Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself

by David Lipsky

  It was just funny, we just couldn’t get in. I think I had a bandanna on, and at some point, people got an idea that this was actually the author on the staircase. And so various Old Testament, you know, gaps opened up at various points. It was, to be honest, it was very weird because it was simultaneously very ego gratifying and also just terrifying.

  Why terrifying?

  It was terrifying because the room was packed, everybody was looking right at me. Clearly if I fucked up a little bit, if I didn’t … y’know what I mean? It felt like there was a lot at stake, socially. There was a New York Times lady with a flashbulb going that made it hard to read. And I had to stop, and say no to that, and worry about lookin’ like an asshole.

  Did you go to that one? It was like being in the subway at five o’clock. I mean, people were standin’ like mashed up. … And the guy who read before me was the bartender, who read this thing about a Nazi conspiracy to kill Kennedy.

  Actually, this was supposed to be a kind of warm-up—I mean, the real reading was supposed to be at Tower [Tower Books; also now gone], and this was supposed to just be … I thought this’d be good practice. And I don’t think it was supposed to be publicized, it was supposed to just be a read-to-the-bar thing …

  Everyone there from literary industry?

  Yeah, I recognized a lot of people.

  Asked to stop photographing?

  When I was readin’, yeah. Have you ever had someone—you try to read, you get that purple dot, and then you can’t follow the words.

  Gratifying?

  Havin’ a whole lot of people there, because of you: y’know? And you know it’s because of you. And to see that there were that many like heavy hitters there.

  Who?

  I can’t even quite remember. There were just all people whose faces I kind of vaguely remembered from sort of big parties and publishing things. And you can also kind of tell by the way people are dressed. I was clearly the least well-dressed person in the room.

  Book party?

  I wasn’t able to talk to my friends.

  Mirror? Policy not to look?

  These situations where you are at least ostensibly the center of attention, it’s very easy to worry about what you’re lookin’ like to other people. And then you can run in and check and try to compose a self. And it’s just crazy—you just end up going crazy. I’m not sure I made a promise to myself. But I know that I went to the bathroom a bunch of times to take my tobacco out—I also didn’t have any clean clothes, and I had just gotten off this car from Boston. I mean, I was like, I was a mess, and I knew if I started worrying about it, it would just be nuts.

  Often best way; you looked cool, green knit polo shirt, white jeans.

  If it looked right, it’s one of the great ironies of life that I’ve learned. Had I had another hour to prepare—when I have a lot of time to dress, I end up looking ridiculous. You know? And this way, this was just, I think, the thing that had the least crusty armpits.

  [Quoting from his list of cities]

  Seattle?

  I’m trying to think of highlights.

  San Francisco?

  A big one was L.A.

  L.A.?

  Because at this bookstore in L.A., this was Dutton’s. [Also gone] And it was OK, it was just, they didn’t have seats, so everybody was standing in the aisle, and I had to stand on a box. And when I read, I normally—I’ve got the thing they blew up, and I’ve made some footnotes, and there was no way to hold the book.

  And then there was a serious problem with—the worst thing about the signings were the book dealers. And you’ve probably had—you know what I mean. They come up—I remember the first time a book dealer ever came up to me, I thought, “Wow, this guy really likes my work.” It’s sort of like [the guy in Updike’s] Bech Is Back—because they’re all carefully wrapped in plastic. But they don’t want any kind of salutation, they just want it signed. And pretty soon, you figure out that it just ups the value for them.

  But these guys would get in line—and there’s always a type, they’re always sort of the type you can imagine. Just the sorta collector, this obsessive, anal, unhappy, tight-mouthed person. And they’ve always got eight to ten books, and I think it was in San Francisco that I figured out the rule, that I’ll sign two at any one time, and then once everybody’s out of the line, Yeah, I’ll stay around and I’ll sign your books, but I’m not gonna do it while people wait.

  Nice.

  It’s nice, but it’s also smart, because it avoids some big imbroglio. But this guy in L.A., this dealer showed up with it had to’ve been a hundred things. Books, magazine articles, all this stuff. And there was clearly no joy in it for him and all this. And Bonnie the agent was there, and she said that I would sign twenty, and he began to make a fuss. And I lost my temper, and I said if he said one more word I wouldn’t sign anything. And then I had anger adrenaline in me.

  Iowa?

  Iowa City was terrible because I ran out of money, and Western Union wouldn’t give me money. Because the guy, the Western Union guy at the Iowa City bus station—a little troll-like, red-haired man—is evil and deserves to be stamped out. He—I had a cab waiting outside. He first claimed that he hadn’t gotten the order, then he claimed that he had. Then he gave me a check, and told me to go to the bank, saying he didn’t have enough cash. The bank was closed. I mean, and I … he goes … If I coulda gotten a lock of his hair, he’d feel stabbing in his buttocks right now.

  How’d you run out of money?

  I had petty cash. I mean I took like $500 with me, and I just spent it all on like cabs and tips. And the hotel was way outside town, and I hadn’t slept, because Houston was so hot.

