Booked

Lit Life

2008-07-25T19:36:05Z

I've gotten in trouble with my publicist for having used this space to point out inaccuracies in reportage about my book and my personal life. (Any press, even snarky press, must be viewed as beneficial. To complain is to be viewed as a whiner, a malcontent, an agitator. Now get back in line!)

So, please understand that I think this is funny, and that I AM NOT COMPLAINING! I really just got a kick out of it....

A group of people called The Underground Literary Alliance began, a few years ago, to accost writers at readings. The group believed that all published writers were part of some corrupt, insider's game—and that, if you were not part of the New York literary scene, then you were forever an outsider, someone without hope of being published. (The ULA came to a reading I did a few years ago at the The Whitney Museum for the literary journal McSweeneys, but they didn't throw tomatoes or anything.) More recently, when my latest book came out, the folks who post on Literary Rejections on Display started to insult it—without having read a word of my writing—because they thought I was getting too much attention for it; if I was getting attention, they assumed, I must be part of some literary clique, some shadowy insider. (The people who run LROD are quite nice, actually—and, after the kerfuffle there about my book, they decided to have my novel be the subject of their first online book club—much to my happy surprise and the chagrin of some of the people who post there.) And there's another blog I won't link to—or even mention by name—which has also come after me, for much the same reason, but with more vitriol and less coherence.

So I wanted to address the question: Is there a New York literary scene, and if so, does being a part of it help you get published, no matter your talent (or lack thereof)?

I don't know. I certainly didn't have any writer friends—or any publishing connections—before I published my first book. Still, I did live in New York, and so thereby was able to walk my manuscripts over to publishers and agents, and I admit—I did go to readings, not only for the entertainment, but also hoping to meet people. And now that I am published, I further admit: I do have a lot of writer friends, and even play in a poker game with a number of high-profile authors. (And, yes, the truth is, there is some logrolling in this business. You can trace the genealogy of a number of literary cliques by paying attention to who’s blurbing one another’s books. This is truly a bad thing. To paraphrase the writer Fiona Maazel, whom I'm also friendly with: books that don't win some big-name blurb have a harder time getting noticed.)

But I think that what's going on is less professional than personal: It's rewarding to be a part of a writers’ community. Cheesy as that sounds, it’s true. There's no water cooler we in this solitary job can go to; shop talk is hard to come by. And I think very few people succeed in this business based on connections. Your work eventually has to find readers, and that has nothing to do with whose friend you are. Publishers aren't going to waste their money, in this economy, publishing someone as a favor to someone else. And again, most writers I know became friends with other writers only after they were published.

But because there is so much subjectivity—and downright unfairness—in this business (good work that gets rejected, bad work that gets published), it's easy to point fingers, to look for conspiracies. Let me quote Maazel again: "Too much media coverage and people start to hate you. Too little and no one knows you are alive enough to hate you for it."

Random Chance & Me

2008-07-22T13:46:05Z

In the middle of the strangeness of a book-tour—there being a limo driver to schlep you three hours to events where you sell twelve books; your flopsweating through five minutes on morning TV, where hosts haven’t read the book or worn pants to cover their legs under their cut-rate anchorman’s desks—in the middle of book-tour strangeness, you don’t expect to learn something heavy about yourself.

I write fiction. My first book was about Asian conjoined twins from the 18^th century, so you see just how close to home I’m comfortable being. Not that I have a thing against non-fiction—but I’ve been more focused on its imaginary friend. Maybe that’s my way of having avoided the more personal, the more keep-off-the-grass parts of my brain. But recently I tried staring directly at a subject I’ve been brave enough only to squint and mumble at for years:

I was in a car accident in high school; someone died.

I don’t know why I’ve been drawn to write about it now I’ve been a professional writer for eight years, and had three books before this one, and never dared go near the subject—but I’ve felt compelled to examine it now: the bombshell and the pain of it. That’s what writers do, I told myself (I hope not too pretentiously): We write about things to understand them. And so I did a piece for the IraGlass show This American Life.

I don’t want to get into the details of the accident now. (You can go here if you’re interested.) But I’ll say only that it was what the insurance companies deem a “no fault” accident, and the police call a “dart out”: when someone hurries into a looming car.

Anyway, I’ve started reading my This American Life piece about the accident at author events. I don’t know why.This secret that I’d been hiding for years, this lockbox that I’d only open to my very closest friends—I’ve started spilling it to rooms full of strangers.

I hope it’s not—and I don’t think it’s true—that I crave the sympathy of others. No, I'm pretty sure it’s not that; I actually feel gross whenever someone comes up to tell me how sorry they are for me, as if I’d used the accident to score pity points. But it must be something about the act of confession, public confession, the way people do it in AA meetings. I found I needed to do this. I know that sounds cheesy.

And this will sound cheesy, too, and self-congratulatory: But I think some people actually kind of needed to have heard it. I only say this because I’ve been flooded with e-mails—just two days after the piece aired—from people who went through similar things, or people who are just dealing with grief of any kind.

The researchers at This American Life found an article that explained how, in the U.S., some 2,000 people a year live through a “dart out” accident—and that those drivers are likely to feel post-traumatic stress syndrome. More likely, in fact, than are people who are actually at fault in a fatal accident. Why? It’s hard to learn so viscerally that the universe is managed with indifference, by chance.

In my last post, I wrote that becoming a writer makes you most yourself when by yourself. I take it back.

Our Lesson For Today

2008-07-18T06:27:22Z

I've been very lucky. I know that.

(Before the cannonade of angry comments comes–and it will come–know that I know I've been lucky.)

And off we go!

It happens at every reading. It happened in St. Louis. It happened in Portland, Maine. Someone comes up to ask about becoming a writer, about the ways and the hows of it.

