by David Lipsky
[Break]
Book is sort of heavy …
My friend said when it hit his porch, it made a sound like a car bomb going off.
[Break]
[We talk about his friend Jon Franzen’s cover story “Perchance to Dream”—which will become well known as “the Harper’s essay.” A piece about how hard it is for novels to get noticed in the classroom with movies and TV.]
This is going to be in Harper’s. And DeLillo had this one great quote in the piece. Where DeLillo says, uh …
PA: (New voice) Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve just landed at the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport. Local time here is approximately 2:28. And you’re still on the Central Time Zone. (Camping it up) We’re gonna be taxiing for a few more minutes. …
(Laughs) So she talks this way normally?
PA: (Engines cycling down, that big, deep, vacuum-cleaner sound) Just a reminder: The airport here in the Twin Cities is a smoke-free environment. Smoking only is permitted outdoors.
(Corrects her) “Permitted only outdoors.” It’s not the only thing that’s permitted outdoors.
[Irritated as a grammarian and as a smoker]
Funny.
DeLillo said, “That if serious reading disappears in this country, it will mean that whatever—it will mean that whatever we mean by the term identity has ceased to exist.”
That’s a great line … did Franzen press him on it, or …?
I think so. All I know is, um—all I know is the stuff that’s actually in Jon’s essay. I think Jon had lunch with him like a couple of times.
So you read the essay? [Coming out in Harper’s]
Uh-huh.
And you liked it?
Yeah. It’s sort of—
[Break]
[We talk about Bloomington-grounding snowstorm: Dave, paying attention to everything, had apparently charted its approach.]
I didn’t wanna tell you when you showed up, that storm was coming out of the Dakotas for two days.
• • •
WE’RE MET BY THE ESCORT, DRIVE THROUGH THE CITY, AND CHECK IN TO THE HOTEL WHITNEY
[Long drive, local sights, the hotel a big former cotton gin by the Mississippi River. Huge spiral staircase in lobby.]
CHECK-IN GIRL (TO ME): And you have a room with twins.
DAVE: Yes, Anita and Consuela.
[Break]
• • •
LUNCH IN MINNEAPOLIS
[Dave has been traveling in ten states’ worth of different cars for nearly a month: His own vehicle is a decade old. It’s like speed-dating, getting to see what’s available, if he were only unattached. So he keeps hearing one message in his head—a consumerist one, which surprises him.]
“Get a new car, get a new car”—but I would never get a new car until I figured out what to do with this one. It’s like a marriage, almost.
[The waitress sweeps by.]
Just a fairly low-rent tea? I’ve learned the hard way.
[There’s a “V” on the menu, marking the vegetarian dishes. Dave asks the waitress—]
Do you count chickens? Chickens are very stupid.
[We do some TV talk. He loves Seinfeld, thinks Friends is “a little gooey.” He says it was scary, after being broke so long in late ’80s and early ’90s, to buy the Bloomington place. His first house. We do some dog talk. Jeeves was his first dog: “I got him because he was so ugly, no one else wanted him—now he’s like a cover-girl dog.” When the magazine photographers come, Jeeves keeps pushing into frame, and tried to eat the Newsweek guy’s lens cap.
Nervous about NPR show tomorrow, and about his last reading tonight, at the Hungry Mind.]
The jungle gym of my own psyche. But I’m the one that has to teeter on it.
• • •
ON WAY TO READING AT THE HUNGRY MIND,
A FAMOUS, PROUD INDEPENDENT BOOKSTORE
ESCORT: I don’t know if it’s a good time or not, or whether you guys wanna see it, but I could take you to the square where Mary Tyler Moore throws her cap in the air. Lots of clients have wanted to.
[David passes.
The reading organizer wants three sections, plus Q and A.]
If I do two sections, it’s gonna be twenty minutes. If I do three, it’s gonna be forty.
ESCORT: [They know the reading math inside out.] Well, you could do twenty, then could do one Q and one A.
My main objective is to avoid Q and A. Which tend to be excruciating.
Have you done them before?
Oh, yeah. At least here I’m being told beforehand. You know, in Iowa there was a Q and A on the radio, that I had not been told about.
Huh. You dislike them?
Yeah. Just stuff like “Where do you get your ideas?” Which is actually a—I get them from a Time-Life subscription series, which costs $17.95 a month. And the pressure to say something witty and interesting in response, when in fact my mind … It’s like a flashbulb goes off in your mind? Sort of? It’s just … light.
[We laugh. We’re all finding him the tiniest bit funnier; he has the preperformance focus and weight, he’s the guy who’s heading onstage, and we’re part of his reading entourage. It makes him automatically glossy and interesting. Almost everything is charming, for no good reason.
We’ll be meeting two of David’s friends—one, Betsy, was in graduate school with him at Arizona; the other, Julie, is an editor at City Pages, the Minneapolis Village Voice. “My friends,” David says, “are a resolutely unglamorous lot.” We stop, door opens, freezing St. Paul weather, Julie crowds in. David talks with her about the City Pages reporter. They did an interview before we left for the reading.]
