{"id":977,"date":"2010-04-22T10:16:00","date_gmt":"2010-04-22T17:16:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2010\/04\/los-angeles-times-festival-of-books.html"},"modified":"2010-04-22T10:16:00","modified_gmt":"2010-04-22T17:16:00","slug":"los-angeles-times-festival-of-books","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/2010\/04\/los-angeles-times-festival-of-books.html","title":{"rendered":"Los Angeles Times Festival of Books"},"content":{"rendered":"

THIS Saturday I am quite honored to be moderating a panel with three very fine novelists of my generation at the LA Times Festival of Books. The panel — “Writing the Fantastic” — takes place at 2, in Moore 100 on the UCLA Campus.<\/p>\n

One of my obsessions the last few years has been the move away from realism — and in many cases toward genre — by writers born in the late ’60s and early ’70s. I sort of associate the issue with Michael Chabon, who has written so well about the matter and exemplifies it in his own work — here<\/a> for more on that — but he’s hardly the only one. Recently I’ve been interested, for instance, in the lead essay on Ted Gioia’s Conceptual Fiction<\/a> site.)<\/p>\n

<\/a>(A year or so ago I wrote about the phenomenon in a Guardian piece called “How Ursula LeGuin Led a Generation Away From Realism,” here<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

In any case, my distinguished panelist include:<\/p>\n

Aimee Bender<\/a>: Known to many readers, esp Angelenos, for her debut story collection, The Girl in the Flammable Skirt<\/i>, Bender has a novel coming in June called The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake<\/i>, which continues her blending of folklore and whimsical surrealism. (Or is it folkloric whimsy — I’m not quite sure, but I think of Chagall when I read her.)<\/p>\n

<\/div>\n
<\/a><\/div>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Victor Lavalle<\/a>: His novel Big Machine<\/i>, which came out last summer, is my can’t-put-down favorite right now. I came to this book cold, and don’t want to spoil it for others, as the unfolding of a mystery that begins in a train station rest room is part of the delight of Big Machine.<\/i> But this guy has a great touch. Lavalle grew up in Queens and is the youngest of the panel, born 1972. His novel drew raves from both the Wall Street Journal and Mos Def.<\/p>\n

Lev Grosssman<\/a>: I’ve admired Grossman’s criticism, much of it in Time magazine, for quite a while now — he’s one of the most astute readers I know. His novel The Magicians<\/i> has been a sensation, scoring The New York Times bestseller list, acclaim from the New Yorker and Junot Diaz. The novel superficially resembled the Harry Potter cycle in its school for magicians, but takes a much darker and more, um, adult turn.<\/p>\n

Each of the authors has a blog, linked above, and I hope readers of The Misread City will check these three out whether they can attend the panel or not.<\/p>\n

And remember: Though Lavalle and Grossman did not grow up on the West Coast, it was not their fault.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

THIS Saturday I am quite honored to be moderating a panel with three very fine novelists of my generation at the LA Times Festival of Books. The panel — “Writing the Fantastic” — takes place at 2, in Moore 100 on the UCLA Campus. One of my obsessions the last few years has been the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[35,119,123,104,166,279],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-977","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-books","7":"category-chabon","8":"category-gen-x","9":"category-genre","10":"category-la-times","11":"category-realism","12":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/977","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=977"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/977\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/culturecrash\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}