Let's Talk About Text: National Book Fest
SOME OF OUR FAVORITE AUTHORS are descending upon D.C. for this year's National Book Fest, sponsored by the Library of Congress. We couldn't talk to all of them, due to our time and space constraints, their busy schedules and that pesky restraining order, but we did round up a few of the best storytellers around and ask them to bend our ears before they touch down for Saturday's book frenzy.
» BRAD MELTZER
Superhero Bible Stories
Brad Meltzer writes best-selling thrillers, but he's also a passionate comic-book fan and writer for titles such as "Justice League of America" and "Green Arrow."
Meltzer's new novel, "The Book of Lies," seems like it's the lifelong dream of combining his loves. It's about a son who traces the gun of his father's killer back to the weapon used in the murder of Mitchell Siegel, the father of Superman co-creator, Jerry Siegel — and how it all plays into Abel's death by Cain and the creation of the Man of Steel.
But the book isn't about Superman; it's about something more vulnerable.
"I'm less obsessed with Superman than I am with where the character actually was born," Meltzer said. "People think America got Superman because we're the greatest country on Earth, but ... we got Superman because a little boy lost his father."
"The Book of Lies" combines real-world detective work by Meltzer — Siegel's father was felled by a heart attack, not a bullet — with the cliff-hanger fiction he's famous for writing.
"It's not a departure," Meltzer said. "It just so happens to deal with the world's first villain in Cain and the world's first hero in Superman — and what they have to do with each other."
» Fiction & Mystery Pavilion, 11:10-11:40 a.m.; signing, 12:30-1:30 p.m.
» FRANCINE PROSE
Grief and Growing
Francine Prose's "Goldengrove" tells the story of Nico, a 13-year-old who is simultaneously coping with the sudden death of her older sister and the inevitable tumult that accompanies coming of age.
But unlike many writers adopting adolescent voices, Prose is no novice. She has published 11 previous novels, as well as short-story collections, children's books and nonfiction, including the 2006 hit "Reading Like a Writer."
"I think that the difference between writing for teenagers and adults is, you might say, hormonal," Prose said. "The presumption is that adults have more patience, and more experience; all the experience that has followed the experience of adolescence."
Still, Prose acknowledged several challenges while writing her latest, including the real-life grief that inspired "Goldengrove" — her mother's death. But the book's message is also one that Prose herself heeded in regard to the misery she was going through about her mom.
"I wrote 'Goldengrove' for adult readers — former teenagers — but I would like teenagers to read it, partly because the novel says what I most needed to hear as a teenager: whatever you're going through now, it won't last forever."
» Fiction & Mystery Pavilion, 10:35-11:05 a.m.; signing, 12-1 p.m.
» TONY HOROWITZ
History, Demystified
America, the beautiful: Tony Horowitz splashes cold water on your fabulously constructed facade in "A Voyage Long and Strange."
"Most of what we think we know about our history is false," Horowitz said, "and then on top of that are dozens and dozens of stories that we don't know anything about. That's really the substance of the book — filling in the stories we don't know."
But it's also about scraping away the layers of myth that we've all been force-fed.
For instance, the Pulitzer Prize winner said, "There's no evidence Pilgrims landed at Plymouth Rock. And any sailor could tell you, the last thing a ship does is aim for a big rock."
But "A Voyage Long and Strange" — which is full of the same wry humor and participatory journalism that made his 1998 book, "Confederates in the Attic," such a hit — isn't just about tearing down myths; it's also about celebrating some of them and chuckling at the rest.
"We're named for a huckster and self-promoter who doesn't deserve to have two continents named after him," Horowitz said of Italian explorer and career exaggerator Amerigo Vespucci. "You could make the argument that it's fitting: We're a nation of salesmen and self-promoters, and, in some senses, Amerigo Vespucci was the first."
» History & Biography Pavilion, 10:35-11:05 a.m.; signing, noon-1 p.m.
» PETER ROBINSON
The Long Arm of Crime
In "Friend of the Devil," an old crime reaches skeletal fingers into the present and ties together two very odd murders, one of an invalid woman on a clifftop, one of a pretty young party girl in the middle of busy Eastvale.
Peter Robinson's greatest creation, Chief Inspector Alan Banks, is back for his 17th foray into the murders and manners of Yorkshire in this book, whose plot Robinson spun from 2001's grisly and moving "Aftermath." He hadn’t planned for "Aftermath" to have an aftermath of its own.
"It's just that sometimes I'm aware that when I've finished a book there's unfinished business," he says. "It's because I don't know where I'm going when I start."
Odd words from a poet and author of what anti-mystery snobs call literary fiction, who turned to crime — crime fiction, that is — as a natural progression from his "structured, narrative" poetry. Banks — and Detective Inspector Annie Cabbot and the landscape and populace of North Yorkshire — grew from there,
"I approached it as writing crime novels that were social commentary, in a way. ... I noticed two or three books in that I'd been writing about a man who was a police detective, and some of the things that happened in his job and some that happen in his life." A detective serial legend was born.
» Fiction & Mystery Pavilion, 4:25-4:55 p.m., signing, 2:30-3:30 p.m.
Written by Arion Berger, Christopher Porter and Meg Zamula
Top photo by Nikki Khan/The Washington Post
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