Congratulations, Who Are You Again?

by Harrison Scott Key

The book had bought these four walls for us. Well, two of them. One solid load-bearing wall. The other three, they’d be paid for soon, just as soon as America learned my name. It was a peculiar season, an intermediary state. Word of the book had gotten out. Everywhere I turned there were congratulations.

  “I saw it on Facebook,” they said. “So, you’re like famous now?”

  “I think if you have to ask if somebody’s famous,” I said, “that means they’re not.”

  People at work and church who never spoke to me before, spoke now. They knew I wrote about my life. Many expressed their desire to appear in a story, so that they might share in a bit of my non-fame. That winter, a local minister, Eric, approached me at a restaurant, where I sat with my wife. He sidled up, as though we had secret news to discuss.

  “You wrote a book, I hear,” he said, his voice dropping low.

  “Yes.”

  “Am I in it?”

  “No.”

  “I heard other people are in it.”

  “You heard right.”

  Eric’s a funny guy, one of those cheery self-effacing ministers who seems like his real calling is to wear clown makeup and craft balloon animals for dying children. I tried to get a read on him and could not tell if he was serious.

  “Listen, put me in a book, will you?” he said. “What do I have to do?”

  “You don’t want him to write about you,” Lauren said. “He’ll say true things.”

  “I should do something zany,” he said. You could see him wanting whatever weird sensation fame wrought, could see it burning in his eyes.

  “If you die tragically,” I said, “I’ll put you in a book.”

  “Is that what it takes?” the balloon animal preacher said. “Death. Okay. I’ll work on that.”

  He congratulated me on being a soon-to-be-famous author, and bounded off. I just stood there. I couldn’t tell what was a joke anymore.

  * * *

  In the days when the book was finally finished, proofed and flash-frozen and off to the printer, I sat down at my desk, forlorn. Technically, my dream had come true, hadn’t it? I’d written a book. But the book had not yet melted brains, or very few. It wasn’t out for several months. Now what?

  I would hurl my name up into the atmosphere of the frightful American zeitgeist, so people would learn my name. I made lists of every magazine I’d like to see my name in and what stories I might write for them. I tried to imagine somebody asking Flannery O’Connor to pitch a listicle in advance of A Good Man Is Hard to Find. She’d have called for an exorcist.

  The dream now demanded new skills, which involved writing snappy emails to editors. A peculiar sensation. The parts of the brain devoted to wisdom-seeking and art, and those devoted to self-promotion and commerce, are not the same parts. They are on opposite sides of the skull. You can’t not think about commerce, so long as you remember that commerce is not art. They serve different masters—one, truth; the other, prosperity. Both are good, but they are not the same, odd as that may sound to a generation of children who build their own promotional websites in middle school.

  I decided to pitch many magazines, via email and regular mail and prayer chain:

  Outside

  Esquire

  GQ

  The New Yorker

  New York Times

  The Atlantic

  Harper’s

  ESPN the Magazine

  O, The Oprah Magazine

  Ugh the Magazine

  Oxford American

  Garden & Gun

  Horse & Hound

  Christianity Today

  Rastafarianism Yesterday

  Messianic Jews of Tomorrow

  “I love it!” Debbie said that January, when I told her about the pitches. I’ve lived my life trying to please people, for better and worse, and Debbie’s constant affirmations were a healthy nectar that freed up my wife from having to love everything I ever did.

  “Glad to hear it,” I said.

  “Love, love, love it!” she said.

  “I’m hustling.”

  “You are. You are hustling. I love it.” Then her tone changed. Debbie wasn’t all love. Sometimes, she was grave. This, too, made her a good agent. Her love went dour. “There’s something else we need to talk about,” she said. She said it like I was in trouble, like someone just learned I’d made it all up, the whole book.

  Chapter 13

  He had whatever the opposite of paranoia is. He thought everybody liked him and took a deep personal interest in his welfare.

  —CHARLES PORTIS, Gringos

  YOU ARE BEING SUMMONED TO NEW YORK,” DEBBIE SAID. “To discuss things.”