And I go all at once into a feeling of protectiveness, of pity. I’m like a boxer who, having miraculously survived the terrors of his sport, wants to keep the innocents from lifting the turnbuckle, from stepping into that ring. Don't do it. It's hard.

I'm not talking an occasional stalker hard. Nor people-come-after-you-merely-because-they-don't-like-your-author-photo hard. (Though these particular people ended up being nice; actually, and kindly, they’re now having a book club reading of my novel). Anyway, I don't mean even that it's hard to face what Martin Amis has called the "veritable dunceiad" of American book criticism.

I'm talking, instead, about the impossible balancing act–being thick-skinned enough to shrug off the snark that finds everyone who puts himself out for criticism in the public sphere, while at the same time being sensitive enough to stay awake to all the human cues, to the peculiarities of our world that it's a novelist's job to notice, and keep on noticing.

Every writer I know secretly thinks she deserves every bad review she gets, and at the same time is furious that her publisher is failing to do more to get the word out about the most brilliant book of the year–hers.

Maybe that’s insanity. But it’s a particular kind of insanity. To be a fiction writer–like probably any non-improvising artist–you need to be a bifurcated person. You have to be both clinically arrogant (to think anyone would care to read your take on things; also to have the confidence to get your prose peacocking across the page), and you have to be unusually humble (to have modesty enough to accept criticisms from the better angels of your friends; to have the ability to see what crap your first draft really is, and in what fixable ways). You have to be Bruce Banner; you have also to be the Hulk.

And yes, I know it’s easy for me to say these things; I’ve been published. I’ve made it over the fence. I’ve even been on national television. But it’s not a career I’d wish on, say, my sons.

I really think if you can find a trade, do it: it beats writing. This job does wonders on who you are: you become inert, most yourself when by yourself, and, in Amis’ wonderful phrase, you become weirdly “self-tasting.” One clue that I’m telling it straight is: in what other field do so many success stories bitch about the job? Amis, again, complains about the “cloistered quiddity” of the writing life. Bernard Malamud talked about writing for a living as a kind of psychosis, like a mental illness. Cheever, too, called a “a dangerous profession.” Philip Roth says: “The difference between being a famous writer and an Olympic swimmer is that the swimmer doesn’t think she’s drowning every time she jumps into the pool.”

I don’t mean to be discouraging. If you want to be a writer–want and need to write–then no one and nothing can stop you. But just think you should know these kind of things, going in.

I Was Toting My Pack Along the Dusty Winnemucca Road....

2008-07-15T05:45:27Z

I’ve been everywhere, Johnny Cash sang (or sings still, in the ubiquity of car rental ads, the incessancy of TV). I know how the man feels. These last weeks have seen me in Los Angeles, Chicago, Los Angeles again, New York, Los Angeles yet again, San Francisco, Menlo Park (CA),Oakland, Portland (OR.), Seattle, Bluffton (S.C.), St. Louis, Minneapolis, Madison, Milwaukee, New York again, and Boston—with Portland (ME) coming the day after tomorrow.

It’s been fascinating, in this time of ascending economic worry, to drive through all the different but similarly gentrifying downtowns, the abandoned or converted factories, and—ringing every city—the glossy office buildings done in the bland, tipped-over refrigerator style. I’m sure all you cartographic sociologists out there would know better than I just how much this list tends toward the blue end of our two-color political map. (When did Red-State/Blue-State get to be a shibboleth we all return to?)

What I do know is that people at readings—for a novel, no less—have been wanting to talk more about politics than they have at any of my other book tours. (This is my fifth one now—though it’s admittedly much bigger than the ones I did for my other two books.) Maybe that’s because my novel is tangentially—and coincidentally—about some of the most severe weather of this campaign climate (race, gender, health care, privacy). But I suspect it’s about something else: people just want to discuss the direction of the country—in a way they didn’t in, say, the summer of 2000, when my first book came out.

All the same, and perhaps not surprisingly in a season that finds the President at a 23 percent approval rating (and Congress even lower), everyone I’ve talked to—and I mean everyone—talked about wanting the country to change: fundamentally, necessarily, quickly. I found it striking, how often all different types of people just came up and wanted to talk it out, to commiserate, to find reassurance from a stranger.

I’m not a political reporter, nor a pundit anywhere but in my living room, so I won’t attempt any grand statements or predictions. (They might be even likelier to be wrong than are the things professional pundits write.) But the dissatisfaction all over the country is palpable—one woman at a reading asked me: “Do you think the economy will turn around soon?” I explained that, as a novelist, I knew no more about that than any other lay person would. She kind of shrunk in on herself, like a child who is told that Santa is a fake, just a guy with a gut, a rented suit, a removable beard.

The cab driver in St. Louis, the bookstore owner in Boston, the housewife who wanted her book signed in Minnesota—they all wanted to get into it, to unload, without even a preamble of small talk.

On a side note, I recently caught one of the Paul Simon concerts at the Brooklyn Academy of Music (with David Byrne and a raft of African musicians—a great geezer show); and while I know that nothing's more high-school mawkish than quoting pop music lyrics, the words to "American Tune" keep looping in my head:

...we lived so well so long
Still, when I think of the road we're traveling on,
I wonder what's gone wrong
I can't help it—I wonder what's gone wrong.

In Which We Ponder Whether There are Stalkers in Heaven

2008-07-11T13:40:19Z

So, I have a stalker.

Or—I might have one. I’m new at this.

I mean, in a way, I’m psyched. Because—more than the other news I got recently, that the book debuted at number 3 on its first bestseller list—when you have a stalker, it marks your having arrived. Right? I just worry for my life.

On my Website, I give out my address and NYU phone number, and also the times when I can be reached. (I called that gimmick “Office Hours,” thinking it would be funnyish, because my alter ego is a mild-mannered professor.) And so: I’ve gotten a lot of very nice emails, from a lot of very nice people. And then I got a different one. This different one opened the lid on a box of crazy. And the crazy kept coming.

