CAAF: Video stars and literary getaways

For your afternoon viewing pleasure, two troves of author videos:
• The Exhibit X archives features recordings of former guests of the series, including Samuel R. Delany (!), Rikki Ducornet, Lydia Davis, Kathryn Davis and several other great authors.
• Along with word of a possible new DFW novel in the offing, The Millions points the way to video of Wallace at Capri’s Le Conversazioni festival in 2006. Pay attention when the camera pans through the crowd, you can see Lindsay Lohan making out with some Italian dude in the back row. Also on the Conversazioni site are readings and conversations with Zadie Smith, Nathan Englander, Martin Amis, and many others with flourishing royalty statements.
As no doubt you’ve noticed, literary festivals are getting very glamorous these days, with locations like Capri, a glass cave underneath a volcano in Mexico… Brooklyn. Still, none of these has caught my fancy as much as a literary getaway idea Maud floated a couple years back: Fishing trips with James Hynes. She was speaking lightheartedly but I think it’s a lovely idea. $250 bucks and you get to spend the afternoon on Town Lake in Austin, shooting the breeze with Hynes and drinking Pearl from a cooler. Get anything published in the next year and the whole afternoon’s tax-deductible. (Hynes may be alarmed at the prospect but he should bear in mind: a) no prepared remarks would be expected, and b) he could probably fit up to eight people in the boat.)