Books in Brooklyn, Alive and Well

Sep 17, 2009 by Juliet Linderman

In the age of Kindle, the old form is still going strong

“One day, I might say it’s first in my kindle,” chuckled Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz at Saturday night’s literary mingle at St. Francis College on the eve of our borough’s literary darling, the Brooklyn Book Festival. “But for now, this festival is first in my book!”

Such a statement set an aptly appropriate tone for Sunday’s fourth annual Borough President-sponsored Brooklyn Book Festival, where more than 220 authors and 150 booksellers gathered to celebrate Brooklyn’s literary legacy, and the written word in its traditional form—the book.

“This is the biggest literary event in Brooklyn’s history—and that’s a history that traces back to Walt Whitman in the 19th century,” said Johnny Temple, the chair of the Brooklyn Literary Council, the festival’s central organizing force. “The diversity and culture in Brooklyn makes it such a great setting for something like this, and the book festival just comes alive; people come and see that there’s no sense of anything dying here. Books are alive and well in Brooklyn.”

Among the brightly colored tents that lined the courtyard was a combination of independent magazines and literary journals, publishing houses and booksellers, not to mention thousands upon thousands of Brooklynites and outer-borough visitors alike. Though independent publishing is suffering in the face of a dwindling economy, not to mention competition from the likes of Amazon’s kindle—the hand-held digital reader that aims to make books in their natural form obsolete, or at the very least provide a viable alternative to the notion of a physical, tangible manuscript—the Brooklyn Book Festival certainly proved to be a beacon of hope for even the most cynical of bibliophiles.

“You come to festivals like this and you see that things are actually really thriving—that this truly is a very literary city, and there’s a huge community of like-minded literary people here,” said Christine Onorati, owner of Greenpoint’s own WORD Bookstore on Franklin Avenue, who set up shop at the Festival for the afternoon. “People who want to budget for books always will.”

Ibrahim Ahmad, the editor of Brooklyn-based independent publishing house Akashik Books, couldn’t agree more. Akashik is based in an old South Brooklyn canning factory along with four other small publishers, and has a close-knit relationship with each, collectively forming something of a “hub of creativity on the putrid banks of the Gowanus Canal.” Ahmad maintained that, even in light of a financial crisis, and the threat of digital technology that looms large over the publishing industry, small presses and booksellers are going to be all right—as demonstrated by the phenomenal sales return yielded from just one day at the Festival alone.

“We’re doing so well, it’s absolutely fantastic—I wish we could do this every weekend!” Ahmad said. “It’s a moment’s vindication—it flies in the face of all that talk about the end of publishing, that notion that nobody’s reading books anymore. People might access content in different ways, but that makes something like the success of this festival that much more meaningful. These books are beautiful objects; they are artifacts that are so important to us.”

In addition to the hundreds of publications and booksellers, the Festival boasted hundreds of panel discussions, readings, signings and performances on three outdoor stages and in six indoor auditoriums in and around Borough Hall, featuring big-name Brooklyn authors such as Edwidge Dantica—this year’s recipient of the Brooklyn Bobi Award—Paul Auster, Colson Whitehead, Jonathan Lethem, Ben Greenman and David Cross, and programs on topics ranging from poetry to politics, satire to hip-hop, religion to experimental fiction and much more.

“What things make me sad about the world?” said author Gary Shteygert, a panelist at the Satire and Comic Relief in 2009 event. “Well, I’m angry about global warming because it’s too warm. I’m angry about the fact that the Bush Administration is over because it was so easy to make fun of. Also, I’m angry that people outside of Brooklyn don’t read books anymore.”

Fair enough. But if the Brooklyn Book Festival is any indication, this borough lives, loves and supports books and literature enough for everyone—or at least the rest of New York City.