I’m wondering if I should be prudent here, and change the details of the messages, or the gender of the writer. But, in for a penny……

“I want to know one thing, and that is, what is your opinion of life after death,” one reads. “I think it is there. But I do not know what you would think, or if I should know that you know what I think. Because I do not know you, I mean not really. But I feel kinda I do. That’s why I believe we couldn’t be friends. Not to say I don’t like your writing, I do. But I do not like your book, even though it is well-done, and beautifully written, and has characters who moved me, and, I will admit, there’s a satisfying ending to it all. But not friendship material, me and you.”

My book does not address the question of an afterlife. So there’s that.

There's really not much you can say to this. Grammatically, it makes sense. But you can’t understand it, hard as you may try. And I’ve tried. It resists understanding; it flicks understanding aside. It’s a message from a dissimilar world, an unintelligible world without its own internal consistency.

I weighed whether I should answer. I decided to erase it, because it creeped me out. (I confess that what you read above is my most honest recollection.)

I received two more an hour later: 1) “I told you we couldn’t be friends in my last email. At least in my opinion, that is. Maybe I am wrong. I hope I am wrong. We could meet and see. I really hope I’m wrong.”

Right after came: 2) “You live in Brooklyn, right? Where in Brooklyn?”

I have two cute, new kids. Maybe even writing this is stupid because it’ll make the e-mailer more angry? Or flattered? I don’t know.

Wiping my brow, licking the sweat from my mouth, I wrote back. “Thanks for your note. I do live in Brooklyn. But I must say I don’t understand your notes. I believe in some form of the afterlife, but I’m not sure. I always wonder about things, such as: if your spouse dies young, and you remarry, and you love both spouses equally—how does that work itself out in heaven.”

The e-mailer wrote: “That is why we cannot be friends.” If something happens to me, you’ll know whom to blame. (I’ve emailed the person’s address to the proper authorities. That is, to my wife.)

Next events:

_____________________

BROOKLYN, NY

Friday, July 11
7:00 PM to 8:30 PM

BOOK COURT
163 Court Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201
_____________________

MARTHA'S VINEYARD, MA

Saturday, July 12
7:30 PM to 9:00 PM

BUNCH OF GRAPES
44 Main Street
PO Box 1608
Vineyard Haven, MA 02568
_____________________

BOSTON, MA

Sunday, July 13
2:00 PM to 4:00 PM

NEWTONVILLE BOOKS
296 Walnut Street
Newton, MA 02460

_____________________

BOSTON, MA

Tuesday, July 15
6:00 PM

BORDERS
511 Boyleston Street
Boston, MA 02116

_____________________

PORTLAND, ME

Wednesday, July 16
7:00 PM to 8:30 PM

BOOKS ETC
38 Exchange Street
Portland, ME 04104

On The Road

2008-07-08T04:01:10Z

Life gets weird on the road sometimes.

Writers tend, as everyone knows, toward the introverted, even the claustrophobic. That’s why readings make for such odd performance art.Whereas a half-hour listening even to, say, Bobcat Goldthwait would have its certain appeal--and I’m thinking of the entertainers I’d really least like to see--a novelist isn’t that kind of funambulist; we come by our work through continual and restless alone time. This does wonders for our social skills, lemme tell you: as a breed we get kind of inert,and are most relaxed--even maybe most ourselves --sitting in a room with no one else. And then, to hawk our wares, we’re sent out;we stand before (we hope) a crowded room and perform. (That’s why I mix my “shows” up by bringing audience members to read with me--it gives it a theatrical feel, and is more, I hope, fun. Because--to be honest--most readings are anything but fun…..)

Anyway, back to the weird, the unexpected twists of the road.

In Portland, the gifted writer PaulsToutonghi stopped me on the street before my reading.

He was with his girlfriend, whom I’d never met before, whose name is Peyton Marshall.

“Hey, Pauls,” I said. (I mumbled the last s on his name, because he’s eastern European, and I never know if it’s a silent s, or what. “Thanks for coming out.”

“Listen,” he said, “we need a favor.” Then he remembered himself and said: “It’s out pleasure.”

“I want you to sign my will,” his girlfriend interrupted.

Now, I was up for anything at this point. My NPR interview had been canceled (Although I’d been on A.M.Northwest, a TV show where the hosts were kind enough to pretend to have read my book.) But this request was a surprise.

“I don’t understand,” I said. I’d never met this woman before.

"Witness it, that is,” said Pauls.

I felt my face slacken: an idiot’s simper. What were these people talking about?

“We're leaving tomorrow on a six week Eastern European trip,” Peyton, the girlfriend, said. As if that clarified things.

“And Peyton suddenly realized today that she wanted to have a will in case--God forbid--something happens in the old Soviet states,” Pauls said.“So, we thought: ‘Oh! We'll go to the reading and have Darin sign it.”

Now, Pauls is someone I’ve met about twice.

“Naturally,” I said.

Out of her big black leather purse she pulled a sheaf of legal documents, and--as Pauls leaned over for me to use his back as a writing desk--I signed over her assets to him. True love in Bush's Recession America.

...

Then I went into the deservedly famous Powells bookstore, was greeted by an old elementary schoolfriend I haven’t seen in decades, and then read to a packed room. (It was filled largely by “creative writing campers” who had been bused in for the event.)

One of these kids, when I called him up to read with me, strayed from the text;he improvised like Robin Williams as I tried to follow along, lost in my own reading. Then--the campers left, as one, without buying a single book.

So: a crazy co-reader, an old friend showing up out of the past,and a legal document signed: Another night on the road.

