I once saw a T-shirt that read: “Hyperbole – It’s the Greatest.” I thought it funny if not exactly true.
Case in point: The front page of the New York Times Magazine yesterday showed the fortune from a cookie that read: “The best book you’ll read this year is George Saunders’s ‘Tenth of December.’”
An editor at the magazine wrote that line, of course, not a writer of fortunes. But the editor assumed prescient powers. The year is young and many, many books will appear – and be read. And even though high quality books, unlike movies, don’t wait until the end of the year for release, it’s preposterous to declare that a book appearing in January will be the best.
The line also presumes that no one who reads the Times will also this year read Tolstoy or Proust or Joyce or (fill in your favorite). Or, even more absurdly, it sets Saunders up as superior to everyone who came before him.
Saunders is a brilliant writer. I use his “The Incredible Buddha Boy” in my travel writing class, and travel writing isn’t even his specialty. But I think even (especially) he was probably taken aback by the cover. There was perhaps the initial thrill of being exalted by the New York Times followed quickly, I suspect, by the dread of a reading public now saddled with impossibly high expectations.
Jesse Millner read his poetry at Books & Books Friday night, before a small group of friends and others. After his signing, a few of us looked for a table in the courtyard, which was a lot more crowded than the reading had been. In the battle between food and poetry (even free verse), food will almost always win.
When we were finally seated, Michael, who is also a poet, asked Jesse how many books he'd sold. Jesse answered by holding up one hand, palm facing outward. Then he told of a reading he once did to which no one came. To try to make the poets feel better, I told of the time that I drove to Tampa and read for a group of six, two of whom had cell phones that went off during the reading. Michael upped the ante by saying that he once went to a bookstore that was going out of business and all of the shelves were empty save for those in the poetry section, which looked, he said, as if they hadn't been touched.
During our conversation, waitresses passed on their way to neighboring tables, all the while ignoring ours. "We're in the poetry section," Lyn said.
I went to the O Cinema in Wynwood Saturday night to see Tom Wolfe Gets Back to Blood. It begins with an epigraph from Wolfe - uttered by him later in the documentary - about the need for writers to get out from behind their desks. The film had me from the start.
Though in the end it disappointed. Wolfe is treated with great respect, almost reverence; even his outlandish attire (which looks even more ridiculous in Miami, especially since it didn't include a hat) is given a rational explanation, not just by interviewees but by Wolfe himself, who explains that the older one gets, the more clothing one should wear, to cover up sagging skin. Though he confesses that when he goes to the beach he wears a Speedo.
It is probably the most fascinating revelation in the film. Throughout, Wolfe says very little of interest, and when he does speak it's in a weak, hesitant, diffident voice that often gets drowned out by background noise. The most trenchant comment comes from former Miami police chief John Timoney who says that New York is about money, Washington power, LA fame and Miami sex.
I was startled to see that Wolfe pulled out a pen only twice, and wrote on a flimsy sheet of paper. And the longest jotting was not to record a conversation but to draw the floor plan of a house. Director Oscar Corral, speaking after the film, said that when Wolfe talks to people he's more interested in their accents and inflections and mannerisms than in what they're actually saying.
Still, it was instructive to observe another writer's legwork - and satisfying to note how, while meeting a representative sampling of Miami residents, Wolfe was never really inserted into the life of the place. He was always an observer, never a participant. But that's what happens when you wear a tab collar in the subtropics.
And I enjoyed picking out familiar landmarks. ('He's in the courtyard of Books & Books!') Mitchell Kaplan appears, as well as a number of Herald people, but unfortunately no local novelists are asked their opinions of a long-time New Yorker who parachutes into their city dressed in a white suit with a handkerchief but no notebook in the pockets and then publishes a 700-page novel on the place.
Sock puppetry, I recently learned, is a practice in which authors assume other identities to write glowing reviews of their own books - and devastating reviews of other people's books - on sites like Amazon.
We have moved from being the country of Neil Armstrong to being the land of Lance Armstrong.
I went to the 2012 Undergraduate Convocation at Nova Southeastern University yesterday because Jamaica Kincaid was the keynote speaker. After brief words from a few university administrators, and the Teacher of the Year, the acclaimed author took the stage.
She spoke a while on the theme of this academic year, "Life and Death," and then started reading from one of her books. It was a passage about the death of her brother. Actually, it was a passage about her reaction to the death of her brother. Writers are renowned for their ability to particularize, and Kincaid had taken an immense, inexhaustible subject and narrowed it down to one sorrowful moment in her life.
The reading went on for quite a while, much longer than her remarks had. I checked the program and verified that under her name appeared the words "Keynote Speaker" (not "Keynote Reader"). I thought of Julian Barnes, who once advised a fellow author: "Never read at a reading. People would rather hear what you had for breakfast." I wondered what his advice would be for the keynote speaker at a convocation.
Finally Kincaid stopped, looked up, and asked, "Would you like me to continue?" No one said a word. Normally I find student apathy annoying, but at this moment it seemed admirable. Kincaid mumbled something that sounded like, "Yes death, it's very sad." Then she thanked the audience, which gave her less than a rousing ovation.
Before abandoning the lectern, she said: "Would you like to ask me questions?" And once again, a beautiful silence reigned.
At the reception, Kincaid sat in a corner signing books, putting the finishing touches on her transmogrification of an academic ceremony into a marketing event.
I apologize for the absence, but I flew to Branson for a long weekend and a (probably long) story.
Coming back last night, during my layover in Atlanta, I found the Cafe Intermezzo tucked inside Buckhead Books in Concourse B. I took a seat at the end of the bar and read the menu. Then I looked around at my fellow barflies: Except for the one couple, everyone was gazing into a Smartphone, or texting on one, or talking on a cell phone, or tapping at a Notebook. The man sitting next to me had his phone plugged into his ear (the one nearest me). There was no chance of striking up a conversation or even asking how the soup was. I ordered the jambalaya and turned my eyes, in defeat, to the baseball game. It's getting tough out there for travel writers.