Chapter and Verse

"Are you set to go to the rally at a moment's notice?" Roach asks someone on the other end. Like many others on the Mall, she's keeping one eye on the festival and another on the peace march.

C-SPAN2 is filming mainly History and Biography authors, as befits the cable network's focus on government and public affairs. The festival is free fodder for its all-books-all-the-time weekend programming.

But that's not the only reason the festival is like a giant TV show.

There are the folks dressed up as PBS characters, with whom small children line up to have their pictures taken. (Cookie Monster has the longest line.) There are the many authors -- Myrka Dellanos, for example, of Univision Network's " En Exclusiva con Myrka Dellanos " -- who double as television personalities.

What's more: The whole format of the festival, as Gioia has pointed out, is "not unlike the format of talk television. It's personality-focused. It's public-conversation-focused."

· It's a potential porta-potty disaster: Putting on the festival is a logistical challenge of no small significance. Last Thursday afternoon, a couple of jumbo-size golf carts filled with staffers and consultants, among them Library of Congress chief of staff Jo Ann Jenkins, motored around the site looking for glitches.

They didn't find many, except for the annoying signs on the food vendors' tents, which appeared to be left over from last year and hence were the wrong color.

Here were the book sale pavilions, expanded this year with the hope of offering quicker checkout. Here was where festivalgoers could make donations to help send books to the hurricane-ravaged Gulf Coast.

The organizers worried about the demonstration. They worried about the weather, too. But they're good at the basics by now. They've never gotten to this stage of the preparations, said Jill Brett, the library's director of communications, and found themselves saying: "Ohhh, we forgot the Sanijohns."

Heads swiveled. Startled voices asked: "Where are they?"

"They're coming!" Jenkins said.

· It's a marketing opportunity: Yes, it's the National Book Festival -- but you surely don't think that means the nation paid for it, do you? There's a reason all those free seat cushions and bottles of water have the Target logo on them -- the company is the festival's major supporter -- and that kids are posing for pictures with a walking, star-shaped advertisement for AT&T.