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. 

Authors shine at Literary Festival

The thing that surprised me most about the N.C. Literary Festival was that it wasn't more packed than it was. Seats were available at all the events I attended, and the streets, restaurants and parking lots were not jam-packed, as they are on football weekends. For those of us who attended, however, the weekend was a delightful smorgasbord of words and the authors who arrange them beautifully.

I had attended the last Literary Festival in Chapel Hill in 2002 and was eager for this reprise. I was not disappointed. Although I did not attend any of the ticketed keynote events and confined my visit to Saturday only, the day was fulfilling and intellectually nourishing. I missed John Grisham, poet James Applewhite (who grew up in Stantonsburg and teaches at Duke) and performances of Lee Smith's "Good Ol' Girls" and Clyde Edgerton's "The Bible Salesman," but I heard readings by some authors I admire and discovered at least one new author who was a serendipitous surprise.

Sessions focused on the milieu of North Carolina history and the literary portrayal of that history. I was particularly interested in the session on Southern Mills, which featured Michael Chitwood, whose "The Weave Room" is a collection of poems about a textile mill. Ron Rash, whose "Eureka Mill" is a painfully honest look at a textile mill through a poet's eye, was featured in a separate session with Lee Smith about Southern storytelling. In the mills session, I discovered Barbara Presnell, whose poetry in "Piece Work" captures the voices of textile mill workers.

In a later session, former state poet laureate Fred Chappell, Robert Morgan (author of "Gap Creek" and "Boone") and young poet Jesse Graves read poems that evoked the uniqueness of the Southern experience. I found myself wanting to devour all the words in all the books that were for sale in tents outside the lecture halls, but I reminded myself of the stack of books already standing by my bedside and aligned on bookshelves that I have vowed to read. And I wanted the story told of life on the mill villages that had marked the transition from the agrarian South to the cities of the New South. In the early 20th century, nearly all North Carolinians had a common experience either on farms or in mill villages. I asked Chitwood if he knew of any great novels about textile mills, and he mentioned the late Doug Marlette's "The Bridge" — a good but not great first novel that deals with memories and denials about a violent union campaign at a mill. Doris Betts (who also spoke at the festival) wrote "The Scarlet Thread," which is set in a textile mill but is out of print. The setting is ripe for some great novelist.

We bought Rash's "Serena" and Presnell's "Piece Work" but did not buy either of Elizabeth Edwards' books, "Saving Graces" and "Resilience." Her session, the last one of the day for my wife and me, packed the sanctuary at University Methodist Church. Edwards spoke openly and frankly about the loss of her teenage son, Wade, in an automobile accident and admiringly about her father, a Navy officer and athlete who suffered a debilitating stroke but exceeded doctors' dire prognosis. She also spoke in general terms about having "my life explode on the pages of tabloids" last year. She was already at work on "Resilience" when her husband's sordid affair became tabloid fodder, and she told her editor she couldn't continue the project. But then she realized this painful episode was relevant to her theme of "Resilience," and she included her reaction to the personal crisis. Edwards is my UNC classmate (though I've never met her), and I have wanted to read her books but never got around to it. Her calm honesty and wit in tragic circumstances make me want to read her books even more.

This Literary Festival may have packed too much into too short a time, but for the hundreds, maybe thousands, who attended, it was a delight for the eyes and ears. Literature is an art of equal standing with music, painting or sculpture, at least as capable of expanding the mind and inspiring the soul. On Saturday, Chapel Hill became a museum to North Carolina's contributions to the best of this art.