A Literary Event, or the Festival of the Book

There is such a diverse community of literary bloggers and readers of litblogs, we thought we would put to you some questions concerning one of the ideas spawned in the scintillating Chapter One Hundred Four.

Though more book sales are occuring through the internet (and some predict a further doubling within the next five years), established book festivals still draw tens and hundreds of thousands of visitors. These are usually considered high-end affairs, and geared more toward the collector than the consumer. But they involve more than just the purchase of rare and antiquarian books, and this is how they trump the internet.

For all the hype surrounding the internet as a tool which helps bring people together and form a community, by its very nature there is a disconnect and isolation. Book festivals bring book-fanciers together to share a love of all things literary. They allow one to form a network of friends, colleagues, and connections, to bond. Just as there is a profound difference between the experience of reading a book in hand and reading one on the computer screen, so is there a difference between meeting someone through an electronic greeting and actually shaking someone's hand. Readers seem to love this sort of thing, as they turn out in droves to meet their favorite authors face to face, to get to know the person behind the words. Collectors distribute their want lists to hundreds of dealers quickly and easily. And dealers get a better feel for the market and the trends, and put their best book forward. Quite simply, a book festival is an event, like the World Series, or a traveling circus, The Ring cycle, or an art exhibition, something which the internet has yet to replicate.

So to the questions: If you have attended a book festival, what are the top three things you went for, to meet that special author, and perhaps have a book signed; to hunt through a huge selection of books for the elusive quarry; to hear a talk given by a publisher or writer; just to hang around with other book-fanciers; or something completely different? What three things are offered at a book festival that you could do without? The ubiquitous coffee bar, perhaps? And what three things do you wish were offered but aren't?

Storylines, or Beyond One Dimension

Narrative irons everything out flat, linear, and one-way. It is what we use and how we are able to make sense of multidimensional experience. Today's question is, how can we overcome the flat, linear, one-way nature of fiction? How do we capture the messy, paradoxical simultaneous life? And if the essence of narrative makes such a thing impossible, what form of art can achieve it?

Short Stories, or How the Universe Works

Short stories have never interested us much. Perhaps it goes back to literature classes that forced us to answer twelve questions about every short story we read to show we understood its meaning and whatever.

A few months ago we were emboldened by Litlove's post about a story by Maupassant to pick up our volume of his short stories and read. We all tell stories every day of our lives, and many of Maupassant's stories struck us as being just like that. We had never thought of or regarded short stories in such a way, and soon the previously conceived possibility of writing some of our own transformed into a present probability.

Just when we start to consider writing short stories, we also follow a suggestion to read short stories. We do not intentionally do one because of the other. Reading the stories, however, reveals things to us that help us to understand the writing of them. This is all to set up the first of a series of questions we pose to either of our readers: what is the cause and what is the effect? Do we find the answer and then discover the question? Or do we know the question but don't ask it until we have stumbled upon the answer? Do we subconsciously mold one to fit the other? What is it that brings question and answer together? Does a person or thing uncover a hidden need, or create a new need? Or does a hidden need seek out the person or thing to uncover it?

You may discuss among yourselves for the next five minutes, and then please share your answers with the rest of us.