The head of the _New Yorker_ fact-checking department, Peter Canby, moderated the “Discussion Among Writers” with Hari Kunzru, Peter Carey, and Gary Shteyngart, on the subject of “Outlaws.” It was a less freewheeling session than the one in the same space “an hour earlier”:http://emdashes.com/2008/10/new-yorker-festival-klam-leona.php. Canby’s questions tended to be feature lengthy quotations from the writers’ works. And there was less crosstalk, the responses conforming more to the two-minute time limits imposed on the likes of Sarah Palin the night before.
Speaking of whom, about midway through Carey mischievously inquired what Ms. Palin would make of one of Canby’s hifalutin questions. It must be said, though, that Canby’s method worked, as all three writers supplied informative and engaging answers and Shteyngart supplied enough humor in an hour to power the next ten Festivals in the event that “angry Ted Stevens”:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VEXJV2P2ZIw takes the Festival over.
Indeed, I’ll succumb to a temptation to turn over the bulk of this post to his quips. Describing his homeland Russia as still in a “pre-therapeutic” phase, he plans to “airlift eight thousand Park Slope social workers” to the vast country to bring it up to speed. Musing on the domesticated status of American writers, hostage to 401(k) plans and health care fees, he contrasted his lot with that of the Lost Generation: If the Spanish Civil War reasserted itself, unlike Hemingway “I’d only go if Iberia had a good frequent flyer plan…. I’m not flying coach to a war.”
An audience question about each writer’s favorite book elicited groans from the panel–but also revealing answers (well done, questioner!). Kunzru stated that the last novel that made an impression on him was Joan Didion’s _Play It as It Lays,_ so he now wants to migrate to California and wear a dress. Carey expressed an admiration for droll and dyspeptic Austrian novelist Thomas Bernhard, and Shteyngart professed to read Vladimir Nabokov’s _Pnin_ once a month.
One thing about these panels–you do come away with a solid impression of the participants. The Friday author sessions remain the ideal way to kick off the Festival weekend.