The next few events are:
__________________

Minneapolis, MN
Tuesday, July 8
7:00 PM
BARNES & NOBLE
3225 W. 69th Street
Edina, MN 55435
_____________________

MADISON, WI
Wednesday, July 9
7:00 PM
BORDERS
3750 University Avenue
Madison, WI 53705
_____________________

MILWAUKEE, WI
Thursday, July 10
7:00 PM
HARRY W. SCHWARTZ BOOKSHOP
17145 W. Bluemound Rd
Brookfield, WI 53005

Please come say hello.

My Night with Two Escorts

2008-06-28T18:25:44Z

In the way that the psychologically-wounded bad guy is more fun to read about (and to write about) than is the grinning, problem free crime-fighter—the dude so Hollwoodly handsome in his red cape, who smiles as he biceps aloft the tottering tram car that has all the hostage children aboard…. In that way, it would be no fun for you to read (or me to write up) last night’s reading at A Great Good Place for Books. It was a crowded success, and we all had fun. I’m not going to write about that. Fun doesn’t make for a good read. Fun is no fun.

I will say that Michael Chabon’s mother, Sharon, came out to hear me.Sharon is a very sweet woman, and she’s an escort. Not that kind of escort; she’s what’s known as a media escort—a job that constitutes one of the more interesting quirks of book touring. There’s a sub-rosa economy out there: a system of people in every city whose job it is to pick up writers at the airport and drive them to bookstores, and then to their hotels. Just as—and any historian will tell you this—it’s the White House staff that knows the really personal dirt on any given Administration, the escorts are literature's best gossip keepers. For example, when pressed about who's the biggest jerk that they’ve ever had to escort, those who'll talk usually tell you (but not for attribution): “Martha Stewart.” It’s nearly unanimous. A surprise second-place in the SUJP (Strauss Unofficial Jerk Poll) is MargaretCho, the comedienne-author who wrote “I'm the One That I Want.”

Most escorts are tight-lipped. But after a few days, and many 3-hour trips to “sign stock” at each bookstore in a given city, I’ve gotten quite a few of them to open up. One told me that she drove John McCain around when he was promoting a book that he'd written before he was a presidential candidate. The senator had just given a morning talk; he’d told the crowd that he’d never lied in his life. “I asked McCain, when he got back in the car,” the escort told me: “‘OK, be honest, senator—when was the last lie you told?’” McCain’s answer, according to the escort: “This morning.” Another one met Barack Obama, and told me that—at the local NPR station where Obama was to be interviewed—the producer,the station manager, and all the secretaries got their hair done before he showed up. (And people say Obama has problems winning over women….)

Many of the escorts are, like Sharon Chabon, semi-retired people who enjoy the company of visiting writers. (Mrs. Chabon had come to hear me read yesterday when she was off-duty, which was beyond the niceness pale—nobody whose job it is to hear three or four readings a week should waste a free night at a bookstore.) So, last night, my escort was Frank Lauria, a salty ex-New Yorker who makes great use of the chiseled language of the military. (He was drafted in the sixties, but missed going to Vietnam by some dint of Italian luck.)

Escorts. You drive around town with them, eat your meals with them, and therefore—a writer isn’t used to having minders—they become your friend for the day. (Your paid friend, but still). Some, however, are looking not just to be friends. (It’s a small community, and I don’t want to give away state secrets, so I’ll refer to the specifics as generally as I can.) One told me s/he “believes in the herb” and offered to “score” me some marijuana. Another hit on me, saying “If I knew as a young woman what I know now about the boudoir, I’d be a highly priced paramour.”(She also offered to come up and take a shower with me, but then quickly said, “Just kidding.”) One is like the ghost of Christmas Future, because s/he says: “I was a writer and had six bestsellers,” as s/he takes your bags and puts them in her/his trunk. One of the most beloved of all escorts actually ended up marrying one of the writers who’d been under his/her care.

As Martin Amis wrote: Early in a tour, the nightly reading feels like an ordeal; then a hurdle; then a testing routine. But soon it's almost as enjoyable as a dangerous habit. Your readers become your supporters, as he says — they sustain the one-man team. He’s right,except it’s a two-man team. If a writer is nothing without a reader, then a writer on tour is nothing without a reader and an escort; who else is going to get him to meet that reader?

Anyway, I hope you can come to my next events; they’re getting fun—as the crowds get more nicely-sized.

Monday, June 30 7:30 PM,
POWELL'S CITY OF BOOKS
1005 W. Burnside
Portland, OR 97209

To Read and Flop in LA

2008-06-26T10:52:17Z

Bad readings are absolutely unendurable. I should know; I’ve just endured one.

At Vroman’s—a great bookstore, by the way, in Pasadena—I read to four people. One was an ex-student of mine. Another was his girlfriend. The other two may have been apparitions, poised holograms.

That unmistakable vibe of futile enterprise, of haphazard ostracism from all the best that the world will never reveal to you; also, the vibe of eternal repetition, the utter futility of trying to make your way an uncaring cosmos: It’s a little known fact, but Kafka wrote The Trial in Lawrence, Kansas, on the second night of his “Metamorphosis” tour.

But I had expected a lot from this event, from this town. Los Angeles. The very thought of an event in Hollywood, as I cooled my heels in gray LaGuardia, got me wishing I’d gone in for a year of push-ups and crunches, of tanning-bed time and supersonic colonic sessions. You’ve got to look posh for Tinseltown. Or so I thought.

I’ve done bad events before, of course. The hailstorm in Chicago, when one of a total of two audience members stood angrily as I began to speak, all the time glaring—he thought I’d been some nutjob who’d just begun addressing the room uninvited; the guy seemed angry that I’d disturbed his assignation with that month’s Omni. And there was the time I’d been flown to Denver, Co., and then driven out to Boulder -- only to find that the two local papers had pushed back their reviews of my book; nobody showed up. Not a single person. The bookstore kicked me out, and I flew home the next morning, having sold zero books. Very Spinal Tap.

But this was glittering LA now. Where I have a movie agent. Where I have a number of celebrity friends (two).

