Carlos Ruiz Zafón in conversation with Rick Kleffel at a May 24 Zócalo Public Square event at MOCA. / photo by Zócalo Public Square

Curious readers got a glimpse behind the art of creating literature when Carlos Ruiz Zafón visited MOCA for a Zócalo Public Square event on May 24.

Zafón, who splits his time between Barcelona and Los Angeles, is the author of the New York Times bestselling The Shadow of the Wind, the recently published The Angel’s Game, as well as four young adult novels. His work has been translated in 40 languages.

Zafón’s novels are infused with lyricism and mystery and explore beauty found in light and shadow. He builds labyrinthine plots like an architect of words, develops characters and landscapes with a cinematic eye, and draws you into a magical world beyond paper and ink. While his books make that process look easy, this literary maestro humbly revealed himself at the Zócalo event as, not a magician, but a craftsman who has to work hard.

“Sometimes I wonder when people say inspiration hits them — as if it were a truck or something. It never happened to me,” he said, adding, “Writing is one percent inspiration.”

Zafón’s comments about his novels and the creative process will inspire readers and writers alike. Read more about this Zócalo Public Square event and view a video of Zafón’s discussion with NPR’s Rick Kleffel at: http://www.zocalopublicsquare.org/thepublicsquare/2010/05/24/carlos-ruiz-zafn-on-inspiration-mystery-and-women/

Also at that website, you can learn about the nonprofit Zócalo Public Square’s upcoming events, which are free to the public and designed to “connect people to ideas and to each other in an open, accessible, non-partisan and broad-minded spirit.”

Harvey Pekar and Alison Bechdel spoke at UCLA Live’s “Titans of the Graphic Novel” event on April 23.

UCLA Live’s “Titans of the Graphic Novel” event brought two highly influential voices of graphic narrative to the same podium on April 23.  The effect was startling and instructive.

Alison Bechdel, author of Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic and the syndicated strip Dykes to Watch Out For, said it best: Words and pictures are, when combined, greater than the sum of their parts.  As she spoke of her life and her background in art, her family, and her work, Bechdel both demonstrated her contemporary relevance and looked to a well-respected colleague, Harvey Pekar.  He followed her presentation with a frank, open monologue to assuage all doubt that Pekar is the Everyman’s comics writer.

Bechdel’s presentation ranged from facts to philosophy.  She read from Fun Home about her late father and displayed excerpts of the book’s images.  When she demonstrated the steps between idea and printed page, the already staggering power of her work increased: text, sketches, ink, and shading in what she laughingly calls “method” comics.  Bechdel’s comics resound even without the potent subject matters of sexuality, family dynamics, politics, and what it means to be as clear as possible and yet hidden in the nuances of self-expression.  Her presentation was as layered as her work, and captured an already smitten audience before referring to the work and influence of Pekar.

American Splendor, Pekar made it clear, was never drawn by him.  (Bechdel had earlier displayed a stick-figure storyboard Pekar once doodled in a diner.)  And yet his stories about the mundane Cleveland life of a medical filing clerk have reached a zenith of cult celebrity.  Among the illustrators fleshing out the text of his work are Bechdel and R. Crumb; in 2003, the film American Splendor created a documentary and biopic out Pekar’s life and work.  Yet perhaps the most appealing and relieving aspect of his low-tech, straightforward storytelling was just that.  It was low-tech and straightforward, as quotidian and relatable as American Splendor itself.

In the words of scholar Hillary Chute, the term “graphic novel” is often “an awkwardly popular misnomer.”  These works are hardly the stuff of fiction.  In a brief Q&A, Bechdel and Pekar spoke of family, next moves, movies (as options, as realities), and, very highly, of each other.  Throughout the night, both authors seemed absolutely and even disarmingly themselves – a feat only more smoothly accomplished by their medium.

Upcoming literary events at UCLA Live include a reading by David Sedaris. For more information, visit www.uclalive.org.  

Harvey Pekar and Alison Bechdel will speak at UCLA Live’s “Titans of the Graphic Novel” event on Friday, April 23.

Harvey Pekar and Alison Bechdel will speak at UCLA Live’s “Titans of the Graphic Novel” event on Friday, April 23, at 8 p.m. at Royce Hall. They will explore the power of graphic novels as a confessional medium.

Pekar’s autobiographical “American Splendor” comics gained a cult following and were adapted into a 2003 feature film with the same name. Bechdel’s graphic memoir, “Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic,” was named the best book of 2006 by Time magazine. She is also the author of the syndicated strip “Dykes to Watch Out For.”

UCLA Live is offering Culture Spot LA readers a Buy One, Get One Free ticket deal. To take advantage of this offer, which is good through April 22, use the promo code TITANS when placing your order. Tickets must be purchased in pairs and are available online at: www.uclalive.org/event.asp?Event_ID=678.

