`Open a Book, Open the World' -- and rethink -- Column of Sept. 16, 2021

By MARSHA MERCER

Even in the best of times, news is rarely uplifting.

“If it bleeds, it leads” is more than a catchy TV phrase. News thrives on quarrels, conflict and chaos.

That said, we’ve all endured a particularly sad run of news of late.

The 20^th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks brought back the day’s horror and sorrow. The precipitous end of the war in Afghanistan made us question, well, everything.

The pandemic tightens its deadly grip on our country because too many of us refuse to take simple, free precautions. Our ailing planet repays us for our disregard of climate change with disastrous storms, floods and fire. Need I go on?

No wonder so many of us are disgusted, disheartened and dispirited.

Usually, when the world is too much with me, I go on vacation, but for various reasons, I haven’t taken a vacation in more than two years.

Fortunately, fall means festivals, and in a rare benefit of COVID-19, many festivals are again virtual, inviting us to attend wherever we are.

The National Book Festival, sponsored by the Library of Congress, continues through Sept. 26, with live author conversations online daily. Only two festival events are ticketed and in person at the library in Washington.

More than 100 popular authors from a range of fields are participating in various formats. Among them: historian Joseph J. Ellis, fashion designer Diane Von Furstenberg, business magnate Bill Gates, historian Annette Gordon-Reed and journalist Isabel Wilkerson.

Children and teen authors include Traci Chee, Kate DiCamillo, Meg Medina, Lupita Nyong’o, Jason Reynolds and Angie Thomas.

Dozens of videos are available to watch on demand, including with actor Michael J. Fox, social commentator Roxane Gay and Nobel Prize winner Kazuo Ishiguro. Question-and-answer sessions with authors are scheduled as well.

New this year is a “Festival Near You” section on the festival website that shows local events. See more at https://www.loc.gov/events/2021-national-book-festival/

First lady Laura Bush brought the National Book Festival to Washington on Sept. 8, 2001, three days before the world changed utterly. That the festival has survived 20 years and evolved to meet today’s challenges is cause for celebration at a time when we don’t have many.

The theme this year, “Open a Book, Open the World” celebrates the power of books to change our lives as well as our perspective.

“Books have been everything to me,” poet Amanda Gorman said in an interview with Librarian of Congress Dr. Carla Hayden on a PBS special about the festival, available on the library’s site. Actor and child literacy advocate LeVar Burton hosts the special and also is a festival speaker.

Gorman became a worldwide sensation at age 22 last year when she read a poem at President Joe Biden’s inauguration. She knew she wanted to become a writer in third grade, when her teacher read Ray Bradbury’s novel “Dandelion Wine” to the class, she says.

Bill Gates says he was lucky as a child to have a grandmother who read to him and his sisters. He also credits summer reading contests at the local public library for encouraging his keen love of reading.

“An addiction to reading has been a key secret of my success,” Gates says.

If, like me, late September makes you feel like you should be back in school – cue Rod Stewart – the festival offers plenty of food for thought, reflection -- and action.

Adam Grant, author of “Think Again: The Power of Knowing What You Don’t Know,” says it’s important to avoid letting our beliefs harden into fossils.  

“The problem is we live in a rapidly changing world, where we need to spend as much time rethinking as thinking,” he said on the PBS special. Grant, an organizational psychologist at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, suggests: “Don’t let your ideas become your identity.

“Look for reasons why you might be wrong, not just reasons why you might be right. Listen to the ideas that make you think hard, not just the ones that make you feel good.”

I haven’t read Grant’s book, but I plan to. In the meantime, his advice makes me want to give rethinking my beliefs a go. What about you?

©2021 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved. 

Writing the next chapter with books -- Sept. 5, 2019 column

By MARSHA MERCER

As summer unofficially wound to a close, more than 200,000 people thronged the National Book Festival Saturday, with a dozen or so hardy souls camping on the sidewalk more than five hours before the doors opened.

The reason for 3 a.m. arrivals was a cultural hero known for her day job. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg drew a capacity crowd of more than 5,000 to the Main Stage area, which had been doubled in size since last year’s festival.

Thousands more watched her on screens outside the Main Stage and through the website of the Library of Congress, which sponsors the annual book fest. She talked about her 2016 book, “My Own Words,” a collection of her writings, and gave encouraging words to fans everywhere.