My first celebrity friend is Carrie Fisher. She’d been kind enough to send an email after my first book came out. A friendly note, signed simply: “Carrie Fisher.” I’d thought it was my friends playing a joke. After I’d verified it was indeed the real her, I spent a lovely evening in 2002 at Carrie’s guest house, from which hung a placard that read “Men’s prison.” Her mom, Debbie Reynolds, came over and gave us—me, Carrie, and two other guys in their early thirties whom I never really got introduced to—a box of leftover Chinese. A memorable night. Carrie’s very kind and almost too charming for mere humans; her conversation takes corners very quickly, and I often find myself skidding off into the weeds. She signed a recent email to me “P. Leia.” How can you not love someone who does that?

My second celebrity friend is Gary Oldman. Don’t believe the hype: Gary Oldman is as sweet a person as you’ll ever meet; when my wife was pregnant with our twins, Gary Oldman was the only person—including me—to give her a Mother’s Day card. When my sons were born, Gary had his own nonagenarian mother knit two baby-size sweaters for them, along with matching hats. He and I have worked together for the last few years on adapting my first book into a script. It’s been fun, but the option is soon running out. (Get on the stick, Gary!)

Anyway, they both had intimated that they’d come to my LA reading, but they both stood me up. Each had a legit reason for missing it (giving a speech in Orange county; a medical condition I probably shouldn’t reveal here…) I was bummed at first, but when I saw the size of the “crowd,” I was relieved they hadn’t come. Imagine how awkward: four civilians, and then Gary Oldman and Carrie Fisher, sitting in the first of many rows of empty chairs. Would they have talked? Gary and Carrie don’t know each other. But maybe the GOFP (Guild of Famous People) rules dictate that they have to converse.

I should have known it’d be a bust. The LA Times hasn’t reviewed the book yet, the LA Daily News interviewed me at the book store five minutes before the event, the great Michael Silverblatt postponed our NPR interview because his father took suddenly sick (good luck, Mr. Silverblatt). That’s why it’s stupid to start book tours before the reviews all come out. Why not wait a few weeks? I guess the publisher wants to make sure the book does well in the first few days after publication—but how can that happen, with unattended readings? Sigh.

Anyway, I didn’t even read; I talked to the assembled few a little while, telling some jokes, sweating my flopsweat, eventually stammering and twittering to some kind of ending. Nothing is sadder than four people clapping softly.

So, come on, Bay Area! I’m counting on you. Thursday, June 26, at 7, I’ll be at A Great Good Place for Books, on 6120 LaSalle Ave., in Oakland. Friday, June 27, at 7:30 I’ll be at Books Inc, at 2251 Chestnut Street, in San Francisco. I don’t think the book will have been reviewed in the Chronicle yet, either. So help a brother out.

The Good and Bad of a Book Tour, All Wrapped Up in One Night in NYC

2008-06-25T11:46:56Z

Yesterday perfectly described the ups-and-downs of book touring and even of living as a fiction writer.

Friday, because my wife and I have twins, I’d dropped her and our 8-month-olds at my parents-in-law’s house in South Carolina. Sad leaving my family—the boys, especially; I won’t see them for weeks. They’re so little: I’m kind of scared they’ll forget me. Here’s the double cuteness I’m jeopardizing my relationship with:

All the same, I left them to fly to my Manhattan book party, which seemed pretty cool to be doing. But the plane sat on the tarmac at LaGuardia for over an hour. In the writing racket, that’s the way it so often is: each victory comes with its defeat. I’ll show you what I mean.

The day before, I’d gotten an amazing Washington Post review (“If you don’t belong to a book club, Darin Strauss’s bitter and brilliant new book is reason enough to start one”); but just as I eased into the warm enjoyment of good press, my publisher splashed me with some freezing-water news: another newspaper—coming later this week, so I can’t link to it yet (thank God)—will be pretty negative about my book.

All day surged and stopped short like that. After my long airplane sit, I arrived home, hoping to ready for the party. Opening my door, I got a call from New York University, which was kind enough to host the party (but not kind enough, I’d learned after the invites went out, to pay for the food or the wine). “Where are you?” NYU said. (The school, as you’d expect from a university of over 20,000 students, has a large voice).

“I’m getting dressed,” I said.

“What?” said NYU, in institutional disbelief: “The party’s started, Strauss—there are 50 students sitting here, waiting to see you read.” Though my Website, and this blog, said that the party would begin at 7 pm, NYU believed it started at 6. (Who in New York gets off work in time to arrive at a Monday-evening party at 6?) My friends, who were kind enough to agree to perform, weren’t there yet. I hurried over to NYU, no shower, no prep time, and stalled before a mic to an audience of fifty, for almost a half hour. No fun—for me, for the students or the school, for literature itself.

But then more people started to arrive. A great number, actually. Old students of mine, a raft of strangers, even some amazing writers—along with, well, my dad. So many people came, in fact, that a lot of them (potential book buyers all) were turned away. (The good-and-the-bad again).

I’d drawn hundreds of people (hurray!). The air-conditioning wasn’t working, so everyone got sticky and uncomfortable (hurray?) John Hodgman—you know him from the Mac/PC commercials, or his book, The Areas of My Expertise—read from his impending and hilarious book, More Information Than You Require. Great! And then Jonathan Coulton played two songs. Also great, but I’d been promised NYU would get him a P.A., and no one had.

I joined him to sing and play Paul Simon’s "Slip Slidin’ Away"—I’m a guitarist and erstwhile singer—which was fun, but I was promised there’d be two mics, and there weren’t……

On it went (a bunch of people hoped to buy books at the end of the night, but the bookseller had left). Still, the event pulled in the largest crowd I’ve had in some time, I got to sing before a few hundred people, and I sold a few books. And, most of all, it was very kind that so many ex-students and friends and people who just liked my work came out on a Monday night to see me. Oh, and I got to hear Hodgman and Coulton perform—two of the best at what they do—and they were generous enough to have done so on my behalf. Thus, as always on a book tour, you end up feeling like an ass for having any misgivings, yet alone complaining. And, also as always, the evening was a combination fun event / cluster-f*%k.