Los Angeles is a one of the great cultural centers of the United States – and the film capital of the world.  There is a lot to see (at very good prices), but due to the city’s size, lack of centralized arts/theater districts and second-rate public transportation, you will spend a great deal of time driving on wildly confusing highways.  Do yourself a big favor and invest in a GPS – and learn how to use it before you get to LA.

1)    Los Angeles has great museums, good classical music choices, a lively jazz scene – but the brightest jewels in LA’s cultural crown are the town’s live theaters. Not the major theaters featuring touring Broadway hits, but the hundreds of smaller 60- to 200-seat houses scattered across Los Angeles and Orange County. In very intimate surroundings (and for very little money – see the next tip), you can see major movie and television stars in interesting new plays or great revivals.

2)    There are not one – but two excellent online half-price ticket services in Los Angeles: LA Stage Tix (lastagealliance.com) and Goldstar (goldstar.com). Both offer tickets several days (or weeks) in advance for as little as $10.  Note: LA Stage Tix, a nonprofit, charges a lower service fee, but their site is quirky and limited to theater. Goldstar offers a broader selection – but check out both.

3)    Before you run off to the “free” Getty Center, be aware that it costs $15 to park a car. (You can get there by bus.) Also, many experts feel that the collections are not in any way as spectacular as the high-on-the-hill location.  Recommended instead is the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (admission $10) or the wonderful Norton Simon Museum (admission $8) in Pasadena. Garden lovers should head to the Huntington Library in San Marino (south of Pasadena), which also features a strong British (including Gainsborough’s Blue Boy) and early American collection.

4)    If you live near or frequently visit one of the area’s performance venues (Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts, Los Angeles Music Center, Pasadena Civic, Orange County Performing Arts Center or Skirball Cultural Center), go to their website to sign up for free email.  Besides sending advance publicity on their programs, email is becoming the primary vehicle theaters and venues use to announce special discounts and last-minute giveaways.  While you are there, see if the venue offers membership – and if it works for you, consider investing.

5)    If you love film, you will love LA anytime (especially the Nuart Theater), but the best time to visit is the week between Christmas and New Year’s when many films are given early screenings to make the Oscar deadline. You can catch the hottest movies – and frequently see a celebrity getting a head start on his upcoming viewing/voting responsibilities.

Visit the book’s website for more information about culture in LA and dozens of other U.S. cities: go-artsamerica.com.

With bindings and paper to give a stationery enthusiast goosebumps, titles like Hey Fudge encompass images, narrative, and haunting meetings of the two.  Travis Millard’s cumulative years of work for the title are in 240 pages of stitch-bound clay composite paper – clarifying, as if there were doubts, the enthusiasm and respect Lepkowski and Dischler have for their products.

With much the same energy, the duo also distributes miniature books and zines, typically self-published by authors and reaping only a small commission for Narrow Books.  As Lepkowski points out, these are meaningful works “because their economics are so democratic.”   Printing costs, thus price tags, move down considerably – but don’t seem to sacrifice artistic draw.  The third self-published 1Up MegaZine, which Narrow Books’ website calls its “prettiest” issue, sells for less than half the sticker price of Hey Fudge, but bursts with the same creative effort.

A localized aesthetic of color, line, and attitude permeates Narrow Books publications, making them both contenders at LA booksellers and a point of due pride for localphiles.  Their appeal contrasts a symptom of the economy: whereas titles from monster publishers are paring down décor and reflecting consumer pragmatism, even the most affordable items from Narrow Books validate and indulge the act of book-buying. (In a recent store display at Book Soup in West Hollywood, the anthology Two Letters, Vol. 2 immediately drew this writer’s eye.)

Lepkowski points out that “we do tend to publish mostly LA artists and writers…. It’s their work that we most often look at, like, and decide is criminally underexposed.” Esther Pearl Watson self-published Unloveable Vol. 1, a collection of her zines that often decorates the Narrow Books sales table.  Her drawings resemble Aline Kominsky Crumb’s: they bring to light the messy nonfiction process of American teenage years, and echo the underground comics movement of indie publishing begun decades ago.  Other local artists and writers at Narrow Books include Millard, John Pham, and the Joseph Mattson of recent Empty the Sun attention.  (That being said, there is also work from France, from the Union of Myanmar, and a recent publication, Megan Whitmarsh’s Yeti Logic, imported from Spain and vended with Narrow Books.)

The break-even nature of the endeavor encourages creative marketing by Lepkowski and Dischler, who have expanded their business to events like the Downtown Art Walk, Unique Los Angeles, and the Alternative Press Expo, selling their own titles alongside T-shirts and music, other publishers’ zines and minis, and individual prints from hand-picked artists.  In a cross-generic period of book history, the meeting of Lepkowski’s interest in literature and Dischler’s in design has created a timely and worthwhile pursuit of book arts and creative distribution.