  “What sorts of things?”

  “Matters.”

  “Ah, yes, matters.”

  “Questions,” she said.

  This is one thing you learn about having a dream: One is often confused by the dream-doulas. In every journey, they are many, from the young editorial assistants reading over the unsolicited stories I mailed to magazines to the literary agents and book editors who sit high over Manhattan streets. These dream-doulas, many of them, at the advanced levels of the dream, when money begins to flow, know the danger in revealing too much to the dreamer about what they’re going to ask him to do next. They don’t want to spook you. You must be handled gingerly, warmed to the bright lights about to shine. At every step through the dream, I found myself stunned with the rococo glory of it all. All this time, I’d been hurling myself up the mountain, and in an instant, forces beyond my control—via the good offices of HarperCollins Publishers—now lifted me and carried me up the mountain.

  “Don’t worry,” Debbie said. “They just want to make sure you’re not crazy.”

  “Oh, fun.”

  “We have some things to make sure of, too,” she said, explaining that one of our goals for the meeting was to find out how HarperCollins was going to make me, in her words, “a hot young author,” which seemed difficult, as I have never been hot, according to a recent survey.

  I figured I needed some goals for the meeting, too, even though I still wasn’t sure what was actually happening in the meeting. Was I in trouble?

  Here’s the deal: If you have to attend an important meeting with important people, where you believe they might tell you your dream is actually not going to happen, because you didn’t do your dream right, because, maybe the legal team has identified some worrisome chapters, and they’re really very sorry, but you have to give the money back and let the bank take your house, then it’s important to prepare. Make a handout. Better write some objectives. You can bet the important people who called this meeting have objectives. Walk in there without objectives and you’re liable to agree to anything. I’ve walked into mysterious meetings as carelessly as a schoolboy on summer vacation and come out with whole new job titles and unnecessary root canals.

  Also, you will need to dress thoughtfully for your mysterious meeting. The good thing about being a creative person is that you can dress differently than regular people. You can take risks. Maybe an ascot? An ironic headpiece? A live animal? You want to be memorable, but not detained for questioning. What I wore to my mysterious Manhattan meeting was Levis, a blazer, a shirt with buttons, a down parka, some experimental hiking boots I bought on Kickstarter after drinking Nyquil, and a sweater I bought back when I was fat, which still fit, because I was still fat.

  * * *

  The city was all White Walkers and skanky berms of last week’s sooty ashen ice, but it was fine. It was possible I overdid the insulation, as I could have easily boiled a baked potato in my armpit, should that have become necessary.

  Debbie and I had lunch and walked in the blizzardy air to 195 Broadway, and then up to the lobby of HarperCollins, which looks exactly what heaven should be like, bright, clean, full of books and comfortable furniture and people who seem intelligent and kind. I touched all the books to make sure it was all real and was then shown to a meeting room, equally bright and clean on this gray wi
nter day. My frozen brain thawed and alerted me that I might be entering an altered state of reality.

  Feelings of euphoria commenced.

  People passed in the hallway, looking in, to see who they could see.

  That’s Harrison Scott Key, they whispered.

  Which one?

  Him. That’s him.

  He looks just like his publicity photo.

  He’s so funny.

  He is. I know.

  No. I mean he really is!

  I know!

  And he’s so hot and young and author-like!

  I know.

  This is what physicians refer to as a hallucination. It didn’t happen.

  Next came the part of the meeting where everyone flattered me, starting with a woman to my left, Executive Vice President of Cultural Appropriation, perhaps, a lady who smelled like leather and peaches and had probably fired an assistant via hologram.

  “We love this book,” she said.

  What book did she mean?

  “It’s just amazing,” she said.

  My book?

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Everyone here is very excited.”

  “Great!” I said. “Me, too.”

  “I loved the chapters about hunting,” another woman said. “So fun!”

