"So," I said to the young woman sitting next to me at Books & Books last night, "was it the best book you read all year?"
She smiled. "I know the New York Times Book Review said it would be," she replied, then paused. "I think it was the most painstaking."
Minutes later George Saunders stood at the podium and read an excerpt from the book, Tenth of December. Many minutes later he opened the floor to questions. There was the usual silence.
"I've found in my other readings," Saunders said, "that the first person to ask a question always has the highest sexual energy in the room."
A man asked the first question. Another man asked the second. (Who said men aren't readers?) We didn't hear a female voice till about the fifth.
Saunders came across as a kind man with an original mind. I almost applauded when he spoke of the importance of line editing in teaching writing. I wanted to ask him about his story "The Incredible Buddha Boy," which I teach in all my travel writing courses; his experience teaching with Summer Literary Seminars in Russia (which I have done); his impressions of Miami (he said this was his first visit); how he felt on reading, early last year, that his book would be the best of any that came out in the following 11 months; what it's like being a writer who's loved by readers, critics, students, editors, booksellers, fellow writers. But these were all more personal question. Or perhaps my sexual energy was low.
