OUR LAGUNA: Listeners rapt at Literary Luncheon

All good teachers grab and hold the attention of their audience “” students or others.

By that criterion, the speakers at the sold-out Literary Luncheon at the Surf & Sand Saturday must be great teachers. Judith Freeman, Amy Wallen, Margot Norris and Gina Nihai, all educators at prestigious California universities, were about the most articulate of any group of authors presented in the last decade by the Laguna Beach Foundation of the American Assn. of University Women.

“I speak mainly at academic seminars, and these are two of the hardest acts I’ve ever had to follow,” said Norris, a UCI professor of English and comparative literature and Laguna Beach resident, the third speaker on the program.

Norris sees herself as a specialist in 20th century literature, art and culture, but her most sustained and devoted interest has been the works of James Joyce.

No that she had any more success than the rest of us the first time she cracked open “Ulysses.”

“I couldn’t get through the book,” she said.

However, a 1967 film directed by Joseph Strick gave her the key.

“Then about five years ago, I got a letter from the University of Cork asking me if I would be interested in writing a ‘wee book’ on the film,” Norris said.

Strick, still alive, living in Paris, and sharp as tack at 81, was delighted that someone was writing about the film, and willing to talk, she said.

Norris was in contact with Strick for about a year, including an interview at her Laguna Beach home. He even attended one of her classes.

“So I was able to publish a whole production history in my book,” Norris said.

Norris is delighted that her “wee book” seems to have rekindled interest in the film.

“If you wanted to read ‘Ulysses’ but found it too daunting, you can get the film on DVD,” said Norris, the current president of the International James Joyce Foundation.

Freeman, who teaches fiction in the Masters of Professional Writing Program at USC and a “Noir” class on the films and mystery novels set in Los Angeles, was the first speaker of the day.

Born into to a large, strict, Mormon family that read only religious tracts, Freeman didn’t discover literature until her late teens, by that time, married and a mother “” and soon to be divorced.

The late bloomer decided at 19 that she would be a writer, but her first book wasn’t published until 18 years later.

She has since written three other novels, including “Red Water,” named by the Los Angeles Times as one of the 100 best books in 1992; a collection of short stories; the text for a musical composition performed at Carnegie Hall and one non-fiction work “” “The Long Embrace: Raymond Chandler and the Woman He Loved.”

“Chandler elevated mysteries to literature,” Freeman said. “He was a social critic and a social historian.

“Books make us wiser and enlarge our sense of what it means to be a civilized human being.”

Wallen, who teaches novel writing at UC San Diego, made her writing debut with “Moonpies and Movie Stars,” a book inspired by her grandmother, a composite of the woman Wallen knew growing up in Texas.

“OK, this is the redneck portion of the program,” said Wallen, who first explained moonpies are southern sweet treat.

So was she.

“My grandmother was not the cookie-baking kind of grandmother,” Wallen said, “She didn’t know her grandchildren’s names. We were the girl, the boy and the baby “” I was the baby. I must have done something to impress her because eventually I became the other girl.”

Granny married four times, the last time to a man 25 years her junior.

“She outlived him,” Wallen said. “She wanted to wear a red dress to his funeral because he always said it showed off her legs the best.

“She was 90 at the time.”

Like her grandmother, Wallen is an original. During one interview, she said, “Life is like a bag of spinach: Sometimes you get a nice salad with raspberry vinaigrette, and sometimes you die of E. coli.”

Besides teaching and writing, Wallen volunteers with an urban high school program working to send at-risk teenagers to college by helping them prepare entrance essays and other public presentations.

She was enthusiastic about the six Thurston Middle School girls who will be able to attend the annual summer Science Tech Trek, funded by proceeds from the luncheon.

Nihai, who teaches creative writing at UCI, was born a Jew in pre-revolutionary Iran, but came to the United States after she graduated at 16.

“I have spent my entire writing career trying to decipher traditional societies,” said Nihai, in which she included Islam, Judaism and Christian Fundamentalism.

Nihai has master’s degrees in international relations and creative writing. She is a member of the International Women’s Forum, served as a consultant for the Rand Corp. and researched the politics of pre- and post-revolutionary Iran for the U.S. Department of Defense.

She has been a guest host on National Public Radio, on which she once said, “Reform has always worked better than revolution, and it has not come at the point of a sword, but through the slow painstaking labor of education.

“”¦.By appreciating the power of art and education, we can plant the seeds of ideas that will grow and blossom in their own time.”

That works for AAUW.

“AAUW was founded in 1891, based on the notion that education was the way for women to reach equality,” said Madeleine Peterson, co-president with Barbara Hamkalo of the Laguna branch.

Diane Reed and Marian Kranser co-chaired the luncheon. The committee included Barbara Antonacci, Jean Brotherton, Pam Berkson, Karen Dennis, Laurie Dickerson, Jane Eichel, Eleanor Finney, Barbara Garrett, Rosa Goldfind, Pat Griggs, Anita Halton, Katie Haven, Bana Hilal, Len Kranser, Nancy Lawrence, Jahn Levitt, Vera Martinez, Elaine Mata, Bev McComb, Nancy Miller, CarynNissimov, Deana Pink, Susan Reese, Gail Sahara, Kim Salter, Barbara Williams-Pemberton and Emy Lou Zimmerer.

OUR LAGUNA is a regular feature of the Laguna Beach Coastline Pilot. Contributions are welcomed. Write to Barbara Diamond, P.O. Box 248, Laguna Beach, 92652; hand-deliver to Suite 22 in the Lumberyard, 384 Forest Ave.; call (949) 494-4321 or fax (949) 494-8979.