  “Thanks!” I said, my eyes beginning to well with untrammeled joy. It kept going, one by one, everybody saying something nice about the book—a publicist, and another publicist, someone from the racketeering department, a few interns, some assistants. My ego expanded to unsafe levels. I was not this amazing. And yet, wouldn’t it be rude to call them liars, about how amazing I was? I decided to return their compliments.

  “I loved the humor,” one said. “Beyond hilarious.”

  “Thank you,” I said. “I love your shirt.”

  “I loved the pathos,” said another.

  “And you have a lovely smile,” I said.

  “He’s funny!” they said.

  And I was like, “I am!”

  “I loved how you almost got divorced,” said another.

  “So did my wife!” I said.

  “My favorite part was the racism,” they said.

  “Mine, too!” I said.

  And then I saw it: My book. There, on the table. Is this what new mothers feel when they first hold their babies? Do they smell them, like I smelled my book? Did they desire to lick them, as I very much wanted to do to my book, like a cat?

  The meeting kept going, but I was not in it. I flipped to a page, read a line. Yes, I wrote that. Another page. Yes, I wrote that one, too. I counted all its fingers and toes and chapters.

  “Harrison?” Cal said.

  “Yes?”

  “We were just discussing book promotion.”

  “Yes, of course, sorry.”

  I pulled it together, presented everyone with a box of pralines I’d brought from Savannah so they could be fat like me should they desire it, and then I passed around a stack of neatly typed handouts regarding my proposed book tour.

  I asked, “So, like how many cities can I go to on tour?”

  They said, “We see a lot of great opportunities for you to blog!”

  I had no interest in blogging. But blogs were going to make me famous, they said, where my illuminating post about “Ten Favorite Hairless Cats of Southern Gothic Literature” would be seen and read by dozens of avid readers.

  Dozens!

  I asked, “So, like, who books the travel?”

  They said, “We love these pralines!”

  I said, “Can you get me on This American Life?”

  They said, “I could eat a hundred of these! So good!”

  I said, “I was thinking about publishing an open letter to Terry Gross.”

  They said, “Please don’t do that.”

  The room got quiet. I had a praline.

  * * *

  I flew home that night, more confused than ever. I was now in the maw of a great and powerful machine and felt the sudden tremors of it surging awake.

  I had a publicist now, courtesy of HarperCollins. We’ll call him Phillip. Great guy, Phillip. Publicists like Phillip are the necessary flanges in the machinations of fame. They make your image and name ricochet around the universe of global consciousness, largely by emailing media contacts, with whom they communicate via a series of carefully placed exclamation points. Phillip said he was emailing everybody about my book, and it seemed to be working. I had begun to see pictures of my distended Goonies face everywhere.

  “I saw something about you in a magazine,” people said, all the time, everywhere.

  “You are all over the Internet,” people said.

  “You must have a good publicist,” people said.

  Telling you that you must have a good publicist is a nice way for people to tell you that you’re not very talented. I mean, your friends like you, they do, but they don’t really think you’re amazing, because if you were, you probably wouldn’t be friends with them. They know this instinctively.

  I’d finally gotten some bites on all my pitching. Four or five magazines emailed back and said, “Sure, fine.” Some even agreed to pay me. Compensation for magazine pieces, I learned, abides no set of earthly conventions. Outside paid me $1,000 for a story, the New York Times paid $150. Many paid nothing, but I wrote those stories anyway, to keep my name ricocheting around the thunderdome of public opinion.

  It was a lot of work for what felt like an unquantifiable end, like having sex for money with people who might be strangers but might actually end up being your wife, except instead of money, most of these magazines pay you in exposure, which is a non-transferable form of currency that is not accepted at most grocery stores.

  One day, I received an email from an editor at a soft-core pornographic magazine called Southern Living, the world’s only magazine that dares you to swoon over fruit-based sheet cakes. (One can find a full description of this amazing magazine in the DSM-5 under “Deviled egg fetish.”) I was very excited as I read this email, because as the editor explained, this very popular magazine had decided to feature me on their website, alongside many yam-infused tablescapes. She said they were about to publish a list titled “50 Southerners to Watch Out for in 2015” and wanted to know if I would like to be one of the people everybody should be watching out for. I very calmly explained that I would pose nude on a bed of plump squash, if they wanted. I would do anything.

