Get Lit! is voices in the night

Thursday’s headline event at Get Lit! 2008 was a sedate affair, attracting only about 70 of us in the orchestra section of the Bing Crosby Theater . And even if there were a like number in the balcony, which I doubt, that would make only 140 spread out in the 740-plus-seat Crosby.

Quit a contrasting feel with Wednesday’s event at Spokane Community College , when at least that many people packed themselves into the school’s Lair Student Center auditorium to hear David James Duncan . When it comes to arts events, from film festivals to art openings and literary readings, feel is often important.

So even though the two speakers, Joseph Bathanti (winner of the 2007 Spokane Prize for his story collection “The High Heart” ) and Diana Abu-Jaber (novelist and author of the memoir “The Language of Baklava” ), were entertaining, they had less of a grip on the audience than Duncan did his crowd.

Of course, the site wasn’t the only difference. Duncan writes the kind of work that combines nature ( mainly flyfishing ) and spirituality, which is a can’t-miss kind of connection with a certain readership. Plus he has ties with the Northwest, having lived for years in Portand and now being a resident of Montana.

Bathanti, who grew up in Pittsburgh, doesn’t have anywhere near the same kind of geographical connection with the region. The story he read, though, was a stirring recounting of a fictional event set in the era immediately following Martin Luther King ’s 1968 assassination. And it, amplified by his powerful voice, filled the stage … for the full 16 minutes that he was allowed to read.

Abu-Jaber, who teaches part of the year at Portland State University , didn’t have as strong a stage presence. Yet she brought an interesting perspective to the festival. Much more easy-going, she talked about several things, little of it having to do with the Northwest (and none of it involving nature or explicit spirituality).

Most of what Abu-Jaber had to say involved her art and how it has been influenced by her Jordanian-American upbringing. She talked about the differences between speaking Arab and English, how the former is a language of metaphors and the latter one of specific directness.

Example: When invited somewhere, an Arab would never say yes or no. They would look at the sky and say a phrase that translates to “God willing.”

She talked of editors refusing her first novel because, in the words of one, Arabs weren’t “politically appropriate.” She talked of the Texas school district that wanted to censor supposedly “racy” passages from her novel “Crescent” and how she compromised by allowing the teacher to blacken the three offending paragraphs – though then putting the same passages on her Web site .

She talked about how her parents met in Syracuse, N.Y., and how her father courted her mother while knowing only two words in English (he pretended to be a waiter and took her order by memorizing the words “grilled cheese sandwich” phonetically). And she talked about one of her former teachers, the prolific writer Joyce Carol Oates , whom she called “craaazeee!”

Abu-Jaber also read from her most recent novel, “Origin,” and sounded almost apologetic about having written a mystery instead of more literary fiction. That’s excusable, though, since she was addressing a presumably wine-and-cheese crowd.

So, as it turns out, both readers were fine. They may have been even better, though, in a different setting. Maybe, say, if the event had been held in a more confined space, one preferably that allowed audience members access to … well, wine and cheese for starters.