  And then at the reading, the bookstore owner gave me Jay McInerney’s review like literally two minutes before I went into the reading. And the reading turned out to be on the radio, which they hadn’t told me. And there were cuss words, you know, so I ended up saying inadmissible words on public radio. Then there was a Q and A they hadn’t told me about. Then at the start of the signing, a lady who’d read some catalog copy that I’d written claimed that I was incredibly insensitive to deformed children.

  From Mao II, right?

  [“The best metaphor I know of for being a fiction writer,” David writes, “is Don DeLillo’s ‘Mao II,’ where he describes the book-in-progress as a kind of hideously damaged infant that follows the writer around, forever crawling after the writer (i.e. dragging itself across the floor of restaurants where the writer’s trying to eat, appearing at the foot of the bed first thing in the morning, etc.) …”]

  (Unhappy) Yeah. I had written this thing in an hour, about how DeLillo’s analogy was correct. It was funny, but on top of everything else, I almost started to cry. That was like the nadir of the whole thing. It got radically better after that. Chicago was fine. Minneapolis was fine.

  L.A. versus New York?

  They seemed more like tourists to the book world. I mean they were dressed in like cardigans and slippers, you know what I mean? Whereas the readings in New York, you could tell, people were used to them as public events, they were there to see and be seen.

  Which actually takes some of the heat off you the reader, because you feel like people are looking at each other—that they all feel they’re on display too. So actually, I’ve figured it out now, I prefer reading in New York to anywhere else.

  [We hear whining, can’t identify it.]

  Oh—that’s Jeeves in the crate! We forgot about the Jeevester!

  [We walk, Dave releases Jeeves.]

  Meet with movie people out there?

  No, nein.

  Dinner at Bonnie’s?

  This friend that I’d made doing the Lynch piece, who’s a unit publicist, she was there. Streitfeld was there.

  [Ear-flapping sound as Jeeves shakes off]

  I’m not bein’ cagey or withholding anything from you, I just haven’t heard anything about that.

  [The tape side runs out.]

 
; Do you wonder if books are passé? Do you worry about that? As we were talking about yesterday, Rolling Stone hasn’t covered a writer your age in ten years.

  I think books used to be real important parts of the cultural conversation, in a way that they aren’t anymore. And the fact that Rolling Stone, which is a pretty important mainstream magazine, doesn’t cover them that much anymore says a lot. Not so much about Rolling Stone. But about how interested the culture is in books.

  For me—and you know this, you get together with writers, and this is a great topic of conversation, ’cause we’ll all just bitch and moan. We’ll talk about the decline of education and people’s declining attention spans, and the responsibility of TV for this. For me the interesting question is, what’s caused books to become kind of less important parts of the cultural conversation?

  A minority taste?

  Yeah, in a certain way. The thing that I think a lot of us forget is, part of the fault of that is books. Is that probably as, you know—you get this sort of cycle, as they become less important commercially and in the mainstream, they’ve begun protecting their ego by talking more and more to each other. And establishing themselves as this tight kind of cloistered world that doesn’t really have anything to do, you know, with real regular readers.

  And uh, so, so no, I don’t think they’re passé. I think they’ve gotta find fundamentally new ways to do their job. And I don’t think for instance we as a generation have done a very good job of this.

  Hey, Jeeves—shut that off for a second. [Jeeves whimpers, sits.]

  Must find new ways to make books—what new ways?

  You know what? I don’t know. My guess is, it’s gonna involve some way of making sort of old eternal verities and questions comprehensible—I can’t think of a way to say it that isn’t academic.

  Could you loosen it?

  (Silent verbal scowl) Well, it’s not just a question of loosening up, it’s that it’s very hard and complicated, and to try to compress it into a couple of sentences …

  [Tape off, break]

  [We talk it out for a few minutes; then, when he thinks he’s ready—and this must be what it’s like to watch him go through a few drafts, as he said in the car; he’s found a way to do answer drafts on the spot, by regulating the tape flow; clever—he turns the tape back on.]

  I’m not sure about “give movies that” [the audience], but you’re right, do you want me to just say it over? Yeah, there’s stuff that really good fiction can do that other forms of art can’t do as well.

  And the big thing, the big thing seems to be, sort of leapin’ over that wall of self, and portraying inner experience. And setting up, I think, a kind of intimate conversation between two consciences.

  And the trick is gonna be finding a way to do it at a time, and for a generation, whose relation to long sustained linear verbal communication is fundamentally different. I mean, one of the reasons why the book is structured strangely is it’s at least an attempt to be mimetic, structurally, to a kind of inner experience. And I know we disagreed in Monical’s about whether experience really feels like that. I mean, I don’t know whether I’ve done it, it’s something that I’m interested in, and am trying to do.

  Subject matter untackled too?

  Yeah. I guess …

  [To tape] David is talking about today people watch more MTV and more movies and more TV, and so that the world in which readers move is very different than the world in which, say, you know our parents moved.

  I guess. Yeah, I guess my first inclination would be to say that most of that would be—to create stuff that mirrors sort of neurologically the way the world feels.