Titles from Narrow Books, as well as the self-published materials they distribute, are available at Skylight Books, Book Soup, Secret Headquarters, Giant Robot, and more, as well as online at www.LittlePaperPlanes.com and www.NarrowBooks.com.

Neil Gaiman / photo by Sophie Quach, courtesy of UCLA Live

The film adaptation of his Coraline is Oscar-nominated for Best Animated Feature Film, his Graveyard Book won 2009’s Newbery Medal, and his bees won him a blue ribbon for honey in the county fair.  Neil Gaiman, ladies and gentlemen, is a talented man.

During his appearance at UCLA Live on Feb. 4, Gaiman assured the audience that beekeeping actually requires very little effort at all.  The Graveyard Book, on the other hand, took years.  In a smooth reading and lecture, the English author of crossover books and collaborations read from several of his works, intermittently mapping his career.  This included the story of filial favor from his now-grown son’s playtime in a graveyard – inspiration for his prize-winning novel, years in gestation, marketed for youth literacy and read in excerpt to an enraptured Royce Hall.  Recent changes in the publishing industry played no small part in the story, as Gaiman was quick to point out.  But even with the complexities of book marketing, there was also mention of a recent World Book Day, a charitable encouragement in the UK and elsewhere for children to buy books.  His Odd and the Frost Giants was written at a publisher’s request, then sold for £1 each to children who’d been given £1 book tokens; then, pleasingly, read from as part of the lecture.

Often working as the author of comics, “a medium mistaken for a genre,” Gaiman has helped to expand the realm and readership of graphic literature.  (His Sandman series remains a cornerstone of the style.) Gaiman’s works have a whimsical and dark tonal unity and a strong-held place in contemporary literature with audiences young and old.

Perhaps the most pleasant aspect of the reading and lecture, apart from Gaiman’s disposition, was its structure.  Before the house lights dimmed, audience questions were handed in on cards (“what are the voices in your head telling you now?” was at the stack’s top).  He answered about upcoming collaborations (Stephin Merritt from The Magnetic Fields), thematic habits (children make for “beautifully clear-eyed” protagonists), and what kind of tea he drinks (“English Breakfast…  Oh, what a boring answer!  I drink tea picked by small monkeys, and they bring it to me!).  Faced with a query about whether he believes in magic, Gaiman quietly noted himself to be “a creature of flexible belief” and politely demonstrated himself to be a creature of immeasurable talent and skill.

Upcoming literary events at UCLA Live include poet Mary Oliver (Feb. 25), graphic authors Harvey Pekar and Alison Bechdel (April 23) and David Sedaris (May 5). For more information about UCLA Live events, visit www.uclalive.org.  For more information about Neil Gaiman, visit www.neilgaiman.com.

R. Crumb, UCLA Live’s most recent literary guest, is a part and pioneer of what came next: underground comics. Changing the face of drawn American heroism, work like in “Zap Comix” of the late 1960s was loud and explicit, engaging the very qualities that had pushed the medium beneath the cultural surface.

On Oct. 29, in a rare public appearance, Crumb spoke to a packed Royce Hall. In a conversation with Françoise Mouly, his friend and art editor at “The New Yorker,” he spoke with humor about his life and family, his work, and his latest publication, “The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb.”

Through photos and drawings from Crumb’s childhood, and discussion of his work at American Greetings, in underground comics, and with his wife Aline Kominsky Crumb (a pioneer in her own right), Mouly smoothly contextualized Crumb’s development as an artist and storyteller. The correlation between life and work apparently began early:  Crumb laughed at a gapped-tooth school picture and cited “Mystic Comics #3,” called “Don’t Tempt Fate” after a predictable flying object knocked out a pearly white. In an image from the comics he drew as a kid, his brother’s text bubbles slowly overcome the drawings – that brother, Crumb said, later decided just to write.

The most impressive aspect of Mouly’s direction was how it prepared the audience for “Genesis.” Its text comes directly from the King James Version and Robert Alter’s translation, and the author calls it a “straight illustration job.” His signature visual style remains, but the five-year project is a departure from what Crumb fostered in American subculture – a temporary departure, Crumb joked at Royce Hall. “I’m totally sick of the Bible.  I’m going back to drawing pornography!” The “Genesis” images are a direct reflection of the text, even resisting the Crumb’s typical visual humor. After several of his pictorial jokes had crossed the screen, Crumb’s point became clear: they’d have been distracting in the new book.

The chaotic Q&A session ended the evening disappointingly. Its grand finale was “What’s your hat size?” Nevertheless, perhaps the best round of applause (and there were many) came when Crumb was asked about his handiwork. Opting out of the digital arts, he creates every panel and page with an ink pen.

