Chad Harbach Reading @ McNally Jackson Books
According to Harbach, my soul, composed of douchiness and tardiness, is both clean as a summer's eve and very often late
The night of Chad Harbach’s reading was to become for me a bizarre, painful evening, an evening whose anthropomorphic traits I, post-disaster, characterized with mildly self-flagellating images, such as nervous nose picking, mumbling, and shame. Oh, reliable old Shame! How the echoes of your approaching footfalls quicken my heart, send rivulets of battery acid to the welcoming lengths of my armpit hair, and call to standing attention on the base of my tongue the ghost of coffees past. It was an evening to remember for its inability to be forgotten.
Though anxiety and second thoughts were familiar feelings prior to asking strangers for insults, dark premonitions were not. For no particular reason I could see, I was suffering from the acute desire to skip the Q train to McNally Jackson and instead ride the L to domestic safety. But I’d humped the bricklike Art of Fielding up and down subway pee-ways and through the grimace of what was then my full-time job, so: dark thoughts circling my head or not, I set out to ask Mr. Harbach to look into my soul and laugh.
Harbach’s work on n+1 suggested he’d be happy to oblige. Happy insulters make for easy, rewarding nights. Add to that the apparent evidence that he was a fellow lover of America’s slowest, most unabashedly boringest game, and I just had to go. The Art of Fielding was a BASEBALL book, and how often can we self-identifying literati hold our heads up proudly in our favorite Brooklyn coffee shops with sports genre type books in our laps? It seemed that Harbach pulled a Chabon – genre subject, literary pedigree.
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Posted in Book Reviews, Insults, Read It.
Tagged all the literary young men, boot straps, chad harbach, douchetard, failure, insults, judas, keith gessen, novel, reading, the art of fielding, three months off
Gary Shteyngart Reading Super Sad True Love Story
I was wearing a T-shirt that read, Kentucky: Not Just Fried Chicken
This write-up was another post that I’ve struggled to release. I wanted to write something interesting and preferably humorous about the evening because Gary Shteyngart and his novel, Super Sad True Love Story, are intelligent and funny. I found myself unable to create a coherent message about what I was reading, what I witnessed and felt, and how that interacts with who I was and what I was doing. Some sort of blockage was happening, as paralyzing as it was frightening.
I’m going to probably stray into maudlin territory. I apologize; this was the only way I could get something out.
My girlfriend, and sometimes co-writer, goes out of her way to share the things I enjoy: literature, readings, insults, corgis. She is my conspirator in many of these signings, sitting next to me in hard plastic seats, chatting and offering a little shove of encouragement to wait in line for an insult. She’s the extra motivation I often need to even board the train out to Brooklyn after a 9-6 day of wageslaving.
On what was an otherwise amazing evening, with Shteyngart sounding easy and relaxed, entertaining his Brooklyn neighbors, I’ll remember Gary Shteyngart’s reading as the first time I fucked up bad enough to make my best friend cry.
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Posted in Book Reviews, Insults, Readings
Tagged baby, book review, Gary Shteyngart, insult, misha, novel, self-improvement, Shteyngart, Super Sad True, Super Sad True Love Story
Mancrush: confirmed
Salman Rushdie was tired. He peered at the crowd with hooded eyes as he stepped up to the podium, his body language screaming “fuck the Q&A.” This was the last stop on his reading tour for Luka and the Fire of Life, he admitted to a bit of fatigue.
Ah, but his voice! Rich and reassuring, with a drummer’s knack for varying tempo to change the mood. He is every inch a storyteller, a veteran professor working an old lesson plan on a fresh class of students. He read mostly from memory, stopping to look at the book almost as if to keep him on-task; it was like he was tempted to riff off the words on the page like good bands improvise off old songs, new notes and progressions unique to the moment or venue, a singular treat for the audience.
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Posted in Insults, Readings
Tagged 192 books, children's novel, christopher hitchens, insult, insults, luka and the fire of life, novel, rushdie, salman rushdie, satanic verses
More than a little Don Rickles
Fellow lovers of literature and audience members: shut up. I’m not interested. The author isn’t. Neither is your mom, your wife, or your dog. The audience is rolling its eyes and looking at its watch. More than likely, you’re not interested in what you’re saying, either.
You’re talking to hear/watch/feel yourself being listened to by Intelligent People.
Back when I was a cute, trim college student, living in a rotting shitbox near school with a fellow acolyte of youth, invulnerability, and alcohol, I fucking loved to hear myself being intelligent. To float above myself, mind’s eye steered by co-captains, Arrogance & Obliviousness, taking in the crowd’s appreciation of my interesting ideas. Like looking at myself in the mirror and managing to see studflesh and allure where there was nothing but a spare tire and the self-awareness of an autistic puppy. I’d peruse the author’s content, think of some unique position to take, back it up with pagination and direct quotes, and poof! I was out on the town, seen by some pretty girls and maybe some classmates, Being Intelligent w/ Other Intelligent People.
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Posted in Book Reviews, Insults, Read It., Readings
Tagged 192 books, don rickles, harding, hipster bitch, novel, old people, paul harding, rant, shut up
Sit and spin, Tom!
