Literacy and Longing in L. A. by Jennifer Kaufman Page A

sister, but just as grandiloquent. My old college roommate, Pamela, is running the showand I’m at her table. The event is held in the elaborate rotunda of the downtown Central Library, a grand old edifice with stately domed ceilings, Italian marble floors, and two-thousand-pound chandeliers, built eighty years ago when libraries were as honored as places of worship and downtown L.A. was still considered center city.
    The rotunda is turned into a ballroom befitting a movie set. Elaborate tables are scattered around, covered with twelve layers of linens, enough silver for the duke of Windsor, and an amazing array of crystal. Violinists stroll through the crowd, playing music so patently corny that it reminds me of music last heard at Dome of the Sea, a tacky restaurant in Las Vegas that features strolling Venetian violinists. I scan the crowd, trying to find Pamela. It seems that at this event “festive” means Chanel jackets, Chanel suits, and Chanel handbags. The library has turned into a trunk show. She’ll fit right in.
    “Finally, you’re here.” I knew Pamela would point out that I was late.
    Pamela is my age but is married to a retired real estate magnate in his seventies. She always wears a nubby tweed Chanel something and I’m always nagging her to put on some weight.
    Then there’s her six-year-old daughter, Madison. Pamela is obsessed with her. I continually have to endure every brilliant pearl that falls from her daughter’s lips, every nuance, every sneeze. So many women fall into this trap and end up boring everyone to death with details that parents should keep to themselves. It’s almost as if parenthood sucks up every available brain cell, andlike the canary, whose brain cells regenerate every year, all previous data is erased forever and all you hear is this year’s song. I read about a scientist in Upstate New York who keeps thousands of canaries in an aviary behind his house and slaughters hundreds of them semiannually to study their brains. Not that I am recommending that or anything, but people do tend to get single-minded after they have children. And it only gets worse. You go from sleeping problems to potty training to preschool, prep school, adolescent angst, tattoos and piercings. Then they start boring you with their child’s first fabulous internship or job and how brilliant little Johnny is and how everyone loves him at the office. It’s all so predictable and tiresome. Even if you like the person, and I do like Pamela, there is only so much of this you can take before you want to throttle them. I usually tell my sister when I’ve heard enough about Camille, but I don’t want to hurt Pamela’s feelings.
    “Dora, are you listening to me?” I guess I zoned out. She is pointing to our table. The hook for this event is that every guest gets to sit with an author, who is usually promoting their latest book. The authors love it. Free trip to L.A. And the patrons love it because they get to have a semi-intimate conversation with semi-important authors. I notice that another friend of ours and her husband are seated in Siberia behind a pillar. Their author, a musicologist from Columbia University, is seated at the other end of the long narrow table. I can see even from this vantage that my friend is clenching her jaw and her husband is staring out into space. Pamela will hearabout this tomorrow. The A-list authors such as David Halberstam, Scott Berg, and Frank McCourt are seated up front. I walk over to my table. Since Pamela is on the dinner committee, I thought I’d get someone interesting. Unfortunately, my author is a San Francisco gynecologist who sometimes hosts the “Your Health” segment of the nightly news. Pamela has also put the requisite single guy at our table to “balance it out.”
    This man is a fairly well-known television agent with bulging eyes and a thinning crown of hair. He also has one of those barrel-waisted bodies with thin, spindly legs, a birdlike