Patrons Check Out Authors at Library Event

The premise was elegantly simple.

Ask people to pay up to $2,500 to have dinner with a favorite author, with the money going to the Los Angeles Public Library. More than 50 writers agreed, some flying in from England. And some 1,000 bibliophiles anted up to hear the authors discuss their books in handsome private homes during last week’s “Literary Odyssey Dinners.”

The night before Monday’s dinners, the authors, their hosts and the most generous donors gathered for drinks in the Central Library’s rotunda, then moved next door to the posh California Club.

Veronique Peck, whose late husband, actor Gregory Peck, also championed the library, was the honorary chair. When Katharine Hepburn biographer A. Scott Berg sat down, he noticed that a sign identified his table with the name “Ernest Hemmingway.” As if channeling one of his biography subjects, legendary editor Maxwell Perkins, Berg jumped from his chair and corrected the misspelled name, slashing out the superfluous “m” with his pen.

“MASH” creator Larry Gelbart, author of a memoir titled “Laughing Matters,” observed: “This is a remarkable show of respect in a town where writers only get their picture taken when they get their license renewed.”

In fact, Los Angeles has long supported serious writers, although not always intentionally. Could Nathanael West have afforded to write his classic Hollywood novel, “The Day of the Locust,” if he hadn’t been paid well to crank out B-movie screenplays for Republic Pictures?

Los Angeles’ public library system is the largest in the country, serving 14 million users annually at the Central Library and its 67 branches. This was the fourth series of literary dinners organized by the all-woman council of the nonprofit Library Foundation of Los Angeles.

Because the food and most costs were underwritten by the hosts, this year’s benefit raised a record $360,000 for the library.

Turner Classic Movies host Robert Osborne, author of a book about the Academy Awards, said today’s Angelenos seem less transient, more culturally rooted than in the past, thanks to institutions like the literary dinners and the new Walt Disney Concert Hall.

Many of the authors said they had first fallen in love with words at libraries. Steve Oney, whose “And the Dead Shall Rise” is about the 1915 lynching of Jewish factory manager Leo Frank, said he hung out as a teen at the old Andrew Carnegie Library in Atlanta.

“The marble steps were already grooved from usage,” Oney said. He recalled discovering the works of William Faulkner there, “and trying to figure out what ‘The Sound and the Fury’ was all about.”

Edgar-winning mystery writer Michael Connelly mingled with authors and fans at last Sunday’s affair. Writing is a solitary business, several authors noted, as they took the opportunity to introduce themselves to other writers whom they admired.

Connelly, a former Los Angeles Times police reporter now living in Florida, said: “I enjoy writing about L.A. in exile.”

A scene in his Harry Bosch mystery “Lost Light” is set in the Central Library’s rotunda.

“I might have written it from memory if I still lived in L.A.,” Connelly said. Instead, he revisited the downtown library while writing the book, nailing down details to satisfy the most demanding Angeleno readers.

Wearing blue nametags, the writers included Simon Winchester, whose “The Professor and the Madman” was a bestseller; Leo Braudy, whose new book is “From Chivalry to Terrorism;” Maxine Hong Kingston, who is touring with “The Fifth Book of Peace;” poet W.S. Merwin; and Laurence Bergreen, whose “Over the Edge of the World” tells of Magellan’s circumnavigation of the globe.

Among the 51 dinners held on Monday night was one at the home of Diane and John Cooke, described in the event’s brochure as “Monticello Comes to Brentwood.”

Twenty people opted to sup with Thomas Jefferson biographers Joyce Appleby and Garry Wills. The latter’s “Lincoln at Gettysburg” won a Pulitzer Prize in 1993.

When guests arrived, they discovered that the Cookes had flown in a surprise guest from Princeton University -- Barbara Oberg, who heads the team preparing a definitive edition of Jefferson’s papers.

John Cooke, who is on the board of Jefferson’s Monticello home and is chair of the Library Foundation board, confessed: “Next Friday night, I’ll be dining by candlelight in Jefferson’s dining room.”

Wills, whose new book is “ ‘Negro President:’ Jefferson and the Slave Power,” spoke over cocktails about the paradox at the heart of Jefferson, whose passionate commitment to self-determination did not extend to blacks or women. As a Southern slave-holder, Jefferson “had to support the system that supported him,” Wills said.

UCLA’s Appleby, a former president of the American Historical Assn., spoke after the company moved into the dining room. Small pumpkins and autumn leaves were strewn across the tables, and Diane Cooke had lighted hand-dipped bayberry candles from Monticello.

Author of the Jefferson biography in the “American Presidents” series, Appleby observed that the nation’s third president, for all the controversy surrounding his relationship with slave Sally Hemings, continues to loom large in the American imagination. “He, in some way, captures the essence of America,” she said.

She lauded Jefferson for his tireless battle against hereditary privilege. “He wanted to eradicate a society of status,” she said. “He wanted to get rid of these invidious distinctions” based on birth or land ownership. That contribution abides, even though “we approach him in 2003 with a tinge of disappointment.”

Over poached salmon, the writers chatted about Jefferson’s fiscal policy and his battles with the Federalists. Guests included corporate heads, a film producer, a writer of children’s books, a restaurateur and a collector of Abraham Lincoln material.

“I spend my days reading Jefferson’s mail,” Oberg said as the rustic apple tart was served.

Each morning, Oberg dips into a cache of some 70,000 letters to and from Jefferson. The day before, she said, she had read a letter from a woman begging Jefferson to give her friend a job as a postal inspector. He declined. As enigmatic as Jefferson is, Oberg said, “If we don’t understand him, we don’t understand ourselves.”

A champion of libraries, Jefferson donated his personal collection of books to rebuild the Library of Congress after Washington was burned in 1812.

And, Oberg said, Jefferson loved to entertain. She suggested that an evening of good talk and fellowship fueled by ideas was very much in the Jeffersonian spirit: “I think he would have approved of this dinner party.”