Two weeks before the beginning of my book tour, I discovered that Amos Oz would be reading in San Francisco. Not just on any night, but the exact same evening that I’d be reading at my favorite local bookstore, City Lights Books.  ”There goes that event,” I remember telling Jennifer, as I braced myself for what I was convinced would be the single worst-attended event of my trip to the US.

No such luck. The room was filled to near-capacity. Even better, it was a repeat of the previous night, when I’d read to an equal number of people in Berkeley. Granted, Oz was reading at the JCC, and I was at an indie shop, but still. Even in the Bay Area, the readership for such Israel-focused work tends to be fairly specific. Watching folks take their seats, I was overcome by an enormous sense of relief.

Indeed, everything about the Bay Area leg of my trip proved to be positive. I’ll be the first to admit I was apprehensive, not just because of my fear of having to compete with much better-known writers, but because the most significant parts of Israel vs. Utopia‘s treatment of the Diaspora is based upon my experience of San Francisco. I really wanted to be able to talk about it, in the city that defined it all for me.

To that end, I’ve been recording nearly every night of the tour so far. I haven’t had the opportunity to sit down and edit the recordings yet. However, this interview, conducted on San Francisco’s KALW last Wednesday, does a great job of summing it all up. Wait until you get to the part where we start taking callers, and the show’s host, Sandip Roy, brings up the issue of food.

The lack of complexity with which I explain that I approach the subject is precisely because of the intensity with which Americans have grown accustomed to relating to the Mideast conflict. Hence the rather unfortunate juxtaposition of adverts above, which I noticed as I waited for the train back to San Francisco following my first local reading, at Pegasus Books, in Berkeley. It’s very Bay Area.

Despite the Berlusconi government’s affinity for the Israeli right, Italian civil society indicates a similar fondness for cultured liberals. The window display at the Feltrinelli store on the Corso Buenos Aires.

Everyone’s favorite Orientalist, this time in Italian. The Mondadori store, near the Duomo, on the Corso Vittorio Emanuele.