Book Expo Dispatch: Overwhelming and Underwhelming

It was about half way through Deborah Eisenberg’s reading that I saw that familiar shape. The back of a head, maybe six rows in front of me and off toward the aisle. It was unmistakable – balding, grayish and round, round like a human head really ought to be, perched on the shoulders of a diminutive gentleman. It was unmistakable, yet highly improbable, given my complete ignorance of Deborah Eisenberg’s private life.Question: what do The Moderns (IMDb), My Dinner With Andre (IMDb), The Princess Bride (IMDb), and a number of Woody Allen films all have in common? They all benefit from the presence of the great Wallace Shawn, actor and writer. And there, on a cold late-October afternoon, in an auditorium down by the lake, was someone who looked exactly like Wallace Shawn. At this point I was not even entertaining the possibility that it really might be him. After all, why would Mr. Shawn leave the familiarity of his Manhattan apartment for the chill of Lake Ontario? In October? That, to pilfer shamelessly from the man himself, would be inconceivable. No, it must be his double. A northern doppelganger for the ultimate New Yorker.Then intermission came. I espied Ms. Eisenberg up in the balcony, and there, beside her, was that unmistakable head, now absent from the seat in front of me. Suddenly my doppelganger theory was becoming increasingly less likely, and what was once inconceivable was now irrefutable – Wallace Shawn was in the audience. A quick Web search later that day would fill in the blanks, and inform me about the decades-long relationship between the two.After the readings, there he was again – standing alone in the foyer, looking bemused. (When does he ever not look bemused?). So I approached and said to him, cleverly, “Hey, you’re Wallace Shawn!” “Yes !…. I am!” he exclaimed sounding like every comic character he’s ever played. I then welcomed him to Toronto and told him how much I enjoyed his work. He replied with a cheery “Great!” It was at this point in our Algonquin Round Table discussion that an elderly gentleman brazenly muscled in on our conversation, and so I retreated. All those questions left unasked – not just about his own work but that of his father, legendary New Yorker magazine editor William Shawn. Ah well, another time.As for Deborah Eisenberg, she delighted the audience with a short story from her latest collection, Twilight of the Superheroes. The story – “Some Other, Better Otto” – introduced us to a 60-ish grouch named Otto, and his much younger lover, the thoughtful William. Otto was bringing William to a Thanksgiving celebration where we would meet his siblings. As Eisenberg says, you meet people in your family that you would never happen to run into otherwise.Eisenberg’s reading was one of the highlights of the International Festival of Authors, ten days of readings, talks, and panel discussions. Another high point was the chance to hear, and later to briefly meet, Edward P. Jones, who read from his story “Blindsided”, from his latest collection All Aunt Hagar’s Children. Blindsided begins with a black woman’s bus ride to see Sam Cooke in Washington D.C. Prior to her outing, her white boss warns her that all black peoples’ entertainment will lead to blindness. And during the course of the story, on the bus ride, she quickly and unexpectedly goes blind. And that’s just the beginning. With its eccentric characters and the heart-breaking plot, the story delicately balances humor and moments of extreme poignancy.The iconic Ralph Steadman, in town to promote his book The Joke’s Over, was also at the festival presenting a slideshow of his illustrations, many of which have given surreal shape to Hunter Thompson’s hallucinatory and incendiary prose. Indeed, throughout Steadman’s slideshow, with its verbal asides, his late friend and partner-in-crime was ever-present.A couple of years ago I read and wrote about Alberto Manguel’s A History of Reading in which he touches on the library in all its variations, throughout history, throughout the world. Now Manguel delves even deeper with a new work The Library at Night. During a reading and a panel discussion at the festival, Manguel spoke of his own private library in France, of losing himself in its stacks, and of the distinctions between day and night. During the day, one seeks to find – one moves purposefully. At night, the activity becomes more ghostlike. Books speak to each other and conspire, the searcher going wherever the books lead him.Manguel contrasts the processes of reading and writing (two different kinds of solitude). After writing, the writer likes to be with other writers who understand, but not necessarily to talk about the specific work. More of a silent understanding. Whereas after reading and being moved by a written work, a reader becomes evangelical about it and would like nothing more than to spread the word.He also contrasts such classical libraries as Alexandria (the library that contained everything) with the web (the library that contains anything.) He’s far from anti-internet, but believes it must never take the place of the real thing. And he prefers his own massive private library to public libraries or archives if only because he would always want to keep the book, and mark it up. Manguel loves the tangibility of books. One’s own books. They remind us who we are, he says. They provide optimism in the face of encroaching stupidity and horror.