My Google Fantasy ... and Then There's Reality

2008-06-21T20:43:08Z

Friday, I saw the dream of capitalism fulfilled. I read at Google’s New York office.

If every company were as profitable as Google is, we’d be the happiest nation in the history of the world. (Truth is, we’re not even the happiest in our world. The new Division I Champion of happiness is Denmark.)

But I urge you all: go to see a Google office. It’s the workplace as fantasyland. All their employees eat lunch for free, five days a week, in two cafeterias; both cafeterias are manned by a guest celebrity chef, and both offer even entry-level day-laborers the joy of all-you-can-eat celebrity shrimp or celebrity steak or celebrity vegan surprise—(let me repeat) for free!

What’s more, throughout the office, every hundred yards or so (the space is huge), snack islands give bottled water away—and nuts and cereal and granola-bars and gum and breath mints—plus a lot of other things I didn’t have time to sneak into my pocket on the way out. Of course, being hyper-profitable buys one a kind of generosity turbo charge; a sense of everyone’s racing together toward perfection; the wind whipping a pretty color onto the whole world’s cheeks. It’s nice. I wonder how many companies have ever gotten the chance to be so munificent?

Anyway, another perk Google affords its employees (along with the Razor kick-scooters that people use to get around, and the indoor basketball court, etc.): free books. Once every week or so, the company invites authors to give readings. Then, it gives every employee who shows up a free copy of whatever the author’s hawking. On Friday, I was that author, selling my wares.

My crowd was, it pains me to admit, sparse. (Ouch.) My first reading in New York, my hometown, and the moderator had to ask the “crowd” to move in toward the center seats—because, that way, the room wouldn’t look so embarrassingly empty when Google put the event up on YouTube. All the same, I had the pleasure of being introduced by Spencer Spinnell, head of sales strategy for Google Print Ads. Spencer is also a friend of mine since we were 10-year-old summer campers together.

He’s thin and handsome now, but let’s just say he was “big-boned” as a kid. (Sorry, Spence). As for me, I was a skinny homesick wimp. We fought often back then—petty stuff: Reese’s Peanut butter cups, whose job it was to clean the toilet for inspection, that kind of thing. Our friends devised a way for us to fight fairly: we’d race from our bunk to the waterfront (advantage Strauss, because I was faster). But the race could involve pushing and hip-checking (advantage Spinnell, for obvious reasons). The only time we attempted this race/fight thing—just as I was about to win—he shoved me from behind and into a canoe.

But I digress.

The reading got me wondering about the nature of book tours: How does one define success? To repeat, my event was poorly attended. (Because of the kind of scheduling snafu that’s epidemic in the book-tour world, I happened to be the third reading that week). Half the “crowd” had their laptops open as I spoke. (“We try to cut down on rudeness,” said Alexander Newman, the nice guy at Google who picks the readers and sets these events up. “But we’re not always successful at it.”) And, since it was my first reading, I hadn’t perfected my spiel. (I read for about five minutes too long—“10!” I hear an imaginary audience yelling in response…)

And yet, I sold about 35 books, enjoyed a great, free meal, and took pleasure in the pinnacle of free enterprise—so that was cool. And the event’ll be up on YouTube: me standing before a crowd that’s been doctored to look fuller than it really was. So, who’s to say it was a total bomb? (Answer: Me.)

Anyway, this coming Monday night—June 23rd—will be my book party. It’s open to the public, with free wine and food and two great performers: one, the author of the wonderful "Areas of My Expertise," John Hodgman, of “The Daily Show,” “Baby Mama” and Apple ad fame; the other, the increasingly-famous singer/songwriter Jonathan Coulton, he of Baby Got Back and Code Monkey notoriety. They’re both crowd-pleasers and I’m hoping to ride their coattails, a little…..

It’s in New York City. 58 W. 10th St., (Between 5th and 6th Avenues). Please come and do something funny: I need material for this site. It’s not hard to do something blog-worthy, and then you’ll see yourself on Newsweek.com.

Anyway, that’s all I got. Strauss out.

The Late Late Show and the Tired Tired Man

2008-06-19T01:52:10Z

1) I’m writing the first hunk of this entry on a plane to do the Craig Ferguson show on CBS. I’m nervous, and the best way to convey the sharp flavor of the anxiety is to start now—when I don’t know whether I’ll bomb or not—and finish up by telling you how it went.

I have two things working against me: I woke up at 5 AM NewYork time, to give my wife another few hours of sleep while I cared for of our baby twins. (Turn to uxorious in your dictionary; you’ll see my baggy-eyed likeness, weeping (depending on the edition)). And now I’m flying a six-hour economy class to LA, on which the screams of two red-headed babies (a touch of home) keeps me from sleep. They’re sitting right behind me. So I’ll be too tired for the show—not quick enough for Craig’s celebrity-grade banter. The other handicap: my book isn’t really meant to be funny. I wish those babies behind me would shut the hell up. I mean, I tried to sprinkle moments of dark comedy into my novel. But More Than It Hurts You is about a child in terrible jeopardy, about corporate greed, the modern mania for attention, loss of privacy, the maddening even-handedness of media coverage, about a family’s dangers from within and without — all the threads and fears of contemporary life. Including, too, race and gender. I don’t regret making the book about serious things (just look at the current political landscape to see how important those last two subjects still are). But it might make for awkward late-night comedy material. Where are those red-head kids’ already?

