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.  

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.

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 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’ve been everywhere, Johnny Cash sang (or sings still, in theubiquity of car rental ads, the incessancy of TV). I know how the manfeels. These last weeks have seen me in Los Angeles, Chicago, LosAngeles 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—withPortland (ME) coming the day after tomorrow.

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

What I do know is that people at readings—for a novel, no less—havebeen wanting to talk more about politics than they have at any of myother book tours. (This is my fifth one now—though it’s admittedly muchbigger than the ones I did for my other two books.) Maybe that’sbecause my novel is tangentially—and coincidentally—about some of themost severe weather of this campaign climate (race, gender, healthcare, privacy). But I suspect it’s about something else: people justwant 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—talkedabout wanting the country to change: fundamentally, necessarily,quickly. I found it striking, how often all different types of peoplejust came up and wanted to talk it out, to commiserate, to findreassurance from a stranger.

I’m not a political reporter, nor a pundit anywhere but in my livingroom, so I won’t attempt any grand statements or predictions. (Theymight be even likelier to be wrong than are the things professionalpundits write.) But the dissatisfaction all over the country ispalpable—one woman at a reading asked me: “Do you think the economywill turn around soon?” I explained that, as a novelist, I knew no moreabout that than any other lay person would. She kind of shrunk in onherself, like a child who is told that Santa is a fake, just a guy witha gut, a rented suit, a removable beard.

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

On a side note, I recently caught one of the Paul Simon concerts atthe Brooklyn Academy of Music (with David Byrne and a raft of Africanmusicians—a great geezer show); and while I know that nothing's morehigh-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.

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.

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:

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.

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’ parents, already?

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? 

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