North Carolina's Literary Festival

The North Carolina Literary Festival was too tempting to pass up, despite the beckoning of long-postponed chores in the house and yard and the beauty of the bright day of new spring. Who wants to sit inside a crowded library when there is a glorious spring day outside?

Well, we do. My wife and I shunned our household obligations and hit the road for Raleigh, to experience the N.C. Literary Festival again and to see the new Hunt Library at N.C. State University for the first time. Despite some misleading directions, we managed to find State's Centennial Campus and the Hunt Library.

A word about the library: I was told that the ultra-modern structure is worth the drive from Wilson, and it's true. I watched in awe as the "book bot" located and retrieved requested books from the new-age stacks — near-infinite rows of metal trays filled with books, which are retrievable by the automated device that paces along the rows and reaches up several stories to find the right bin for the requested book and transports it to the circulation desk. Amazing! The rest of the library is just as modern — no imposing Doric or Corinthian columns, no frieze above the entrance, no brass chandeliers. Instead, there are banks of computers, quiet rooms for reading/study and a coffee and ice cream bar. The library gives the feeling of more of a public space than most university or college libraries do.

As a venue for the Literary Festival, the library offered the advantage of having all the events in one location. It also had that advantage as a disadvantage. Moving from place to place, as we had done when the festival was at UNC-Chapel Hill, has its own advantages, especially on a bright spring day. Finding the session you wanted to attend wasn't always easy in the Hunt Library. The session we especially wanted to attend wasn't where it was supposed to be. But the festival provided a number of clearly old-school human guides who graciously pointed us in the right direction and even escorted us, too.

Any time you can get hundreds of people together — some of them legendary North Carolina authors — to discuss literature, it's a good day. The first session we attended featured Wilton Barnhardt and Jill McCorkle, who bandied about their handling of redeemable and unredeemable characters. The session could have focused on humor in N.C. literature because they provided the audience with frequent laughs as they read from their novels and commented on writing, characters and books.

We slipped out early for a session featuring Drew Perry, another novelist whose writing is as full of humor as a Johnny Carson monologue. Perry, a Greensboro resident, humorously discussed his own and his characters' angst over life's big decisions, such as marrying and having a child.

We then skipped the first novel session, which was about to be played before a packed room of wannabe novelists, opting instead for the display of books for sale downstairs. My wife bought a couple of books; I decided against buying the bourbon cookbook. Then, examining our options, we went home after a quick visit to Trader Joe's.

The state Literary Festival has been a hit-and-miss affair since the first one a dozen years ago. Intended to rotate among UNC, State and Duke, the festival hasn't always happened. We've attended two at UNC and found both events in Chapel Hill marvelously packed with great authors and interesting sessions. This year's event included fewer writers we knew and therefore was less than an all-day event for us.

In an age when it seems the written word, or at least ink-on-paper, is dying, a literary festival is a particularly ambitious undertaking. Readers love their books, which offer a satisfaction that neither live performance nor film can provide. To see and talk to the authors of good books is a thrill for every serious reader. That thrill lured us from work that needed to be done to an enjoyable interlude in Raleigh, an afternoon surrounded by books and book lovers. It is a feeling as beautiful as a spring day. 

Could you stand up under the pressure?

Before anyone gets too sanctimonious about the members of the N.C. State University hierarchy who resigned after being caught in the Mary Easley web, ask yourself: Do I have the guts to stand up to the boss when I know that what he's doing is wrong and that opposing him will cost me my job? That, essentially, is what Provost Larry Nielsen and Chancellor Jim Oblinger faced when word was handed down from the Executive Mansion that first lady Mary Easley would like to have a job at N.C. State, and it shouldn't be just any job.

Nielsen created a job for the governor's wife. Oblinger essentially negotiated the deal, finding a niche for Easley and getting all the right deans and department heads on board. Both men have now resigned, but their resignations are not the result of hiring Mary Easley. Nielsen resigned because the pressure to explain why he created the job and why he bumped her pay up 88 percent became too great. "I did what I was told," might be ridiculed as the Nuremberg defense, but it's a fact of life in the corporate world.

Oblinger resigned after he lied about two things: He said Nielsen's transitional pay was a standard package for any administrator going back to teaching, and he said he couldn't remember any contacts about Easley's job. It turns out Nielsen was getting an unusual three-year transition back to a professor's salary, and e-mail sent to a federal grand jury shows Oblinger had numerous communications about Easley's job, far too many for him to have forgotten.

This could have turned out differently, as University President Erskine Bowles pointed out Monday. If Oblinger had simply said, "Oh yeah, they asked me about a job for Mary Easley, and I passed her name along to the right people," he might still be chancellor. If Nielsen and Oblinger had told the governor, "If your wife wants a job a job at N.C. State, she should fill out the online application, and she'll be considered for any vacant positions along with everyone else who applies," they'd be out of a job a lot sooner than they were. If your boss says, "Hire this person" or "Don't hire that person," you either obey or you get fired for insubordination.

I've never worked at a big university, but in more than 30 years in the newspaper business, I had many occasions when I disagreed with the boss about some matter. In each case, except one, I swallowed hard and did what I was told. The one case, from 30 years ago, involved a corrupt politician my city reporter had heard allegations about. I took him off of his regular assignments and gave him a week to check out the allegations. A week later, he had the goods on one aspect of the allegations, that the politician was running a private business out of his city office on city time. We ran the story past the paper's attorneys, who signed off on it. Then the publisher decided she didn't want to publish the story. The reporter resigned in protest. I did the same. I thought getting the facts to voters was more important than my job, even though I was supporting my wife and three small children. It worked out for both of us. The reporter went on to be a big-city columnist, and I landed a job in Wilson about two months after I quit my old job.

Would I do it again? Foolishly enough, I probably would if I were still 30 years old. But at 60 and worried about retirement income and finding a new job at this age? I'm not as sure.

I empathize with Nielsen and Oblinger. It's not easy standing up to pressure from above.