Also this issue: Lit Up The 215 mixes literature with the faint hope that you're gonna get laid. -Sam Adams Live in the (215) Velocity's Escape You can read Dave Eggers' novel as a parable of the burdens of fame -- or you can just enjoy it. -John Freeman Childrens Books -Harriette Behringer Caricature Study In a collection of Salman Rushdie's essays, persona trumps personality. -Justin Bauer FICTION -Debra Auspitz, Justin Bauer, Juliet Fletcher, Cindy Fuchs, Frank Halperin, J.B, Maura Johnston, M.J, Sara Marcus, Patrick Rapa and Alex Richmond Q&A Double-Booked The Philadelphia Book Festival is also celebrating a second birthday this weekend. -2 p.m.) -- is free, Friday at 5. (The ubiquitous Meredith Broussard turns up as well, 50 to brunch with The Red Tent ’s Anita Diamant (Sun, you sure can’t bitch about that price, so you can’t really gripe about the price, Jefferson Alumni Hall, McClellan Hall, one area in which the 215 could use some beefing up. Central High Grad Omar Tyree, Manayunk misanthrope Joe Queenan presents The Malcontents, Just Say No, the author of Flyy Girl, his anthology of sour-tongued writing from across the ages, will be on hand Friday at noon; Chang & Eng ’s Darin Strauss drops by Sunday at 1 to plug The Real McCoy, 1 p.m, 7:30 p.m, all the proceeds go to benefit patient care at Jefferson Hospital, 1025 Walnut St, 1020 Locust St.). Of course, Still, chatting up the forthcoming anthology she’s editing.) A few of the events boast the kind of steep ticket prices the 215 was specifically created to get away from -- it’ll cost you $15 to meet the McCourts (Fri, most of the stuff -- like a comic book workshop with illustrator Joe Kubert (Sat, you have to tip your hat to the Book Fest’s focus on local authors and now can you? --S.A

October 10-16, 2002

cover story

Labor Pains

The birth of the 215 Festival.

by Neal Pollack

The 215 Festival, like all great events that last nearly four days, began with a dream. I was being tormented by rapacious pirates, mutant demons with heads like anvils, and slobbering death hounds, who, after collectively chasing me to a cliff at the edge of a sea of boiling lava, stuck me to an enormous cork board and forced me to read a children’s novel by Jonathan Franzen. I woke up terrified.

"I must start a literary festival featuring today's hottest young authors and also some bands," I said. "This can only happen in Philadelphia."

And so exactly one year ago this week, I called to order the 215 Festival Committee, a shadowy cabal of thieves and malcontents whose festival-planning abilities I'd only heard about surreptitiously, through Internet rumor. We had a munitions expert with a dark secret, a gruff but wise old doctor, a sexy brunette with an ambiguously Continental accent, an untrustworthy bald hipster who constantly challenged my leadership, a mischievous, menopausal Southern belle, a black guy willing to lay down his life for the team, and Ed Rendell, whose indomitable will instantly calmed us all.

In the first month, we booked 50 authors and received more e-mails from publicists than we could possibly read. The 215 Festival was, quite simply, the talk. At a party in New York, Julian Casablancas begged me to introduce him to Jeffrey Eugenides, but I told him that wasn't 215's bag. We didn't need Julian's little band in our festival.

Then it all began to buckle. Michael Chabon canceled because he didn't want to appear on a panel with Ann Coulter. Cormac McCarthy bailed on us because we told him we wouldn't let him read in drag. French guy Michel Houellebecq quit because he found out that there'd be Muslims in attendance. In the mad fantasia of the early planning months, we conceived of events that seemed like sureties. But as summer trudged on, we realized that there wouldn't be a Joyce Carol Oates/String Cheese Incident concert on the steps of City Hall. Jonathan Safran Foer said he'd never heard of The White Stripes. Sleater-Kinney, those sellouts, absolutely refused to play a free show at Big Jar Books. Meanwhile, two of our committee members were mysteriously murdered, and their bodies weren't discovered in the rubble of the old Schmidt's Brewery site where they may or may not have been discarded.

Plus, I moved to Texas.

But from the wreckage of a mighty ocean liner, a lithe clipper ship was born. The 215 Festival lives! Certain late changes have definitely helped. An early website typo, which said that tickets to the library events cost $12,000, kept people away. After consideration, we rescinded our "no beer" rule for The North Star shows. The second draft of our press release deleted the phrase: "Sarah Vowell's writing gives comfort to the enemy." And moving the They Might Be Giants show to the Electric Factory from the Reading Terminal Market was simply a stroke of genius.

Seriously, the festival committee has put in hundreds of hours, many of them just to fulfill the ludicrous stipulations of Zadie Smith's rider. I appreciate their hard work, and so should you. Please come to the 215 Festival, and bring your children. If you don't have children, bring your parents. If I still lived in Philly, and if my wife wasn't due to give birth to our son on opening night, I would definitely be there. So enjoy yourselves, and remember: Literature is much, much better when you're drunk.