BEA

So Friday I went to the Book Expo of America, an annual publishing industry convention where publishers flaunt their new books. It was at the Javits Center for three days.

I got to see an editor whom I'd pitched a book to a year ago (she's still considering it), and I saw some publicity people from Red Dress Ink. "You should publish 200,000 more copies of that Carrie Pilby book," I said. I don't think it helped.

Perhaps the most interesting book I got free was a light-blue uncorrected galley of something called FINDING IRIS CHANG: Friendship, Ambition, and the Loss of an Extraordinary Mind. Since Iris was an otherwise successful young woman who committed suicide at the age of 36, I was kind of curious about the book.

I debated taking it, as one's totebag gets heavy and runneth over at the conference, but I couldn't quite put the book down. And out of all the books I got, I somehow started reading this one first.

Apparently, Iris was an overachieving journalist of whom many other journalists were jealous. Yet, she also did some wonderful work at an early age, including exposing the extent of Japanese atrocities committed against the Chinese during WWII. The book is interesting on several levels:

1. It shows the kind of dangers faced by the rare journalists who really stick their necks out to uncover and write about wrongdoing, and there are so few people willing to do this kind of probing work. Sometimes, as a journalist, you find something you want to expose, and you know that it will take months of work and pushing and interviews for possibly little reward. But you know the story is there and you must follow it. Irish Chang ended up writing three important books in that vein.

2. On another level, the book shows the kind of naivete that still exists in this day and age about mental illness. The book is written by a friend and former classmate of Iris who can't understand how someone so smart and successful suddenly killed herself. In the days before Chang killed herself, she called the author and rambled for more than an hour, saying things like "I think I gave my son autism through vaccinations" and "If anything should happen to me, remember how I was before I got sick, ok?" Naively, the author believes people who tell her that Chang was merely "depressed" or stressed by the book tour. When someone is experiencing delusions like harming her son, it's more than stress. And when someone hints that they are going to commit suicide, you don't just let it go. Anyway, later in the book the author reveals (surprise) that Chang had more serious problems than depression. Chang's mom was reluctant to talk about it at first, but then spoke publicly on it later, because of the stigma of mental illness in the Asian community. There are so many people who just don't understand the pervasiveness and nuances of mental illness, and I think this book sheds a little light on how it can happen to someone who is otherwise successful.

3. The book is interesting on a gossipy level because of the extent of the jealousy of Iris by her superiors. Sometimes the book has a bit of a smarmy feel as certain people in it are a bit too curious about her suicide, more than they are saddened by the loss. But it's an important book about an important person.

Wow, I went off on one book...I'm not all the way through it but it seems worth reading.

I also got a novel called "The Flawless Skin of Ugly People" by Doug Crandell that's coming out this fall; a book called Grub that is described as a "send-up of the publishing world", a book about Jane Austen, Tom Perrotta's new book The Abstinence Teacher (signed!!), and a hardcover Red Dress Ink book, Welcome to the Real World by Carole Matthews.Other goodies included a free Mad magazine, some notebooks, and pads.

I also bumped into a few people I know, like Nichelle of the Nichelle Newsletter who is always nice enough to call out my name as we are making our ways through the throngs. All in all, a worthwhile visit.

Unfortunately, next year BEA will be held in L.A., so I'll be skipping that one.

Over and out.