THE (DOWNTOWN) OMAHA LIT FEST: INCITING ANXIETY SINCE 2005

Marge said she didn't care to go with them to San Remo. She was in the middle of a 'streak' on her book. Marge worked in fits and starts, always cheerfully, though it seemed to Tom that she was bogged down, as she called it, about seventy-five percent of the time, a condition that she always announced with a merry little laugh. The book must stink, Tom thought. He had known writers. You didn't write a book with your little finger, lolling on a beach half the day, wondering what to eat for dinner. But he was glad she was having a 'streak' at the time he and Dickie wanted to go to San Remo.

--From The Talented Mr. Ripley, by the nefarious Patricia Highsmith [note: Patricia Highsmith was infamous for bringing her pet snails along to cocktail parties; and when she was a child, her mother boasted that she'd tried to abort her by drinking turpentine. "It's funny you adore the smell of turpentine, Pat," her mother once remarked.]

Here's a picture of Patricia Highsmith:

While in San Remo, Tom Ripley fatally brains Dickie with an oar. Meanwhile, Marge continues to guzzle gin martinis in her rented villa, and effortlessly arouses interest from a publisher for her book about the little Italian town of Mongibello. ("Now if I can only finish the damn thing!" Marge says blissfully.)

Highsmith presents a precise and telling portrait of the writer's life (martinis at noon, extended Italian vacations, overwhelming unproductivity, compulsive acts of homicide), but an even more accurate one can be had at the (downtown) omaha lit fest, held annually in various venues. We've been whoopdeedooing it since 2005, and we're always threatening to quit. (They're idle threats, calculated to make us sound blissfully indifferent and sophisticatedly blasé.) Our first year, the loosely applied theme was banned books, and also included panels on crime writing, screenwriting, and telling secrets in memoirs; for 2006's festival, the theme was the literary fringe, with panels on blogging, literary sex, death on the plains, and stretching the truth in memoir, among others. We also saluted the vanished poet, cult figure, and Nebraska native Weldon Kees, and showed his rarely screened experimental short film, "Hotel Apex."

In 2007, we paid tribute to "Depraved Women Writers & Others," and also partnered with Film Streams for "Adaptations," a repertory series of films with literary origins, which included East of Eden, The Shining, Masculin Feminin, and the panel discussion "Liquor, Junk, Madness, and the Underwood Portable: The Portrait of the Author in Film," following a screening of David Cronenberg's Naked Lunch. The festival also served as the Nebraska premiere for Chicago's renowned reading series "The Dollar Store Show" and kicked off the Lit Fest Print Series, with limited edition prints by area artists.

“Plagiarism, Fraud & Other Inspiration” was the theme for 2008, and included panels on music and the visual arts as literary influence, and discussions of the art of gentle creative thievery. The art exhibit TXT:ART included work by local and national artists that incorporated text. And in recognition of the 70-year anniversary of the banning of Mari Sandoz’s classic novel Slogum House from the Omaha Public Library, the book was re-banned for the weekend following a public reading of some of its more objectionable parts.

In addition to Nebraska authors, the fest has hosted novelists, short-story writers, nonfiction writers, and poets from New York, Chicago, Los Angeles, Kansas City, Portland, Washington DC, and Topeka (and beyond). The (downtown) omaha lit fest has received mention in the travel section of the LA Times, in such international publications as Library Journal, Poets & Writers, and Prestige Hong Kong, and was spotlighted as "a particularly good time to visit" Omaha in the New York Times Style Magazine. The Omaha World-Herald cited the fest as "another strong indication of Omaha's continuous cultural growth and expansion of diverse activities" and an "impressive part of the landscape." In an editorial, Elizabeth Currid of the University of Southern California and author of The Warhol Economy: How Fashion, Art and Music Drive New York City, wrote, "While Omaha is small compared with other metropolitan areas, the Lit Fest is on the radar of those in the cultural know... While Lit Fest is ephemeral, what it can teach us about the vitality of city life is not. Creativity -- particularly, arts and culture -- is a central part of the growth and success of metropolitan areas and needs to be taken more seriously as a part of any city's economic development scheme."

above: Beloved and celebrated Omaha poet Todd Robinson reads at the 2006 (downtown) omaha lit fest, in the Gene Leahy Mall. (photo courtesy of charlene baumbich.)

Do not attend Lit Fest if you're hemorrhaging, cranky, prone to touching strangers inappropriately without an invitation, or wear large view-obstructing hats. Discontinue attending Lit Fest if any of the following occur: neck pain, neck rigidity, leukocytosis, cyanosis, edema, dehydration, hostility, false euphoria, "feeling drunk," conjunctivitis. Lit Fest has not been approved by the FDA, and may cause drowsiness in small children. Enjoy in moderation, but overindulge freely.

The Omaha Lit Fest is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization, and has been supported and/or sponsored by a number of people and organizations, including: Omaha Public Library, the Alan and Marcia Baer Foundation, the Weitz Family Foundation, Film Streams, Bemis Center for Contemporary Arts, the Kaneko, the Bookworm, Blue Barn Theatre, Carol Gendler, Aromas Coffee House, Upstream Brewery, Joslyn Museum, University of Nebraska-Lincoln English Department, the Nebraska Summer Writers’ Conference, Nomad Lounge, and others.