The LA Art Book Fair took place in Little Tokyo during a Superbowl Weekend that coincided with the Lunar New Year.  I decided that, since it was literally in my back yard, I would check it out.  It was kind of awesome—a bit of a mixed bag.  The books were slightly less interesting than the people-watching:  everybody was dressed up in their idea of “artistic.”

The weather had dipped down to the fifties and this allowed folks in LA the opportunity to wear the dramatic coats and hats they had been saving up all year.  The hall was packed with people who were busy texting, tweeting and sweating.

My pronouncement about the event:  it was a mixed bag.  Some good.  Most mediocre.  Little excellent.

My favorite part was the first exhibit—a curated chronological history of the Queer Zines.  There was care in assembling this material, much of which usually goes uncollected, so it was a rare opportunity to educate myself on these artifacts, which are otherwise so ephemeral.

There were a lot of penises.  Penises everywhere.

When you dump out into the rest of the Festival, it’s mostly vendors:  independents, small publishing houses, retail establishments, local art schools.  Giant Robot, my favorite LA bookstore was there.  They hosted book signings by graphic artists and you could buy pop culture East Asian stuff.

The Gagosian Gallery did up a space that looked like a miniature gallery.  They did something high-brow.  “It’s a site-specific performance that involved an artist conversation, transcribed and turned into a screen print,” said the smart young woman who manned the desk.  You could buy this souvenir for 200 dollars.  The furniture everywhere was midcentury:   expensive, sleek, modern.

But a lot of the stuff fell into the regrettable category.  I began to pine for all those Queer Zines I left so quickly.  So much more care was taken in the curation.

I’ve been to my fair share of book type events but never to one like the LA Art Book Fair.  Full disclosure:  most of my friends are addicted to books; they are academics and spend their life among them; they haunt archives, usually in not-so-chic draw string sweats and lumpy sweaters that do not show so well as many of the get-ups I saw at the fair.

For me, the defining book lover event is quasi-professional—the hallway of the Modern Language Association’s annual meeting, which is big as a football stadium.  There, most people come to find their own books or their friend’s books.  Then they take pictures next to them and post on Facebook.  Hardly anybody reads anything.  They are there to bump into people they know and pitch their ideas to editors.

Anybody could possibly put in an order for a few hundred books through their university.   They could possibly put the book on a library list and be single-handedly responsible for its dissemination to thousands of libraries across the United States, so the MLA book hall is almost like a trade show:  lots of freebies, books steeply discounted, extremely knowledgeable and serious booksellers.  You are assured of leaving with too many free tote bags.

At the LA Art Book Fair, you must buy your tote bag.  The tote bag was the defining fashion item at the Fair and it was probably the biggest seller, too.

In fact, though this was a book lover event, there was something not-so-book-loverly about it. There was the feeling in which book loving was put on display as spectacle.  People tried to jockey for position to immerse themselves in actually reading books, despite the jostling crowd.  You could even buy this sign to put in your living room to remind people of your commitment to literacy.

“Look at me.  I’m artistic, reading an artistic book.”  That was the understated message in the dramatic Gothic Steampunk blocky eyeglass squint.  For me, though, the last thing I wanted to do was read a book in such a cluster fuck.

Art books are supposed to be fundamentally different from ordinary books.  They not only have many more pictures but they grapple with the materiality of the book as form.  They self-consciously investigate the book as an artifact.

But so many of the attempts at Art Book-i-ness were caught between being (unsuccessfully) commercial and (unsuccessfully) artistic that they were simply pretentious.  For me, one image summed up the entire show.  It was a book of photographs about Cuba–leather bound, embossed with swirling calligraphy–set in a presentation box made to resemble a cigar box with a tiny stamp: Hecho en Mexico.