Between the Lines

English professor Andrew Tonkovich writes for OC Weekly.

This week the Bibliofella previews, anticipates and otherwise promotes Orange County’s upcoming annual spring literary wingding, the weirdly named Literary Orange. Not Orange Julius or A Clockwork Orange or Orange Sunshine, which might be other great one-day conferences about, respectively, a frothy juice shake, a Kubrick film from the novel by Anthony Burgess and a Nick Schou history of the notorious OC hippie drug cult, but is actually a groovy, smart and fun book festival sponsored by the county’s libraries and UC Irvine.  There’s a catered lunch and coffee and book signings to go along with keynote addresses, all of it on a Saturday at Mr. Bib’s alma mater and employer. The Sixth Annual Literary Orange happens Saturday, April 14 at the UCI Student Center.

Past years’ highlights included a hilarious morning address from novelist and all-around swell gal Karen Joy Fowler (The Jane Austen Book Club) and the yummy cookies in the lobby, and a panel hosted by Yours Truly on Latino “sudden fiction.” I mispronounced all sorts of espanol while nonetheless delighting attendees with insightful questions. You shoulda been there.

Participating in this year’s festival will be plenty of writers, readers, editors and assorted literary folk offering advice, testimonials, case studies on the writing and reading life. Sixty bucks gets you two keynote speakers (Lisa See and Paula McLain), a lovely catered lunch, coffee, excellent cookies, book signings and panels on everything from mystery to memoir.  Wow, some segue!  Among writers on hand will be James Brown, the So Cal neo-realist recovering addict and redemption-boosting tough guy whose two dark, beautiful memoirs about family and death and loss and remorse make your life look like The Donna Reed Show, pal.

Divorced parents. Emotionally troubled, criminal mother. Smart, handsome, precocious over-achiever older brother and sister. Except that both (!) of Brown’s siblings, wildly talented adults, actors with loads of success and even more promise, nonetheless abused alcohol and drugs and took their own lives. (His brother was famous Barry Brown, of the excellent films Bad Company and Daisy Miller.) Little Jim himself published serious literary fiction as a teenager, showing early his own super-intelligence and talent, and no doubt already trying to make sense of his dysfunctional family. He achieved success, publishing novels and attending, yes, UCI’s MFA Creative Writing workshop.

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