“I’m still alive,” the indomitable Ginsburg, 86, said. Recovering from her latest cancer treatment, she said she’ll be ready to work when the court’s term begins the first Monday in October.

Other big names included chef Jose Andres, historian David McCullough and novelist Barbara Kingsolver as well as many children’s authors and activities.

The mood at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center was celebratory, as people good-naturedly waited in lines -- to enter and pass through security, to hear authors speak, to purchase books at full price, and to have a quick meet-and-sign with authors.

Several people I met in lines told me seeing so many people happily loaded down with books, mostly hardbacks, cheered them. It was also reassuring to see people were polite and their questions respectful.  

For those who spend all day there, which is easy to do, the festival’s free admission eases, somewhat, the pinch of convention center prices for snacks – a bottle of water for $4.50, for example.   

Still, not bad for day that affirms ideas and reading at a time when both seem threatened.   

Book festivals have proliferated since then-First Lady Laura Bush founded the National Book Festival 19 years ago. Almost any weekend this fall, you can find a book festival somewhere in the United States. Check out the festivals list at bookreporter.com.

All this is excellent news for book lovers, but, sadly, it’s not the whole story.

The world’s wealthiest country ranks just 16^th in the world in literacy. Roughly 32 million or 33 million adults – about 13% of the population -- cannot read past the third-grade level, philanthropist David M. Rubenstein, a major supporter of the National Book Festival, said at its opening gala.

These non-readers are not foreigners who are literate in another language but people who are functionally illiterate in any language, he said.

They can’t get good jobs, and thus earn much less, are more likely to get in trouble with the law, and, as Rubenstein diplomatically put it, have “not as pleasant a life” as people who can read.    

Rubenstein runs The Carlyle Group, a private investment firm, and has given millions of dollars to patriotic projects, such as restoring or repairing the Washington monument, Mount Vernon, Monticello, Montpelier and many other historic sites and museums.

He also bankrolls the Library of Congress’ Literacy Awards, which since 2013 have given $1.9 million in prizes to 120 organizations that promote literacy in 35 countries.

Yet he had more sobering news about those who are literate. “The average person in this country reads for pleasure 16 minutes a day,” he said.

I was shocked and skeptical pleasure reading was that small, so I checked the American Time Use Survey. The Bureau of Labor Statistics asks people to record how much time they spend on various activities, such as work, housework and leisure activities.

Time spent reading varies by age. People 15 to 54 read for personal interest – not for school or work – an average of just 10 minutes or less a day last year. Those 75 and older read the most -- an average of 48 minutes a day.

Rubenstein also said 25% of Americans did not read a single book last year and 30% of college graduates never read another book after finishing school.

September always feels like the start of a new year, so let’s resolve not to be average.

Let’s make sure work and our other duties don’t keep us from the joy of reading. We can put books in our next chapter, enrich our own lives and perhaps lead by example for others.  

©2019 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

Love story: Book festivals bring readers, writers together -- Sept. 15, 2016 column

By MARSHA MERCER

We think of reading as a solitary pastime, but it’s often social and cultural as well.

Who wants to talk about a great book? Just about everybody, as the explosion of book clubs in recent years attests.

Bring writers into the conversation, and you have a book fair. Add more readers and writers, and it’s a book festival.

About 75 book fairs and festivals are now held in 43 states. More than 120 authors and illustrators and upwards of 100,000 people are expected to throng the 15^th annual National Book Festival on Sept. 24 in the Walter E. Washington Convention Center in the nation’s capital.

Stephen King, whose books have sold an amazing 350 million copies worldwide, is the festival’s marquee draw. If you didn’t snag a free ticket for his sold-out appearance, you can still visit with big names.

No tickets are required for the other speakers, who, unlike King, will sign their books. Among them: filmmaker Ken Burns, journalist Bob Woodward and authors from at least seven foreign countries.

The celebration surrounding the opening of the Museum of African American History and Culture the same day likely will extend to the festival, where the roster includes basketball great Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, civil rights leader Rep. John Lewis, television producer Shonda Rhimes and novelist Colson Whitehead.

In addition, many readers may see Carla Hayden, the new Librarian of Congress for the first time. Hayden, the first African American and the first woman in the position, was sworn in Wednesday.

Free and with programs for all ages, the national festival is the legacy of first lady Laura Bush, a former librarian with the lifelong mission of inspiring people to read.  

