Larry Karp's Books

ELEA WEEKEND AT THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK FESTIVAL

The L. A. Times Book Festival, an amazing event, fills the UCLA campus with some 150,000 book lovers for an entire weekend. Though there are charges for some feature indoor attractions, basically, the festival is free - just walk onto the campus and spend all the time you'd like listening to panels, or poetry readings, or interviews. Browse outdoor display booths of bookshops, publishers, writing-related services. Talk to authors; have them inscribe books to you. Give a dollar to a talented calligrapher, and walk away a few minutes later with a beautiful bookmark, created to your specifications.

The Mystery Bookstore in Westwood, just down the road from UCLA, kicked off this year's event with a Friday night party, cramming about a hundred authors and readers into the shop between five and nine pm. A great opportunity for Larry to catch up with friends from across the country.

Saturday, Larry spent the morning walking through exhibitors' booths, then in the afternoon, signed copies of The Ragtime Kid and his earlier books at three mystery-bookstore booths. At The Mystery Bookstore's tent, Larry sat beside Keith Raffel, who was promoting his first mystery, dot.dead. Keith's speaking voice sounded so interesting, Larry bought a copy of his mystery, and was pleased to see that the voice carried over to narrate an interesting, fast-moving story. Next, Larry went to sign at Crime Time Books, and especially enjoyed inscribing two copies of The Ragtime Kid for Robin Eller, a young actress who had played the role of the Harlem Woman in the Los Angeles production of Ragtime, the Musical. Between signing books, Larry enjoyed some good conversation with the L. A. Sisters in Crime, particularly Celeste Covas and Darrell James. And then he trotted over to Mysterious Galaxy, and sat with three other Poisoned Pen authors, Aileen Baron, Ken Kuhlken and Twist Phelan. The volume of walk-up customers was pleasingly brisk.

First up Sunday was a signing spot at Book'Em Mysteries, after which Larry had the rest of the day to walk around the festival with his sister, Kate. A highlight for him was the poetry reading by California poet laureate Al Young, whose work was heavily peppered with black-music references, including one recollecting the frantic warnings of White Citizens' Councils in the 1950s that "Negro music was corrupting White youth." After the reading, Larry and the poet had an interesting chat about the way not much had changed between the outcries over the dangers of ragtime to the unacclimated young white brains of 1900, and the inter-racial hazards fifty years later of doo-wop and other "black music" forms.

Larry stayed over another day to sign books at Borders, in Montclair. As he usually does, he played a Joplin CD as he sat near the checkout counter, and at one point, just happened to look around in time to see the clerks, Amy and Katie, doing a lively dance behind the counter. Proof once again how irresistible Scott Joplin's ragtime really is.

The trip ended on a high note. Any time Larry is anywhere near Pasadena, he's sure to stop by Canterbury records, and on this visit, he hit a jackpot. Someone had just sold the store a carton of vinyl records, and the collection was full of ragtime. Larry went home with ten discs, including two Kicking Mule Labels he'd been chasing for years. Another inducement to consider coming back to the Times Festival next April.

PEOPLE, PLACES AND THINGS: LOS ANGELES TIMES FESTIVAL OF BOOKS--APRIL 28-29 and BORDERS BOOKS, MONTCLAIR--APRIL 30, 2007