“Books,” wrote the poet Philip Larkin, “are a load of crap.” No doubt Larkin, one of the most gifted lyric poets of the 20th century and a career librarian at the University of Hull, was being ironic. But irony or no, the participants and sponsors of this Saturday’s National Book Festival vehemently disagree.
Held every year for the last six years on the National Mall — rain or shine — the festival brings together marquee-name authors of all stripes and genres and readers and bookish types from around the area — some 100,000 people if the number of attendees from last year is any indication.
And since D.C. is a haven for bookish, intellectual types and writers of all kinds, it stands to reason that alongside those marquee names will be a few locally based writers. This year’s festival lineup doesn’t disappoint.
Fiction writers include the ever-prolific Joyce Carol Oates, who will probably have started and finished another novel during her time at the festival. Then there’s Jodi Picoult, who was the first woman to write for the D.C. Comics “Wonder Woman” series and whose popular Oprah-touted novels have essentially made her a cottage industry in publishing. Joining them is locally based novelist Thomas Mallon, author of Dewey Defeats Truman, Henry and Clara, and his latest, Fellow Travelers. Then there’s Edward P. Jones. If you don’t know Jones’ story, it’s worth repeating: a writer with only one published collection of short stories under his belt, Jones had saved up five weeks vacation at his day job here in the D.C. area. He decided to use it writing a novel he’d been thinking about. The result? The Known World, which won the 2004 Pulitzer Prize for fiction and catapulted him to literary stardom.
Those with a historical bent will want to visit the History & Biography pavilion to check out Arnold Rampersad. He’ll be discussing his recently published biography of iconic African-American writer Ralph Ellison, in which he paints a not altogether pretty picture of the perpetually blocked writer. Locally based historians and biographers include James Swanson, who will be discussing his book detailing the 12-day manhunt for John Wilkes Booth following the Lincoln assassination; noted political historian Elizabeth Drew, and Joan Crawford Greenburg, a lawyer and Supreme Court reporter and author of a book on, yep, the Supreme Court.
