, in ways that are still happnening here and there.

There are still all kinds of things that happen at a BEA that a Winter Institute can't match: granted, a show in Los Angeles presents differences from the East Coast, even Chicago. What New York people make the trip, and how long they're there for, is one thing. (Learning to work a BEA, depending on one's intentions, means things like thinking of who is there when.) There are the intentional - and incidental - ways of seeing them.

There is also the matter of presence of most of the smaller, independent publishers and university presses. A BEA gives one time and room to see and talk with people in a way one never gets, even with the best of rep appointments. The Sunday of this past BEA was spent having to go too briskly - yes, traffic, yes, getting there - but was spent in a most pleasant meandering up and down aisles.

BEAs generally mean seeing more old friends - from bookselling, from publishing - and, with BEA - other key parts of this work. I'd been sensing and hearing from various people about a novel coming from Abraham Verghese and Knopf next spring - the most emphatic praise came from a dear friend (and tough reader) who is a book scout. Running into her (which was a surprise, she only came at the last minute) also meant talking over what was there at the show to look at, what we each were reading. Then there was the somewhat more intentional meeting - re-connecting - with an agent whom I had probably not sat down with in over a decade, and that had been at a BEA dinner. Based mostly in Paris, she and I had only kept loosely in touch over the years. A chance note said she would be at BEA, and seeing some of the books on her website (which had been discussed with publishers), it seemed a good time to sit down once again. That was a totally pleasant occasion, one I hope won't take a decade (again) to be repeated.

In short, for the purposes of here and now, without this being a fully fleshed-out case, I say it's good to have both Winter Institutes and BEA - they complement more than compete with each other. Winter Institute feels like something closer to the ground, the forest floor view of things. BEAs - including the presence of those from other countries - they provide the opportunity for seeing things in a larger context.

One idea for BEA: having been a guest, on short notice, to the domestic Beijing Book Fair in January and a subsequent round of bookstore and publisher visits, and a daylong symposium with Chinese booksellers, mightn't there be a way for BEA (and with ABA doing its part) to foster more exchange with counterparts from other countries? I love it - in our place (Elliott Bay) when I have the chance to visit with booksellers from other countries, as I have with people from Rome and Tehran, in recent times, and publishers from Barcelona and Mexico City, as well. The world is  more and more this way. Getting more books translated and into readers' hands is one thing. Having more conversations - translated if need be - with people doing what we do would be something that can only help us see and know what we do better. 

Posted by Rick Simonson on June 19, 2008 | Comments (0)