2) Backstage, three hours later; the Late, Late Show’s green room is like a tiki joint; salad-and-sandwich platter, a bamboo-ish bar with a smiling bartender,and a woman dressed in Hawaiian clothes. In this case, the woman in Hawaiian clothes is Virginia Madsen. We’re both slated to be guests that night, but it’s her green room. Madsen’s the planet around which a lot of moons—assistants,children, publicists, who-knows-whats—keep orbiting. Her assistant has impractically blue eyes and her skin is camel-hair tan. Madsen seems flawlessly nice and stands among her entourage withthat air celebs have of pretending not to notice you’re in the room near them. We never speak, except later, when she’d finished her segment.

I say “great job”; she lifts her unflappable chin and fires off a comfortable smile.

So, now it’s my turn on TV.

After having gotten slathered in pancake make-up (“You lookpale and tired—we’ll fix that”), I stand in the wings, toeing a piece of yellow tape that read “Guest’s mark”; next to me whispered a really nice producer named Lisa Ammerman, who tells me not to be nervous, or something (I’m too nervous to follow what she’s saying). And then Lisa walks off; I’ve been left alone. I try a moment to let the details marinate a bit. Didn’t I, and most kids, dream about being on a talk-show?

I gawk around, at the union workers who get paid only to put water in Craig Ferguson’s mug, up at the curtains, the wires, the bits and pieces of this network show, this sort of company, this business that employs a hundred people to put out a product every night. “Two million viewers,” I think. Virginia Madsen had been funny—in part because Craig is so charming and easy that he teased out the humor in her stories.

Craig himself bounces over to me in the between-guest break, all kinetic energy, larger than life, and he says in friendly voice: “I hear you’re nervous—you’re going to be great.” I say something brightly about my gratitude and he is gone.

On the monitor, a more manageably-sized Craig holds up my book, shoves it right in the camera’s face,and pretends to read it. “Looks pretty good,” he says. Then I hear my name being called in a loud thriving Scottish voice. This is followed by the mid-volume applause you get when a crowd has no idea who the person coming onstage is.

I walk out. He gives me a hug, and, nervously—or because I am filled with gratitude—I return the hug vigorously: too vigorously. It’s as if I’m greeting a brother I thought I’d lost on the Hidenburg.

The lights are blinding when you look into the crowd. Under the cameras, a red digital clock ticks away. A very funny man asks you questions, and the crowd you hear rustling behind the impenetrable Klieg-light brightness waits for you to be funny in return. I do get some laughs: I tell him that most press I’ve done as a literary author are more like the Schwedtty Balls skit on SNL than a late night TV show. He says something very funny about Munchausen-by-Proxy—which is hard to do—and then tells me I looked like the comedian Richard Lewis. (I’ve heard this before. I am not psyched.) I do a bad impersonation of said comedian by grabbing my head in mock-angst with both hands. (I don’t think I “went for it” enough, so I’m not sure the audience or the host, or even my friends watching at home, knew what in God’s name I was doing.) Craig then intimates that our time is up. Impossible! I’m only getting started. But it’s true—I’ve flown 6 hours here, and will fly five back the next day, for three minutes of chat.

And yes, it was a total thrill. I didn’t embarrass myself; at the end, Craig graciously leaned over to me (I always wondered what end-of-segment host-guest pow-wows were about), and said, “You were great.” He couldn’t have been nicer, or funnier. And like that it was over.

My abiding memory—since the interview itself is a haze—is of his kindness. He really went out of his way to promote my book, to make me feel welcome, and he even wrote me a personalized card. I leave LA on a high (and fly home in economy, sitting next to a man with b.o. who’s from, of all places, Scotland. Today, I forgive him his B.O.)

3) Next stop, NY—for the official book launch. It’s Thursday,June 19^th, at the Barnes and Noble on 97 Warren St (at Greenwich St.), in New York, NY. I don’t know yet what I’m going to read; I’ve been too busy being nervous. So please come by and offer advice, and suggestions, and support. If you do something freaky, I’ll mention you here.

Oh, one more thing: if you saw me on the show, and have any tips on how I could improve, or what you thought of me in general, please let me know.(Also, the show will re-air on July 3).

That’s it. Strauss out.

The Book on 'Booked'

2008-06-12T15:45:28Z

This is the first post on our new blog, “Booked” — where I’ll be sending updates on my 22-city book tour. Think of it as your behind-the-scenes look at the least exciting of all the performance arts:public readings!

A book tour is a mixed bag: part Spinal Tap, part—well, I guess there is no other part. So it’s just a bag. I don’t mean, or have any right, to complain; there’s nothing more pompous than an author whining about having to go on tour. But if I’ve told them once, I’ve told them a thousand times: Put the writer’s name first, the puppet show after.

Of Jews and Love Matches

I started my tour three weeks before my book comes out – excellent planning! – and at one of the most stressful events there is: the Jewish Book fair try-out. Run by a generous woman from Long Island named Carolyn Hessel, the tryout has been called a combination of speed-dating and “The Gong Show.” I, and about seventy other writers, got two minutes each to pitch our books to hundreds of Jewish Community Center representatives from around the country. (If they like you, you're picked to go on a Jewish book tour.) We all gathered in a large auditorium in Los Angeles’s “American Jewish University”—who knew such a place existed? And what does that do Brandeis’s confidence?

And so, one by one, each writer stood from his plush seat,walked up and down the basement of his confidence, and diluted years of work into a 120-second spiel. The night’s M.C. held up signs the writer could see: “1 Minute left”; “30 seconds left”; “Time’s up!”

Kandinsky said: “All artists dream of money.” True, but author dreams are more specific: we focus on book sales. Hessel and her colleagues are offering writers the fantasy rewards of an automatic sales bonanza. If a Jewish Community Center from, say, Tampa picks your book, you get a free trip to Florida and a guaranteed jackpot—all the members of that J.C.C. buy a copy. So, if you make a love match with ten J.C.C.’s on try-out night, you’ve sold thousands of books. It all goes back to that splendid, that gregarious, that community-minded woman, Carloyn Hessel. She came up with this exquisite torture. It’s her way of putting good books into the hands of Jewish readers. And so she invites every kind of writer in Jewishdom—Pulitzer prize winners, Jewish cookbook authors, guys who sell self-published Israeli thrillers from the trunks of their cars—and we all come and do our little-dog-and-pony show, our two-minutes of anti-assimilation: we all make our books seem as Jewish as possible.