Do you like readings?
I like it once I forget myself. So that right now it’s terrible, and the first ten minutes will be one of those awful like I-can-feel-my-heartbeat, and everyone else can hear it. And then after a while I just forget it. One reason I don’t mind going long is that when it gets to twenty minutes, just as I’m starting to halfway enjoy it, um, it’s over.
I read about this store in articles about independent booksellers a bunch a times.
[I’m talking like Dave now: Infectious …
David is gone; the bookstore, Hungry Mind, was sold and shuttered; that world is closed too, of the thousand-page novel, the escorted reading tour; the Whitney Hotel is gone, Dalton’s, it’s a period that’s gone. There’s just his work, which needed all those things to launch.]
It’s got its own newsletter that I think is fairly well thought of. (A “rather” sound to David’s voice.)
ESCORT: Yep. The Hungry Mind Review. I think they’re very well thought of.
Now, has this reading been publicized pretty well in town?
ESCORT: Yeah, they do—the gal [“Gal”—so Minneapolis] that runs this, Laura Barrado, does a great job of publicizing it. Everybody knows about her, so that if it’s the Hungry Mind, everybody knows. Y’know: press release. It’s got such a great reputation I think that everybody comes. This newsletter is so good.
They’re gonna do this man Michael Chabon. I know he’s about two weeks behind me.
For Wonder Boys.
[David is talking to Julie, about how escorts had been hired.]
The mind reels. I think geisha, in full hairpins. But the person in the first city was a six-foot-five Irish man.
JULIE: Oh no kidding, where was that?
That was in—I’m sorry, that would be the second city. That was in Boston. A big Celt.
[Break]
[David’s having a cigarette. Our escort has moved to celebrity talk. Famous people I’ve driven. She notices David’s cigarette.]
ESCORT: I wouldn’t give you a lecture about smoking. I just, it’s just gonna be …
[Shirley MacLaine came through Minneapolis on reading tour. Ron Wood.]
ESCORT: He signed everything. People’s coats, their arms, legs. Peter O’Toole …
Peter O’ Toole came for a book tour?
Is he still a
live?
ESCORT: He did a trilogy, I’m not sure what’s happened to the trilogy. He was on book tour, and he was wonderful. He was absolutely wonderful.
I would think so.
ESCORT: He looked like he had been ridden hard and put away wet. But, boy, was he, he was great. We went under a bridge coming over here, he wanted to go see Saint Paul …
… and screaming bobby soxers. (To me) Are you prepared to give me a butt?
Oh yeah. Of course.
[We’ve arrived, and step outside the car.
David is talking about readings for Broom of the System and Signifying Rappers, a book he did about hip-hop music.]
And I’d never before gotten an advance for a book in the form of a gift certificate for Sears.
[We stand outside the Hungry Mind; it’s so snowy, white, and lamp-lit that it feels like the soundstage for a movie. Open on a university bookstore in the Northwest, starring someone spunky. So pretty I wouldn’t accept it in a movie.
I creep forward, look through window for Dave—who isn’t willing to, but wants the data—doing reconnaissance work. How big and impatient is the crowd?]
There’s no empty seats anywhere except for right up front.
Anybody look dangerous?
Mm-mm. No.
ESCORT: Minnesotans are nice. Friendly. Don’t worry.
[She’s mistaken his stage nervousness for actual lack of confidence, which slightly irritates him; for the remainder of the trip, she’ll keep reassuring David the reading went well. She’ll say, “I’ve heard a lot of readings. Believe me, you were fine.” She doesn’t realize he has a kind of perfect confidence. She’ll do this when she isn’t spending her behind-wheel time reminiscing about Peter O’Toole or how charming John Updike was, which bugs David.]
It looks like a sit-down version of the Nordstrom’s catalog inside … All that heavy, puffy clothing, boots and mittens.
Yeah. [He power-ups my joke.] It’s better than that. They sorta look like they’re waitin’ on the moon. This is great: I’ll sweep in exactly at eight …
[Break]
[We’re inside a kind of reader’s green room at the Hungry Mind, talking with the woman who oversees the readings. David asks for a drink, to foil dry mouth. Then asks, even better:]
Do you have any artificial spit?
[Everyone laughs.]
No, it’s called Zero-Lube. It’s an actual pharmaceutical product.
Really? Artificial saliva?
Yeah, but it’s way better. Mark Leyner used to write catalog copy for the Zero-Lube company. It’s way better than water, because it lubricates. You don’t get that clicky sound.
READING LADY: I’ll remember that.
I’m becoming a grizzled veteran at this. Next tour I bring a case.
READING LADY: What would you like to drink?
Water. No ice.
READING LADY: Oh. OK.
Because then I will crunch the ice in the microphone.
[We head back outside for another cigarette.]
[Staring at audience] Didn’t Hal’s dad make a movie like this? [From Infinite Jest]
Called The Joke, yeah. What we need is an enormous screen projecting this back out.