This UCLA event coincides with “The Bible Illuminated,” a Hammer Museum exhibit of each page in the new “Genesis.”  Furthermore, the conversation-cum-history-lesson offered a foundation for upcoming events in the Spoken Word series at UCLA Live.  New styles and autobiography have transformed the graphic narrative into a topic of study for academics and Hollywood types alike. Neil Gaiman arrives in February. The English artist and writer has won literary recognition for his “Sandman” books and major studio production of his “Coraline.”  The aptly titled “Titans of the Graphic Novel” will feature Harvey Pekar, whose “American Splendor” stands as one of the most recognizable autobiographical comics in the American canon, and Alison Bechdel, whose own somber story in “Fun Home” spent two weeks on the New York Times best-seller list. “Fun Home’s” complex and personal matters, the style of “American Splendor,” and the thorough narrative of Gaiman’s works echo the aesthetic tradition of comics while breaking new ground – thanks in great part to the history of Crumb, so thoroughly presented at the Oct. 29 event.

For more information on UCLA Live events, visit www.uclalive.org.  For information on “The Bible Illuminated,” visit www.hammer.ucla.edu.  To discover underground comics, visit your local independent bookstore (Skylight Books has a particularly good selection) and ask for self-published materials.

Image from the title page of "The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb."

Literary classics can be given new life with new artwork, and the Bible itself has undergone a re-inking or several to appeal to new, or younger, audiences. “The Book of Genesis Illustrated by R. Crumb,” though – “all 50 chapters!” brags the cover – is not illustrated for kiddie appeal. God’s wrinkled brow and the expressive depictions of women (whose roles and thoughts are generally exempt from the patriarchal text) are just the first signs of practiced artistic mastery. And with comics-style panels for even the least expandable verses in the religious text, the project is thorough to say the least.

In a rare public appearance, Crumb will be on the Royce Hall stage in a UCLA Live program this week. Francoise Mouly, Crumb’s friend and his artistic director at The New Yorker, will be the other half of a conversation about Crumb’s life, his work, and his “Genesis.”

Since Crumb established himself in the underground comics movement, his artistic voice has become a profane and profound one of cultural hyperawareness and critique, from characters like “Mr. Natural” to Terry Zwigoff’s documentary “Crumb.” Between his incredible life, his work, and what the graphic writers in the rest of the UCLA Live season owe to his impact, this event is not to be missed.

UCLA Live will host An Evening With R. Crumb on Thursday, Oct. 29, at 8 p.m. at Royce Hall.  For more information, or to buy tickets, visit www.uclalive.org.  A related exhibit, “The Bible Illuminated: R. Crumb’s Book of Genesis,” will be on display from Oct. 27 through Feb. 7 at the Hammer Museum.

The Pasadena Museum of California Art kicks off Written in California, its new reading series co-sponsored by Vroman’s Bookstore, on Thursday, Oct. 22, at 7 p.m. Sarah Shun-lien Bynum will read from “Ms. Hempel Chronicles,” a finalist for the 2009 PEN/Faulkner Award. “Ms. Hempel Chronicles” is a novel-in-stories about a seventh-grade English teacher and her students. The reading is free, and galleries will be open from 6-7 p.m. for $5 admission. Current exhibits feature work by Wayne Thiebaud, Frances Gearhart, and Ray Turner.

Shelby Hiatt

Shelby Hiatt, author of "Panama"

Shelby Hiatt will discuss and sign her novel “Panama” at Book Soup in West Hollywood on Saturday, Oct. 24, at 7 p.m. and at the Bookstar in Studio City on Sunday, Oct. 25, at 3 p.m. The former “General Hospital” actress and “Santa Barbara” writer also worked in the United Nations Office of Public Information. A trip to Panama got her storytelling wheels turning. After researching the history of the construction of the Panama canal, she crafted a love story about an American woman and a Spanish laborer that explores questions of social justice.

Pamela August Russell

The Better Off Dead Poets Society and ForYourArt host a book launch for “B Is for Bad Poetry” with a “bad poetry” open-mic night at the Mandrake on Thursday, Nov. 12, at 8 p.m. Pamela August Russell will read from her hilarious and irreverent collection of poems, with titles such as “But L’OREAL Said I Was Worth It” and “Love Is Like a Toilet Bowl.” Guests are encouraged to throw literary pretension to the wind and share their best bad poems. The Mandrake is at 2692 S. La Cienega Blvd., LA 90034.

Panels and book signings, featuring local and national authors, will focus on everything from entertainment to politics and include genres from poetry to graphic novels. You can learn how to write a memoir or improve your spoken word performance in free workshops, hear ghost stories by Shirley Jackson and Mark Twain, and meet Bob Barker who will talk about “Priceless Memories.” Come on down.

The free admission and parking really put this literary event over the top. The website is very thorough, providing all the details you need to plan the day: www.westhollywoodbookfair.org.