In November, the Texas Book Festival, which Bush started when she was first lady of Texas, will mark its 20^th anniversary. She and the Library of Congress launched the national festival in 2001, just three days before the horrors of 9/11.

Bush didn’t invent book fairs, of course, but she did popularize them for modern readers.

Book fairs got their first 20^th century boost in 1919, when a Chicago department store held Book Week. One hundred thousand customers poured into the store to shake hands with 14 authors and buy books from 60 publishers, Bernadine Clark wrote in “Fanfare for Words,” a 1991 history of book fairs published by the Library of Congress.

The Miami Book Fair started in 1984 and the Southern Festival of Books in Nashville in 1989. The Tennessee festival takes place Oct. 14 through 16.

In Virginia, the Fall for the Book festival, sponsored by George Mason University, runs Sept. 25 to 30, and the Virginia Festival of the Book is next set for March in Charlottesville. The 2017 Alabama Book Festival will be held in April in Montgomery.

Festivals are quick-hit gatherings for readers and writers, but the nation’s first, permanent celebration of American writers past and present is in the works. The American Writers Museum is under construction on the second floor of an office tower in downtown Chicago and plans to open in March.

The idea for the museum came from Ireland, where the Dublin Writers Museum honors great Irish writers. In this country, the writers museum will fill a void, says Jim Leach, former chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

“We collect in central points the artifacts of civilization and honor politicians and soldiers, athletes, artists, inventors and entrepreneurs, but we neglect our writers,” Leach said in a statement on the museum’s website.

It probably won’t surprise anyone that Laura Bush is among those supporting the writers museum.

Like the Texas and national book festivals and literary events around the country, the new museum will “celebrate writers of every era, every genre and every race,” she says in a video, and “inspire everyone to fall in love with reading and writing.”

I hope she’s right.

©2016 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

Is partisan gridlock race-based?

By MARSHA MERCER

Fall is the season of books and provocative ideas, and author Taylor Branch has no shortage of either.  

The Pulitzer Prize-winning historian hopes to keep educators interested in teaching about the civil rights era with the publication of “The King Years,” a short version of his much-acclaimed trilogy on the life of Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement.

Last Saturday, he challenged his audience under a big tent at the National Book Festival in Washington with an idea he said is both dangerous and delicate. He’d sprung it last month on Gwen Ifill when she interviewed him for the PBS NewsHour. Intrigued, Ifill gingerly broached the idea when she and Judy Woodruff interviewed President Barack Obama a day later.

Obama “danced all around it,” Branch said.  

Here it is: Obama is the victim of partisan racial gridlock.

Everyone agrees that Congress is dysfunctional and that the tea party has put sand in the gears of Washington. 

But is it accurate – or unfair -- to ascribe race as a motivator of partisan gridlock?

Even practiced interviewers like Ifill and veteran interviewees like Obama get hives using the words race and racial. Ifill held the question until last, and she used many words asking it. She asked the president if he agreed with the historian “and, if so, what, if anything, the first African-American president can do to break through that kind of motivated gridlock.”

The last thing Obama wants is to suggest that he considers himself a victim of racism. He talked and talked. He went on for 647 words, more than twice as many words as Lincoln used for the Gettysburg Address, and basically Obama said no, he doesn’t think partisan gridlock is race-based.

But he did offer context to gridlock. Since the 1960s, Obama said, people have fought government efforts to help minorities and the poor as being bad for the economy, and that has led to thinking of government as the problem instead of the solution. That in turn led to criticism that “pointy-headed bureaucrats in Washington are just trying to help out minorities or trying to give them something free.”   

Bingo! Obama is thinking of the racism of George Wallace even if he’s not talking about it.  

In early 1963, Alabama’s governor declared, “Segregation today, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever.” As Branch tells it, the March on Washington and other events convinced Wallace that talk of segregation and race were unacceptable, and Wallace never mentioned them again.

"He turned on a dime,” Branch says. “He switched his message adroitly.”

That September, Wallace launched a presidential bid with a speech that turned his scorn to “pointy-headed bureaucrats,” tyrannical judges and “tax, tax, spend” legislators.

It was “the beginning of the vocabulary of modern politics,” Branch says.  For him, “The greatest unexamined question today is to what extent the underpinnings of partisan gridlock are racial.”

I thought of Branch’s question in connection with recent comments of Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, about Jesse Helms.   

