Imagine living in a town of 100,000 people who all read books, relish books, buy lots of books, and talk about books. I had the pleasure of doing so this past weekend.
I was a panelist at the Tucson Festival of Books, a two-day annual gathering held at the University of Arizona that assembles 300 authors for panel discussions, book signings, and assorted interactions with the hundred thousand or so booklovers who attend each day. It is a marvelous event and one of the handful of national book festivals held in the United States. Each year, a horde of book fanboys and fangirls descend on Tucson, flooding halls, theaters, and classrooms to hear authors gab about their works. Some bring shopping carts to hold all the books they purchase. They treat authors—well-known and not-so-known—as celebrities. Look, there goes Buzz Bissinger! (author of the classic Friday Night Lights and the recent bestseller The Mosquito Bowl: A Game of Life and Death in World War II). They line up to have the books they buy inscribed by poets, historians, novelists, journalists, mystery writers, memoirists, children’s books superstars, cookbook creators, and others—and to take selfies with their favorites. They chase after those they recognize from cable news shows and NPR. This year, they waited hours to see Bernie Sanders, who recently published It’s Okay to Be Angry About Capitalism and hometown gal Linda Ronstadt, author of Feels Like Home: A Song for the Sonoran Borderlands. It’s a congregation of the Tribe of the Book. Burning Man for book-stans.
The vibe is festive. Mariachi bands play. Food stands serve tamales, rice bowls, hummus, and pizza. Families come to spend the entire day. A sales tent filled with stacks of the participating authors’ works hums with the commerce of literature. Books, books, and more books—a celebration of creation. “This is a hidden gem,” Peter Slen, a host for C-SPAN’s Book TV, tells me, shortly before he conducts a sit-down with Sanders.
It seems that anyone within 90 miles of Tucson who reads the New York Times or watches MSNBC is here. This is an oasis of sanity and good cheer in Arizona, not the Arizona of Kari Lake and Paul Gosar and other election-denying extremists and QAnon-friendly know-nothings. This is an amassing of the Arizonans who beat back—barely—the threat to democracy posed by detached-from-reality Trumpists and far-right radicals. Among the throng are people who have trekked from Idaho, Illinois, and New Jersey. It’s book tourism. Most of those present come each year. An army of hundreds of volunteers staff the festival. All events are free. If you’ve ever felt at home at an independent bookstore—looked around and said, “These are my people”—you would be in heaven here.
For authors, it’s nirvana. Scribes who usually toil alone can meet appreciative readers who treat them as conquering heroes. They can eat and drink—and drink—with fellow authors and gossip, compare notes, and bitch about publishers, editors, the economics of book-writing, the vagaries of success (How did that book make the list?), and the decline of literary culture. We come together—political journalists, sports historians, Y.A. authors, illustrators of children’s books—to share the common joys and frustrations of our craft.
I participated in two panels with political themes that were each held in a packed theater and discussed (and promoted!) my recent book, American Psychosis: A Historical Investigation of How the Republican Party Went Crazy. (To qualify for participation, an author must have published a book in the previous year.) During the first of these sessions, New York Times reporter Robert Draper (Weapons of Mass Delusion: When the Republican Party Lost Its Mind) recounted a reporting trip he made to Arizona last summer for a piece on the state’s crazy Republicans. Interviewing a slew of GOPers, he repeatedly heard them voice what seemed to be a mantra: “This is not a democracy, this is a republic.” He read that as a sign that these people feared that political forces aligned against them would use democracy—say, winning an election by a narrow margin of 50 percent plus one—as a weapon to take away their rights and properties. “This is truly an antidemocratic movement,” Draper told the rapt audience.
Tim Miller, the jaunty former GOP operative who became a Never Trumper (Why We Did It: A Travelogue From the Republican Road to Hell), noted there was a simple explanation for the Republicans’ underwhelming performance in the 2022 election: “They were creepy.” Don’t assume, he told the crowd, that the Democrats have yet figured out how to effectively counter MAGA extremism. Chris Whipple (The Fight of His Life: Inside Joe Biden’s White House), who spent the first two years of the Biden presidency working sources within the White House for his book, reported that what most shocked Joe Biden after he became president was the persistence of MAGA extremism. Biden entered the White House believing that with the defeat of Donald Trump, this political phenomenon would fade and something resembling political normalcy would return to our fair land. He came to realize that he had miscalculated, Whipple noted, and now Biden and his aides assume Trump will end up the 2024 GOP nominee and the election will be a fight over the existence of democracy.
At the second panel, the Atlantic’s Mark Leibovich (Thank You for Your Servitude: Donald Trump’s Washington and the Price of Submission) described how the GOP establishment succumbed to Trump, and I explained how the Republican base had been radicalized for decades by the politics of hate. Then we watched as fellow panelist Malcolm Nance (They Want to Kill Americans: The Militias, Terrorists, and Deranged Ideology of the Trump Insurgency) turned the fright dial up to 11. He scared the bejesus out of the audience with his prediction that the far-right extremism that spurred the January 6 attack on the US Capitol will lead to further acts of political violence. Some of these extremists, he forewarned, will say, you know, we are terrorists—and act like terrorists. Arizona and other states vanquished several of the worst extremists in the last election. But, Nance said, it ain’t over. (And the House of Representatives, I reminded all, remains in the hands of the kooks.) The faces of audience members registered dread on this beautiful Sunday afternoon.
