Okay, let’s face it: I am too hungover to write anything brilliant today. My head is spinning, my stomach is making SOS noises of gastric distress, the ceramic god is calling. And yet I'm so happy! Yesterday was the publication date for
Super Sad True something or other, and although this is my third book and I've been through the drill before, there's nothing like walking into a beautiful New York store like the Strand, or McNally Jackson, or Three Lives, or the St. Mark's Bookshop and seeing your copies gloriously stacked one on top of the other. I keep saying literature is dead, but the swarms of super-smart, super-funny, super-good-looking people who came to the first reading nearly made me cry. "Y'all want to hear youse some literature?" I called out and they responded "Hells, yeah, Lady Gar-Gar!"
Then Sharyn, my intern, interrupted my reading midway to make sure I took an iTelephone picture of the assembled crowd for publicity purposes.
"Don’t read to the people who look like they’re not going to buy the book," she whispered, "like that guy in the porkpie hat. Read away from him. Read directly to that woman over there with the Balenciaga bag."
But in the end I just read to everyone. And then adjourned to a little party thrown for me where I celebrated my publication with 2.4 liters of vodka on an empty stomach. Foolish? Perhaps. But as I crawl toward the ceramic bowl, still typing away madly on my laptop, I remember how glorious it is to write text. And how honored I am that so many people read it.