Ed. note: Andrea, Bringer of Happiness and Provider of Sexytimes, has taken over the narrative for this post. Enjoy.
I was entrusted a few months ago with the weighty task of attending Tom McCarthy’s reading at McNally Jackson Books (had my delinquency in writing this post been known at the time, I am not sure I would have been given this opportunity). I’d been to one prior reading at this venue and found it to be civilized enough to provide a relaxed setting for a reading. However, The Insulted had advised me to turn away if it looked like Mr. McCarthy’s audience looked like a rowdy pack.
Quite the contrary – things were very orderly and although all of the seats were soon filled, everyone was polite. Per instructions received, I sat at the front right corner so as to be well-positioned for the reading. I felt like a bit of a fraud – I had no clue as to what his new book was about, nor did I know anything about the author himself and his oeuvre. The audience was quite diverse, so that didn’t give me any sense of what I was about to hear. I sat next to some tittering British art school students. There were also some journalistic types taking notes throughout the reading.
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Fellowship is not a substitute for penmanship, Mrs. Egan
Fellow illegible scrawler Jennifer Egan read from her newest novel, A Visit From the Goon Squad, then discussed her writing process with fellow writer Glenn Kurtz.
I showed up about a quarter to seven and frowned at the house. Almost turned around and went home; one of those nights where a beer and a couch sounded better than a discussion about the craft of writing. Glad I didn’t.
Egan reads with a soothing voice, a good handle on the “ups” and “downs” in tone and speed that quite a few authors surprisingly lack. Her voice reminded me of the “folk storytellers” who eke out an existence on the grade school circuit, somehow convincing principals that helping keep alive the DYING ART OF STORYTELLING is worth more than a new computer or more crappy plastic playground material to replace the entertaining wooden death structures of my playground youth. I loved those storytellers even though they were unabashedly lame, and all the video games in Tokyo couldn’t get me to say otherwise. The stupid over-enunciating, the bombastic movements and vocalized sound effects. Usually silk scarves, beads of some sort, like they mixed up “Gypsy” and “Hippie” as children and never quite resolved the differences. Were they dressed as the lovable, sagacious scamp from their stories or was that just the way they dressed? I’ll never know. But their voices were pure peanut butter, and Egan’s was Skippy Lite.
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A seagull divebombed my hat during lunch in 7th grade and I didn't notice the drying streaks of multi-hued shit until someone pointed it out in algebra an hour later. Thanks for making me relive the laughter, David.
Stars align. This was one of the first insults I’d dared ask for, and it was the first insult I’d received outside of a reading/signing. It was as if Hemmingway Himself guided me to The Strand that day in search of a rare book. I normally don’t put much stock in religion, but there’s still enough old Catholic spiritualism (and self-loathing) kicking around in my subsconcious to wonder if I’d been guided to Mr. Mitchell by way of a Flying Spaghetti Monster.
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As a self-effacing, wanna-be writer whose rapidly diminishing chances of ever becoming even a second-rate publishing author is paced only by his readiness to disarm his detractors by throwing his ego under the bus — to laugh at himself, his missed chances and self-inflicted miseries — I don’t particularly like people who take themselves too seriously.
Nicole Krauss apologizes for using the word “asshole” in front of a crowd who’ve already chuckled at its use. She pauses after reading a passage like she expects the audience to murmur in appreciation with sub-sonic “ohhs” and “oohs” that wouldn’t be audible unless it was released in a dead-quiet auditorium. She then waits just a beat too long before beginning again, as if she, too, needed a moment to recover from that Sad Truth despite being the author of said Sad Truth and having read the same passage dozens of times in the last month.
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Rosencrans Baldwin Reading Review – You Lost Me There
Someone isn't a fan of corn
The turnout at McNally Jackson was surprising. I’d not heard or read any of the hype buffeting Mr. Baldwin’s first novel, You Lost Me There, so the kind of flitty buzzing of low voices that comes from an expectant crowd came as a shock. The attendance dwarfed A.L. Kennedy’s (a week or so before) and Tom McCarthy’s (the next day). Neither got this kind of elbow-to-elbow attention from pastel sweaters and thick black plastic glasses. I jittered out a few vicarious shivers and grit my teeth through a brief belly-cut of jealousy. Brief because he looked more surprised about the crowd than I, and spoke like a man appropriately appreciative of the strong attendance. Christ. You can’t help but like the guy.
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Jonathan Safran Foer Reading – Eating Animals
Elevate Me Later, you bastard
I’m a fairly nice guy with a sometimes tenuous grasp on reality. I’ve broken the windshield of a hit-and-not-run car with my bare fist and ended up hiding in a church until the police came. I recently screamed nonsense at a scalper in front of MSG for shouting me down when I tried to give away my extra ticket. I tend to do things without thinking and only afterwards realize potential dangers.
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Posted in Insults, Readings
Tagged asshole, eating animals, foer, idol, insults, jerk, jonathan safran foer, non-fiction, novel, reading, sad