Flocks of Festival-Goers Celebrate Books as Potent Symbols of Change

If Grace Paley were to write a short story about this year’s Los Angeles Times Festival of Books at UCLA, she might call it “Enormous Changes on a Glorious Weekend.” For books as the agents--and symbols--of change were a dominant theme on the festival’s first day.

More than 50,000 people crowded onto the campus to kick off the third annual book conclave, and they heard some of America’s finest writers--from novelists and historians to poets and self-help experts--describe a world in flux, with books at the forefront.

The issues they touched on echoed the news headlines, highlighting the concerns of women, African Americans, small-business owners and budding filmmakers. The writers also delved into the deeply personal world of psychoanalysis, sexual liberation and the fickle nature of success.

Overflow crowds greeted many writers. Hundreds of Ray Bradbury fans waited patiently in line for him to sign their books, and some brought beach chairs to relax on during the wait.

Sao Duong, a 21-year-old UCLA student, stood in line for more than an hour to meet the science fiction legend. Another book lover, Roger Whittaker of Woodland Hills, was eager to meet filmmaker Oliver Stone, noting that “he’s gotten involved in a lot of issues I agree with.”

In an early morning panel, Paley and fellow writer Tillie Olsen, 86, discussed the changing nature of feminism, politics and literature from the vantage point of a generation that grew up in the ‘20s and ‘30s, then watched the world turn upside down in the 1960s and later decades.

Paley, whose “Enormous Changes at the Last Minute” was a collection of American short stories, said writers of her generation have an obligation “to bear witness, to speak bitterness and to speak truth to each other” because a younger generation needs to hear their stories of struggle and political upheaval. A writer who has long been a vigorous social activist, Paley noted wryly that she had finally figured out why so many women were willing to read stories written by male writers and liked them.

“It was like [women] were going to a foreign country . . . and you don’t see that you’re missing [from the landscape], or not there, in a foreign country for a while. But finally we women have become our own foreign country.”

In a lively session on the legacy of the civil rights movement, Taylor Branch, author of a two-volume biography of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., recalled another era of upheaval in American life--and said the nation has begun to forget many of the important lessons.

He recalled how national sentiment for a voting rights bill shifted after millions of Americans saw young children marching into the fire hoses and attack dogs of an Alabama sheriff.

“I know of no precedent in history where the power of a nation changed [based] on the moral witness of schoolchildren,” he said. “Today, we are numb to many of those stories. We’ve forgotten what it meant to the life of this country.”

Tamar Jacoby, who has just written a book about civil rights in America since 1963, suggested that the quest for diversity has blinded the nation to the goal of one common society. “We think of ourselves as blacks, as Asians, and so forth. So what makes us different is more important than what unites us.”

Elsewhere, authors talked of changes that have rocked their personal lives.

Isabel Allende--who wrote “Aphrodite,” a book of recipes, stories and other aphrodisiacs--told a sold-out crowd that a bout of depression after the death of her daughter in 1992 brought on a new stage in her life--and led to the writing of her latest book.

After a long period of writer’s block, she said, her “body began to come back from the depression and the underworld. I started to have erotic dreams, always with food and sex. In one of the dreams, I placed a wicked Antonio Banderas on a Mexican tortilla. I slathered him with guacamole, rolled him up and ate him.”

Terry McMillan, author of “Waiting to Exhale” and “How Stella Got Her Groove Back,” hailed changes for black writers fighting for commercial acceptance. When she was starting out as a writer, McMillan said, “I didn’t get much support. Black writers did not go on book tours. But that has changed.”

The movie of “Waiting to Exhale” brought similar awakenings, she added, because “it was one of the first movies about African American women who were not downtrodden.” Studio executives “didn’t know it was going to do as well as it did. But they were shocked about ‘Titanic’ too.”

Some changes, however, are best forgotten.

Recalling her growing interest in aphrodisiac cooking, Allende said she experimented on her husband in the kitchen.

“He lost almost all of his hair,” she confessed. “And he developed blurred vision from all of the frolicking.”

Times staff writers Tracy Johnson and Anne-Marie O’Connor contributed to this story.