[Shakes his head, smiles.]
You’ve gotta understand, this is about as sexy as the tour gets.
[Our shoes and boots make a sound on the snow like hands rubbing or scrunching over balloons.]
READING LADY: Is this going to be in the article?
You bet. But not your asking.
Are we going in? Oh wait—[I’ve lost my scarf; it’s a shadowy puddle on the snow.]
[Inside, David goes off to do “Job one,” which means “Finding the loo.” The Reading Lady says, “Go through the back.” Curious, excited, student-y heads turn as he crosses to the bathroom. The Reading Lady escorts him as far as the washroom door.]
I can take it from here.
[Break]
[Here someone picks up a book of mine from the reading table, opens it, drops it back down.]
[Break]
[Dave, before the reading, looks up, chews a nail, verifies there won’t be a Q and A, asks something about the crowd, tests to make sure his water is “not sparkling.”]
(To himself, looking over the room) This is the swan song, this is the finale. [It’s his last event for Infinite Jest.]
READING LADY: How do you want me to introduce you?
The ones, the gang, the ones around here for the performance? Please tell them, a good stiff monotone—I can provide that.
READING LADY: They’re not looking for Al Franken. Who’s great. He was out here, he killed last week.
Do you want us just to come in from the back, or …?
READING LADY: It depends. Some people don’t mind making an entrance. And some people are very uncomfortable with that.
That sounds like me.
READING LADY: Whatever you’re most comfortable with.
You don’t want me to do that, because that would involve my not being here.
[Everyone does a Yikes laugh.]
ESCORT: (Helpfully) He means, going back to the hotel.
What do I do while you’re introducing me?
READING LADY: You would just have to sort of stand.
And I kind of look at the floor? It’s not going to be one of these hideous, ten-minute long …
READING LADY: Oh, no, no. Everything I do is short.
[And he starts to read. He’s careful. As he begins, he sounds too breathy to himself on the speakers.]
Does this sound all right? Am I like fellating the microphone? Am I the appropriate distance?
[He reads; he’s a finger licker; wets a fingertip while turning the pages.
As a performance, the whole thing is astonishing: the drive to Chicago, the plane to Minneapolis, the hotel, the car from the hotel—all this transportation expertise marshaled, just so he could arrive in this room and share some sentences he’d worked up in this basic, private, lovely way.
And then, when the reading is over, and David’s about to leave, the reading woman looks at him and pulls a fast one.]
READING LADY: I’m sure if you have any questions, David wouldn’t mind answering them.
FIRST QUESTION: How do you get your ideas?
• • •
AFTER READING
HUNGRY MIND BOOKSTORE
THE SIGNING LINE
A LONG, EXCITED LINE
[It’s not an easy process. People want to talk. They’re thrilled when they get to the table: blushing, excited. David draws a smiley face next to each signature. One woman looks at hers with a frown. She’s not sure what it is; she believes he’s drawn a computer.]
It’s a smiley face. If you want, I could put Wite-Out over it. It’s your book.
[Someone pulls out a copy of Broom of the System.]
Oh no. This old thing.
[After the signature, he does a birthday-candle blow over the ink, to dry it.]
Little, Brown taught me that.
[Some readers attempt a second of Match-Wits-with-David at the signing point, dropping an insight, trying to compress something of who they personally are and what they feel about him and the book into a few seconds. It’s strange, and it’s why writing celebrities are different from tennis or movie celebrities. Writing is communication, which people do on and off all day; writing is the professionalized version of what they’re up to all the time. Fans at tennis matches sometimes show up in the stands wearing wristbands and tennis shirts—and for these few seconds at the signing, they’re stepping onto the court with David.
That desire, in those blushing seconds, to make a mark, to be as attractive a mental human package as the evening’s attraction.
One flustered, excited, embarrassed reader in the queue reaches the front and David. A tall guy: goatee, vest, jeans, a huge, white-man’s Afro.]
GUY: Are you glowing? Unbelievable. The City Pages. That’s our local newspaper. Alternate news. Goddamn
beautiful, man. Where to next? You cover some incredible material.
[Dave signs.] Thanks. I’ve been to like ten cities.
GUY: No, I meant, uh, bookwise. You know? What’s playing on your heart song?
If you talk about it, then you don’t do it.
GUY: True. Very True. But is there something, that you’ve zeroed in on, for the next project? Or are you contemplating—
[This is painful. Shy, flustered; the guy trying to be expansive, intimate, cool, making human contact. He doesn’t realize you can’t, the moment’s not designed for that.]
Yeah. I mean, I finished that like almost two years ago, so. This is—there’s this lag, we’re always on to other stuff by the time this stuff comes out.
GUY: Ever write poetry?
No. (Clipped, nervous)
GUY: Thank you very much.
Thank you. [A woman plunks down Infinite Jest.] Hello. (Glares at me) Yes?
Oh, no no …
• • •
IN CAR