My novel is, to some degree, about the frayed relations between Jews and African-Americans (it’s about a lot of other things, too), but I didn’t plan out what I’d say at the try-out. “I’m good at winging it,” I thought. Bad idea.I went something like 67^th out of 70 authors, and I could feel the collective nap overtaking the crowd; I got up to speak and, at the same time, chugged water so my voice wouldn’t crack; I started, as everybody advises, with a joke. We had all been told to say our names and our book’s specific page number in the Fair catalogue. I said: “Hi, I’m 199. Which is ironic, because people always say, ‘Funny, you don’t look 199-ish.’” (Not great, I grant you: but tailor your jokes to your audience, right?)

However.

The water I’d chugged went down the wrong pipe. I coughed over the joke, and immediately saw the “1 minute left” sign. I muttered something about God (or G-d) and then out came the cane; I was yanked from my misery.

And that’s how my book tour began. Not with a bang, but with a failed Jewish joke. I hope I do better next week, when I’m on the Craig Ferguson show on CBS. I’ll let you know how it goes.

The Book Tour Schedule

2008-06-11T16:16:35Z

Darin Strauss hits the road for in support of his new novel, "More Than It Hurts You." A calendar:

CHICAGO, IL

Saturday, June 7
CHICAGO TRIBUNE's Printer's Row
(Dearborn & Polk Streets)

NEW YORK, NY

Thursday, June 19
7:00 PM to 8:00 PM

BARNES & NOBLE
97 Warren St (at Greenwich St.)
New York, NY 10007
_____________________

NEW YORK, NY

Monday, June 23
7:00 PM to 9:00 PM

NYU PARTY
with John Hodgman ("Areas of my Expertise," and TV's "The Daily Show")
& music by Jonathan Coulton

58 W. 10th St.
Lillian Vernon Writers House
58 W 10th St, New York, NY, 10011
(Between 5th and 6th Avenues)
_____________

LOS ANGELES, CA

Tuesday, June 24
7:00 PM

VROMAN'S BOOKSTORE
695 E Colorado Blvd
Pasadena, CA 91101
_____________________

SAN FRANCISCO, CA

Wednesday, June 25
7:30 PM to 8:30 PM PST

KEPLER'S
1010 El Camino Real
Menlo Park, CA 94025
_____________________

SAN FRANCISCO, CA

Thursday, June 26
7:00 PM to 8:30 PM

A GREAT GOOD PLACE FOR BOOKS
6120 LaSalle Ave
Oakland, CA 94611
_____________________

SAN FRANCISCO, CA

Friday, June 27
7:30 PM to 9:00 PM

BOOKS INC IN THE MARINA
2251 Chestnut Street
San Francisco, CA 94123
_____________________

PORTLAND, OR

Monday, June 30
7:30 PM to 9:00 PM

POWELL'S CITY OF BOOKS
1005 W. Burnside
Portland, OR 97209
_____________________

SEATTLE - TACOMA, WA

Tuesday, July 1
7:30 PM to 9:00 PM PST

ELLIOTT BAY BOOK COMPANY
101 S Main St
Seattle, WA 98104

_____________________

DENVER, CO

Wednesday, July 2
7:30 PM to 9:00 PM

TATTERED COVER BOOKSTORE
2526 East Colfax Avenue
Denver, CO 80206

_____________________

SAINT LOUIS, MO

Monday, July 7
7:00 PM to 8:00 PM

LEFT BANK BOOKS
399 N Euclid Ave
St. Louis, MO 63108

_____________________

Minneapolis, MN

Tuesday, July 8
7:00 PM

BARNES & NOBLE
3225 W. 69th Street
Edina, MN 55435

_____________________

MADISON, WI

Wednesday, July 9
7:00 PM

BORDERS
3750 University Avenue
Madison, WI 53705
_____________________

MILWAUKEE, WI

Thursday, July 10
7:00 PM

HARRY W. SCHWARTZ BOOKSHOP
17145 W. Bluemound Rd
Brookfield, WI 53005
_____________________

BROOKLYN, NY

Friday, July 11
7:00 PM to 8:30 PM

BOOK COURT
163 Court Street
Brooklyn, NY 11201
_____________________

MARTHA'S VINEYARD, MA

Saturday, July 12
7:30 PM to 9:00 PM

BUNCH OF GRAPES
44 Main Street
PO Box 1608
Vineyard Haven, MA 02568
_____________________

BOSTON, MA

Sunday, July 13
2:00 PM to 4:00 PM

NEWTONVILLE BOOKS
296 Walnut Street
Newton, MA 02460

_____________________

BOSTON, MA

Tuesday, July 15
6:00 PM

BORDERS
511 Boyleston Street
Boston, MA 02116

_____________________

PORTLAND, ME

Wednesday, July 16
7:00 PM to 8:30 PM

BOOKS ETC
38 Exchange Street
Portland, ME 04104

_____________________

LONG ISLAND, NY

Thursday, July 17
7:00 PM to 8:30 PM

BOOK REVUE
313 New York Avenue
Huntington, NY 11743

_____________________

HARTFORD - NEW HAVEN, CT

Monday, July 21
7:00 PM to 8:00 PM

RJ JULIA

768 Boston Post Road
Madison, CT 06443
_____________________

NEW YORK, NY

Wednesday, July 23
7:00 PM to 8:30 PM

HOUSING WORKS USED BOOKS CAFE
126 Crosby Street
New York, NY 10012