Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself (16 page)

I missed that part of the reading, because at that point I was in the corner of the bookstore
.

Believe me, it’s a loss I think you can weather.

[Break]

… I got my own white robe in each hotel, and decided I had arrived.

In which, in San Francisco? The Whitney?

No, I just—I don’t know why I said “Whitney.” Hang on, I can even check it.

They deserve a plug, for putting a bathrobe in their bathroom. It seemed to me an incredibly touching and considerate thing. [Unfolding publicity call sheet, reading.] “See
Salon
. Laura Miller.” The
Prescott
.

[Break]

In Seattle, they also had—

Alexis, the Alexis Hotel.

[He explains: a place with animal heads on the wall and stuff, the Alexis.]

[Break]

Ah, you’re fine. $120 by the night. [He’s checking how much tonight’s hotel will cost, to see if it would break me.]

[Break]

[Pulls out Kodiak chew]

Now I can enjoy full nicotine satisfaction, and you cannot.

This is his prepping to chew the Kodiak stuff, talking about how “The rules on the airplane, whatever the nightmare of the food is, actually discourage people from chewing tobacco. Because those few people who know how to chew tobacco would be chewing tobacco all the time.”

[Smiles; he gets a kick out of my repeating things he says into the tape machine.]

Those people who know how to chew tobacco would be chewing tobacco all the time.

[Break]

Two separate drafts of this book were written—were typed, David says—with one finger
. ’Cause
he can’t type very well. Two drafts of this book were typed with one finger
.

But a really
fast
finger.

“But a really fast finger.”

[Break]

He asks for an additional foam cup—says he’s allergic to plastic—because he wants to spit tobacco into it, and knows that if he uses the see-through plastic it could gross people out
.

[The Hyde Street Gift Catalog]

Boy, there’s some interesting stuff in here.

[Hyde Street Gift Catalogs on plane: he says he’s been reading them back and forth on each trip leg, getting to know the stock.

He’s looking at an extension, a gardening tool, that would allow you to remove wasps’ nests from trees and eaves.]

Oh, I
like
this—I like this guy’s expression as he’s putting it in there. It looks like he’s working for the National Security Agency or something. “This’ll resolve that situation.” Oh wait, there’s another one, where a man’s using the stomach exerciser: it looks just like he’s having a bowel movement. Where is this?

[Public address system: “You’ll notice we’ve turned the Seat Belt sign back on …”]

Look at the expression on his face. He looks like sort of an autistic person having an orgasm. Yeah, hours of fun with that thing.

[PA: “Please make sure that your seat belt is securely fastened. We’d like to say thanks for flying with us today. It’s been a pleasure having you on board, hope to see you again soon in the near future.”

Our pilot, like everyone, doing his job, which also requires a little promotional work, a little future-sales stuff …]

[Break: We’re landing.]

They told you you’re number fifteen on the bestseller list
.

Oh, yeah. (Nervous, faking unconcern)

What did you make of that? Exciting, isn’t it?

I
guess …
(Slightly nonconvinced sound in voice) I don’t really know what it means. I don’t think very many people buy hardcovers, so I don’t think it probably
takes
a whole lot to get on that list.

But there are also a lot of books that aren’t on that list
.

This is true. I’m trying to work out my system of like—how to accept this without thinking of the karma about it.

Martin Amis’s The Information—you were talking about it at dinner—never made that list
.

So what
does
make that list? Stuff like, um,
Primary Colors?
Or, um,
Men Are from Venus, Women Are from Mars?

That’s been on for about two years. More
.

[To tape]
David said that this is why, when they started, he and his publicist reached an accord, which is “There’s information that it’s better for me
not
to have.”

I don’t want it rubbed off. And if I were
stronger
, I could hear it and then just …

Did you ever think you’d have a bestselling book, though?

No. Nope. And there’s a part of me that’s just immensely … pleased, and surprised. It’s not, I don’t mean to walk around pullin’ this long face about it.

[Break]

How many printings? It’s in fourth?

It’s in its sixth printing now? They do all these little printings, and now all the stores are out of stock. And so, the stores are pissed because they’re afraid that people won’t buy it after a week’s wait or somethin’, so they’re trying to do all kinds of …

How small are the printings?

(His voice lifts, a little, when he feels he’s saying something—wistfully, dreamily, upping the volume to jam the mixed feeling—that’s charged, that isn’t entirely sincere or true.) I don’t know: Like ten thousand or fifteen thousand each?

(Normal) I think the book is so expensive and the postage is so much, that they’re really afraid of having too many.

[But he does know the number and size of the printings; can’t help knowing.]

I mean, he [Michael Pietsch] has fifteen books he’s working on, he line-edited this
twice
. We’re having conferences when he’s, like, lying in bed sick with the
flu
. I mean he really—I know it sounds like horseshit, but he really did the old-time. … Like—and I know this wasn’t, he must have had to put a lot of himself on the line, to even get them to
take
this. Given that it was so long. I mean, I think he’s a little bit of a hero, and it would be nice if he got some of the good attention out of it.

[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.

[Long drive, local sights, the hotel a big former cotton gin by the Mississippi River. Huge spiral staircase in lobby.]

C
HECK-IN
G
IRL (TO ME):
And you have a room with twins.

D
AVE:
Yes, Anita and Consuela.

[Break]

[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.

E
SCORT:
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
.

E
SCORT:
[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.)

E
SCORT:
Yep. The
Hungry Mind Review
. I think they’re
very
well thought of.

Now, has this reading been publicized pretty well in town?

E
SCORT:
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
.

J
ULIE:
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.]

E
SCORT:
I wouldn’t give you a
lecture
about smoking. I just, it’s just gonna be …