  [Dogs whimpering]

  [Snapping fingers] Hey, c’mere! C’mere, Jeeves.

  But you’re right: and the fact of the matter is—

  I was quoting you, actually—

  No wonder it sounds so, so very smart.

  C’mere! You know what? You’re making me nuts. Sit down! Sit down, I can’t think when you’re doing this.

  But I guess part of it is, it also affects the kind of inner experiences. And you know, the feelings that fiction is about. Today’s person spends way more time in front of screens. In fluorescent-lit rooms, in cubicles, being on one end or the other of an electronic data transfer. And what is it to be human and alive and exercise your humanity in that kind of exchange? Versus fifty years ago, when the big thing was, I don’t know what, havin’ a house and a garden and driving ten miles to your light industrial job. And livin’ and dyin’ in the same town that you’re in, and knowing what other towns looked like only from photographs and the occasional movie reel. I mean, there’s just so much that seems different, and the speed with which it gets different is just. …

  The trick, the trick for fiction it seems to me, is gonna be to try to create a kind of texture and a language to show, to create enough mimesis to show that really nothing’s changed, I think. [Different position from first interview, five days ago, when I defended the nothing-about-people-has-changed position.] And that what’s always been important is still important. And that the job is to find out how to do that stuff, in a world whose texture and sensuous feel is totally different.

  And what’s important—you’ve been saying to me—is a certain basic humanity.

  Yeah … sort of, um, who do I live for? What do I believe in, what do I want? I mean, they’re the sorts of questions so profound and so deep they sound banal when you say them out loud.

  I think every generation finds new excuses for why people behave in a basically ugly manner. The only constant is the bad behavior. I think our excuse, now, is media and technology.

  I think the reason why people behave in an ugly manner is that it’s really scary to be alive and to be human, and people are really really afraid. And that the reasons …

  [As I get closer to the dogs, David likes me better too; has that pet owner’s helpless, natural, unavoidable faith in his dogs’ taste.

  The dog keeps whimpering; David jokes he’s got “Godfather Cheeks” from chewing the tobacco. Which he’s always spitting into things …]

  That the fear is the basic condition, and there are all kinds of reasons for why we’re so afraid. But the fact of the matter is, is that, is that the job that we’re here to do is to learn how to live in a way that we’re not terrified all the time. And not in a position of using all kinds of different things, and using people to keep that kind of terror at bay. That is my personal opinion.

  Well for me, as an American male, the face I’d put on the terror is the dawning realization that nothing’s enough, you know? That no pleasure is enough, that no achievement is enough. That there’s a kind of queer dissatisfaction or emptiness at the core of the self that is unassuageable by outside stuff. And my guess is that that’s been what’s going on, ever since people were hitting each other over the head with clubs. Though describable in a number of different words and cultural argots. And that our particular challenge is that there’s never been more and better stuff comin’ from the outside, that seems temporarily to sort of fill the hole or drown out the hole.

  Could it be assuageable by internal means also?

  Personally, I believe that if it’s assuageable in any way it’s by internal means. And I don’t know what that means. I think it’s fine in some way. [Tape off again; we keep turning it off while he mentally drafts and redrafts answers.] I think it’s probably assuageable by internal means. I think those internal means have to be earned and developed, and it has something to do with, um, um, the pop-psych phrase is lovin’ yourself.

  It’s more like, if you can think of times in your life that you’ve treated people with extraordinary decency and love, and pure uninterested concern, just because they were valuable as human beings. The ability to do that with ourselves. To treat ourselves the way we would treat a really good, precious friend. Or a tiny child of ours that we absolutely loved more than life itself. And I think it’s probably possible to achieve that. I think
part of the job we’re here for is to learn how to do it. [Spits with mouthful voice into cup.] I know that sounds a little pious.

  [We pause for a little.]

  Women?

  I date occasionally. I wouldn’t know what to say.

  Hard?

  I think if you dedicate yourself to anything, um, one facet of that is that it makes you very very selfish. And that when you want to work, you’re going to work. And you end up using people. Wanting people around when you want them around, but then sending them away. And you just can’t afford to be that concerned about their feelings. And it’s a fairly serious problem in my life. Because, I mean, I would like to have children. But I also think that the sort of life that I live is a pretty selfish life. And it’s a pretty impulsive life. And you know, I know there’s writers I admire who have children. And I know there’s some way to do it. I worry about it. I don’t know that I want to say anything much more about it—I mean, there’s jokes about getting laid on tour and stuff.

  It’d be nice to have someone, for example, to be sharing this with?

  Yeah. I really have wished I was married, the last couple of weeks. Because yeah, it’d be nice to have somebody to um—you know, because nobody quite gets it. Your friends who aren’t in the writing biz are just all awed by your picture in Time, and your agent and editor are good people, but they also have their own agendas. You know? And it’s fun talking with you about it, but you’ve got an agenda and a set of interests that diverges from mine. And there’s something about, there would be something about having somebody who kinda shared your life, and uh, and that you could allow yourself just to be happy and confused with.