“We need a hundred more like Jesse Helms in the U.S. Senate,” Cruz declared Sept. 11 at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank in Washington.

Helms died five years ago, but his star in the political right constellation is brighter than ever. 

Former Sen. Jim DeMint, R-S.C., head of Heritage, calls Helms “my kind of conservative.”

Cruz said that he sent his very first political contribution -- $10 -- to Helms because critics were “beating up on him.” Helms’s “willingness to say all those crazy things is a rare, rare characteristic,” Cruz said admiringly.

Cruz was 19 in 1990 when Helms ran a chilling campaign ad against Harvey Gantt, Charlotte’s black mayor. The ad showed a white man’s hands crumpling up a job rejection letter. “You needed that job and you were the best qualified, but they had to give it to a minority because of a racial quota,” the voiceover said. Helms won his re-election bid.

Helms, unlike Strom Thurmond and Wallace, never recanted or apologized for his use of racism as a political tactic.

In the 21^st century, America needs to move forward, not back. We can’t afford to listen to rhetoric from the bad old days, whether we call it racially tinged or racist.  

© 2013 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

It's the season of book fairs -- and guilt -- Sept. 13, 2012 column

By MARSHA MERCER

In the 21st Century spirit of blabbing personal secrets, I’m going to tell you something.

That book I happily bought last September at the National Book Festival on the National Mall, the one I had to have after listening to the author talk about his years of hard work, the book I stood in line in the sweltering sun for him to sign?

That book I then put on the table next to my reading chair by the window?

It’s still there. Unopened and, yes, unread.

It’s not about him or his 700 well wrought pages. It’s about me. I just wasn’t that into it. I put it on the table with every good intention but after a while had to stack books on top to muffle its reproachful cries whenever I walked past.

Months passed, I read other books, magazines and newspapers but never tackled the one book I’d imagined as my erudite companion through the long, snowy winter. But last winter was mild. Could global warming have stolen my book enthusiasm?

That’s silly. Besides, as an anxiety producer, books-I -haven’t-gotten-to-yet is a large category. But it’s hardly the only one that makes me break out in hives of literary remorse. Earnest interviews with authors on C-SPAN’s Book-TV, books I start and put down, even lists of books everyone ought to read exacerbate my unread-book guilt.

This year, it got so bad that when the Library of Congress in June issued its list of Books That Shaped America, I refused to look, fearing I’d feel worse.

I was wrong.

The library chose 88 books that chronicle a wide range of American history, literature and popular culture. The earliest volume is Benjamin Franklin’s “Experiments and Observations on Electricity” in 1751. The latest: “The Words of Cesar Chavez,” 2002.

Note that the list is not titled THE Books that Shaped America. The library intentionally omitted the article “the” to indicate that the list is a starting point, says Librarian of Congress James H. Billington.

“It is not a register of the ‘best’ American books – although many of them fit that description. Rather, the list is intended to spark a national conversation on books written by Americans that have influenced our lives, whether they appear on this list or not,” Billington said.

Not a list from On High but a list designed to spark a national conversation? That’s refreshing.

The eclectic selection includes the obligatory “Moby-Dick” but also such how-to titles as “The Joy of Cooking” and “Our Bodies, Ourselves.”

“Common Sense” by Thomas Paine and “History of the Expedition Under the Command of the Captains Lewis and Clark,” by Meriwether Lewis made the list, but so did “Gone With the Wind,” “Goodnight Moon” and “Tarzan of the Apes.”

Why 88 titles? The library thought choosing 10 or 25 or 100 would have indicated finality. The list is a work in progress. Plus, 88 books fit in the exhibit space.

The exhibit at the Library of Congress closes Sept. 29, but you don’t need to come to Washington to see Books That Shaped America. It’s online at http://www.loc.gov/bookfest/books-that-shaped-america/

Be sure to take the quick survey and give the library your own suggestions for future lists. Send me your thoughts too. I’d love to hear them.

I have my candidates that didn’t make the list, and many that did I’v e not yet read. It’s nice to know others suffer unread-book anxiety.

A cartoon in the Sept. 3 New Yorker showed two guys at the beach. One, reading a big book, is only a little way into it. The other guy says, “I got tired of ‘Moby-Dick’ taunting me from my bookshelf, so I put it on my Kindle and haven’t thought of it since.”

