Bookfair wrapup and Broad Flea weekend

As always, the New Orleans Bookfair, held this past Saturday, November 7, was an absolute treat. Unlike some years, I was on my own, so I wasn't really able to experience it beyond my own station in Lazzizza's (the grape leaves are fantastic, pass on the falafel). But I had good ongoing company from fellow bookseller Donald Miller and poet and indpendent publisher Danny Kerwick, among others, and a steady flow of booklovers bound and determined to dispel my occasional dips into the swimming pool of chlorinated cynicism in the face of a world seemingly dominated by attention-span-challenged tweeters and intellectual Kindle-garteners and ignoramuses who haven't purchased a book since the end of the O.J. trial, ready to make a best-seller out of a woman whose mayoral tenure in Alaska included trying to intimidate the town librarian into censoring books. And now she's written... a book... that she wants us to read. Aaaaaahhh!

But I must remind myself that such things happen outside of our alternative universe here in New Orleans, and as soon as our local scientists have the force field ready (oh, shit! Forget I said that! Purely speculative!).... Anyway, as I was saying, the Bookfair was a rousing success on all fronts. Among the meandering autodidacts taking their personal evolution in their own hands were:

a young woman obsessed with Mexican art and murals who never reads nonfiction, and who was absolutely thrilled that I had a copy of Celine's Journey to the End of the Night (incidentally, I acquired that copy from a friend of partial Mexican ancestry);

two Catholic high school English teachers avoiding grading, wandering the Bookfair with a large quantity of affordable red wine, purchasing De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium Eater;

a fascinating woman who attended the funeral Michael Harrington (perhaps this country's most important and effective socialist after Eugene Debs) and was passionate about the history and work of the Catholic Worker movement;

a very cool acquaintance who is writing about the application of Naomi Klein's disaster capitalism theory to post-Katrina New Orleans;

a young woman buying a book of Leonard Cohen's poetry and lyrics, inspired by a recent concert she saw of his in Asheville, eloquently talking about the inner peace he radiates singing songs which obviously originated in great emotional turbulence.

You sustain me, my friends.

Bestsellers for the day included Walker Percy, Leon Trotsky, Albert Camus, Tennessee Williams, Noam Chomsky, Aldous Huxley, Upton Sinclair, Ray Bradbury, Philip K. Dick and John Steinbeck, many of them well-entrenched in the Greater New Orleans Bestseller List. In fact, the list saw the surprising ascendance of New Orleans native Walker Percy into a tie with Kurt Vonnegut at the top. I gotta admit, I didn't see it coming. I thought Vonnegut was a cinch for the title this year, but there are still a lot of sales to go. Here are the current standings, with previous rank in end parentheses:

1. (tie) Walker Percy (2)
1. (tie) Kurt Vonnegut (1)
3. Ray Bradbury (4)
4. Hermann Hesse (2)
5. George Orwell (4)
6. (tie) Albert Camus (8)
6. (tie) Aldous Huxley (unranked)
6. (tie) Star Trek (4)
9. (tie) Joseph Campbell (8)
9. (tie) Robert Heinlein (7)
9. (tie) James Joyce (8)

If anyone should stumble, Henry Miller, George Carlin, Ayn Rand, Anne Rice and Tennessee Williams are among those who could make a surge. Stay tuned to find out, or, for those who want to take a more active role in zeitgeist determination, come on out to Broad Flea this Saturday, November 14, from 11-4. This "affordable shopping adventure" is accompanied this weekend by the first annual Broad Street Brewhaha, "a celebration of the beer and coffee brewing traditions of New Orleans." Check out broadcommunityconnections.org for further details, or contact me at mpbookfreak@hotmail.com and I'll give you the skinny. Until then, keep reading.