  I sent them everything they required: the high-res photo, a quote full of pathos and irony, and a link for readers to preorder the new book.

  “I’m going to be in that magazine!” I said to my daughters, in line at the grocery store, pointing to the cover, with its many headlines about soups and stews.

  “Is your book about crockpots?” Stargoat asked.

  This was my first national publicity for the book, and I was very proud. I could feel the potentialities of fame whirring inside me, little atomies of celebrity ready to burst forth.

  The day the list was published online, I was not on it. Wait, what?

  I looked again. Nope, not on it.

  Again. Nope. Okay, so.

  I wrote an angry email to Southern Living and deleted it.

  I wrote a funny angry email and deleted that one, too.

  “Never email angry,” I tell my students. So, I took the edge off with fifty margaritas and wrote another email, this one less angry, kinder, gentler, margaritier.

  “What happened?” I asked. “I thought I was on the list.”

  “I guess we forgot you,” the editor said.

  They felt terrible, they said, and offered to put me on another list.

  This is one of the fun things you learn about publicity: It’s all imaginary. All of it. They can just wave a wand and invent whole imaginary lists.

  “40 Southerners Under 40 Pounds”

  “50 People Who Like Rice Sometimes Under 50”

  “60 Writers Who Write Books for People Over 60 But Who Are Under 60”
/>   “What new imaginary list would I be on,” I asked.

  “Fifty Best-Dressed Southerners,” they said. “Will that work?”

  I had not known that Southern Living was a humor magazine.

  “Absolutely,” I wrote back. “Thank you for this opportunity.”

  On a typical day, I generally look like a drifter who’s murdered a professor and stolen his clothes and gotten thrown by a twister high up in a tree. But whatever. I had a dream to keep dreaming here.

  Word soon got out. I was one of the South’s Best-Dressed Humans. The Savannah Morning News picked it up, put a big color picture of me in the paper. Strangers who recognized me honked as I rode my bike to work. I could feel the first tender kiss of fame on the lobes of my enormous ears.

  And yet, at church, everybody seemed confused.

  I walked into the sanctuary and faced the stares of a wall of elders and deacons.

  “I don’t see it,” one said.

  “You look terrible,” another said.

  “It’s very confusing,” an older man said, squinting his eyes at my shoes, unpolished, the laces fraying. He looked like a man passing a gallstone. Like his feelings were hurt.

  “You must have a good publicist,” he said.

  “I do,” I said. “His name is Phillip.”

  I walked with my family to a pew, wondered what my posture should be. Do I hold my head high, proud of all we’d accomplished so far, or do I hang it low, in humble preparation for the battle that was to come? It felt like God was smiting me, in slow motion. I could feel my soul shifting a little, blurring into something new. The dream was evolving.

  Act IV

  MY METEORIC RISE FROM OBSCURITY TO SLIGHTLY LESS OBSCURITY

  Chapter 14

  Our crowd consisted of approximately three-hundred Margaret Atwood fans, with the remainder of the crowd being my fan.

  —GEORGE SAUNDERS, “A Brief Study of the British”

  THE DAY YOUR BOOK COMES OUT, THEY CALL THIS YOUR PUB Day, a reflection of how much drinking usually happens to make this moment possible.

  On Tuesday, May 12, 2015, precisely eleven years, five months, and twenty-six days after I announced to my wife that it was my dream to write a funny book, it was true: The book was now alive and for sale in real life, soaring like a great happy bird through the Internet and bookstores across America. It had only taken 4,195 days. I rolled quietly out of bed and walked soundlessly to my desk and breathed deeply and opened the Internet to find no urgent messages from Debbie congratulating me on queues that had formed outside surprise midnight bookstore parties. No religions had been formed in honor of my characters, and no presidents of fan clubs had delivered any remarks via YouTube, for there was no fan club. Odd.