Aha! Expiation by gadget – perfect.

But wait a minute. There’s no “read-by” expiration date on books. And unlike with e-readers, there are no dying batteries in me-readers. I can take a non-judgmental path, be glad I have the book I haven’t yet read, knowing that when the time is right, I’ll pick it up. I can move on -- to the next National Book Festival.

Yes, more than 100 authors will be at the celebration of reading and books Sept. 22 and 23. About 200,000 people showed up last year, and I plan to be among the crowd on the National Mall this year.

Among the hundred-plus authors slated to speak and sign books are Mario Vargas Llosa, T.C. Boyle, Geraldine Brooks, Robert Caro, Patricia Cornwell and Jeffrey Eugenides.
I’ll be there, guilt-free.

One more thing. The Library of Congress plans next year to issue a list of Books That Shaped the World.

Get ready.

©2012 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.

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Book festival wastes taxpayer money? Not! -- Sept. 29, 2011 column

By MARSHA MERCER

About 200,000 people thronged the National Mall last weekend -- not for war protests or to demonstrate against Congress or the president. They came to celebrate books.

In this time of dwindling bookstores, surging e-book sales and ever more virtual commerce and remote companionship, the 11th annual National Book Festival brought together more than a hundred authors, swarms of readers and stacks of old-fashioned books in print.

The festival, started by Laura Bush as first lady, is free, and generations of families showed up for readings, book signings and children’s programs. Among the preeminent writers on several stages -- Nobel laureate Toni Morrison, historian David McCullough, biographer Edmund Morris, humorist Garrison Keillor, poet Rita Dove, children’s author Katherine Paterson, and memoirist Dave Eggers.

I listened to a few authors talk about their work, wandered through a tent where state libraries gave out flyers on intriguing state and regional book festivals and state maps. I browsed the book tent and bought two and then stood in a long line to get one signed. There’s something you can’t do with a Kindle, I gloated. (Later I watched a YouTube video on how an author could digitally “sign” an e-book. Complicated is an understatement.)

It was heartening to see so many people enjoying themselves with books, but something nagged at me. How much was this feel-good event costing taxpayers? Could it be perceived as, horrors, a waste of money? Would the long knives of congressional budget-cutters slice out its heart?

Stan Collender, who has worked for both the House and Senate budget committees and is the author of a book on the federal budget process, raised questions about the festival on his blog on the Capitol Gains and Games website.

“It might be possible to achieve better results at a lower cost if the government distributed vouchers all over the country and let people get books from local stores,” Collender wrote after the festival a couple of years ago.

“Some might consider the program to be a waste because it directly benefits only a relatively small number of people and is held in only one city. Others might believe it’s a waste because they don’t think it’s the federal government’s job to promote reading over, say, movie watching. Some might think it is waste because they don’t like the authors whose books are featured or because the language in their books offends them,” he wrote.

Whoa. Don’t tell the tea party.

Me, I’m a soft touch for books and reading. Not only do I think the festival is not a waste, I’m fully prepared to argue that it’s money well spent. OK, it’s not as important as National Institutes of Health researchers’ searching for a cure for cancer or Alzheimer’s, but it’s definitely worthwhile. The government should encourage literacy. How else will we compete in a global economy?

I’d read about the festival’s deep-pocketed corporate sponsors, including Target, Wells Fargo, AT&T and the Washington Post. In 2010, David M. Rubenstein, cofounder of the Carlyle Group, a global private equity fund, announced a $5 million gift over five years. But was it enough?

I called Jennifer Gavin, acting director of communications for the Library of Congress and the project manager of the festival.

The festival is estimated cost $2.2 million this year, she told me, and there’s good news.

“We aren’t financing this with taxpayer dollars. It’s financed through private donations.” Gavin said.

None of the corporate sponsors get in the door for less than $30,000. This year, Rubenstein offered to spring for another $300,000 above his announced gift so that the festival could expand from one to two glorious days.

A few Library of Congress employees – about 20 -- devote about 15 percent of their time overall to the festival, Gavin said. Other than that, it’s paid for with donations. That’s a relief.

Librarian of Congress James H. Billington thanked the corporate sponsors, supporters and more than 1,100 volunteers at this year’s festival. Because of them, he said, “We can look forward to this beloved celebration of reading and literacy for years to come.”

See you there next year?

© 2011 Marsha Mercer. All rights reserved.
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