At a panel of authors who have recently published books on abortion rights, Joshua Prager (The Family Roe: An American Story) focused on a point often forgotten in our current battles over reproductive freedom: Abortion used to not be a divisive political issue. In 1967, Ronald Reagan, the Republican governor of California, signed the most liberal abortion law in the nation. In 1970, Pat Buchanan, then a White House aide, sent President Richard Nixon a memo advising him to support a pro-abortion measure to win over left-leaning Catholic voters. In 1975—two years after the Roe v. Wade decision—Supreme Court nominee John Paul Stevens was not asked a single question about Roe at his Senate confirmation hearing. Until 1980, the Southern Baptist Church was pro-choice. It was only in 1976 that the nascent religious right began pushing for the Human Life Amendment, which declared that life and personhood began at conception. Up until that point, no political party platform had mentioned abortion. This was a good reminder of how the right ginned up a contentious issue that had not been ingrained in American politics and spent decades pursuing a crusade that now threatens the freedom of women.
A panel discussion about memoirs included LA gang-member-turned-successful-restaurateur Keith Corbin (California Soul: An American Epic of Cooking and Survival), Los Angeles Times columnist Jean Guerrero (Crux: A Daughter’s Quest for Her Border-Crossing Father), and immigration lawyer Efrén Olivares (My Boy Will Die of Sorrow: A Memoir of Immigration From the Front Lines), who had worked at the border during the family separation crisis. Olivares recalled how tough it was at first to draw national attention for the horrific policy that stripped children from their parents and placed them in cages. He and other advocates kept hoping that photos or videos of the travesty would be leaked by people working at the US Customs and Border Protection facility where the children were being held and that this would trigger popular outcry. Instead, it was leaked audio obtained by ProPublica of children crying and howling for their parents that sparked outrage. Olivares said that he believes the audio recording was more effective in rousing public sentiment than video or photographs might have been. As he put it, no one could see the color of the children, and “all children cry the same.”
One of the best anecdotes I heard at the festival came from Ron Shelton, who wrote (or co-wrote) and directed Bull Durham, White Men Can’t Jump, and Tin Cup, and who last year published The Church of Baseball: The Making of Bull Durham: Home Runs, Bad Calls, Crazy Fights, Big Swings, and a Hit. Tin Cup tells the tale of a down-and-out pro golfer named Roy McAvoy (Kevin Costner) who manages to pull his life together and qualify for the US Open. On the last hole of the last day of play, he’s in a fight for first place. Instead of playing it safe, he daringly tries to clear a water hazard and reach the green in one shot. The ball plops into the water. He can still win if he lays up the next shot to set up an easy shot to the green. But once again he goes for it all. Plop! He stubbornly tries over and over, with the same result. He has thrown away his chance at winning the tournament. Yet on the 12th shot—before he will be disqualified—he reaches the green and the ball rolls into the cup. He’s lost, but he’s proved something. During a panel with Bissinger, Shelton told the crowd that at the premiere of the 1996 film, Donald Trump approached him and declared the film was great but that McAvoy should have taken the two shots to reach the green. Shelton replied: That would be like Ingrid Bergman staying with Humphrey Bogart at the end of Casablanca. With a blank look on his face, Trump shrugged and walked away. Shelton thought, He doesn’t know who Ingrid Bergman is.
Even in a discussion of moviemaking, Trump was present. In many of the conversations I had with the locals, another politician persistently hovered: Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, the Arizona Democrat turned independent (who years ago called herself a “Prada socialist”). I encountered many Democratic and progressive activists who have known her since the start of her political career, and I asked them to explain her long, strange trip from a Green Party denizen to a middle-of-the-road Dem to a rogue centrist defying key elements of the Democrats’ agenda. The typical answer: “Who knows?” No one had a good answer. “I think she’s angling for a television job,” one former state Democratic Party official said. “Maybe replace Meghan McCain.” Another common response was, “What do you think?” People long familiar with her—since she entered the state legislature in 2005—were puzzled and flummoxed. No one was sure whether she would run for reelection in 2024 as an independent and perhaps be a spoiler and help elect a Republican. “She’s a mystery,” another Democratic activist said, “a black box. Or is it a black hole? Maybe both.”
Politics, history, literary fiction, the arts, business reporting, fantasy, science fiction, personal tales of trauma and survival—the Tucson festival had it all. It represents much of the best of American culture—the open-minded embrace of diverse ideas and creativity that is under assault in certain parts of the nation. (Florida, I am looking at you.) I was delighted to be an inhabitant of this pop-up city of writing and reading that was thriving beneath a wide-open blue sky in a valley bordered by majestic mountains. This was my second time as a participant, and, as I headed toward the airport, I told one of the organizers that I hoped I would be invited back. “Just write another book,” she said.
Got anything to say about this item—or anything else? Email me at ourland@motherjones.com.
