All I Need is a Miracle

The low-down on last night's festivities at KGB should be forthcoming later on today, but right now I'm just posting to let you all know about something fun that's coming up.

My good friend and former roomie Kelly has requested that I spread the word about her one-woman show, which will be running throughout the month of September at The Pit here in NYC. If you're local, or you'll be in the area on a Tuesday, I highly recommend it. I attended the first staging of this a few months back and it was fantastic. Kelly is, quite literally, the funniest person I know, and her talent is out in full force in this show.

I have pledged to attend at least one of these showings myself, and bring a date, but I'm not yet sure which one I'll be at.

Anyway, details are as follows:

Miracle Grown-up

Kelly Buttermore was born three months early, on a road trip, a thousand miles from home. Since then, things have been anything but normal. Through personal monologues and conversations with her grandfather who isn't afraid to tell it like it is, she traces her unusual path towards adulthood--from fighting for her life in an incubator to four years at an all-girls college, to living in New York and trying to make sense of the coed world--all the while knowing that the fact she got a chance to grow up at all is, well, a miracle.

Written and performed by Kelly Buttermore
directed by Aaron Bergeron

Tuesdays at 7 in September at the Peoples Improv Theater (PIT)
(Sept. 6th, 13th, 20th, and 27th)
154 West 29th Street, 2nd floor
Cost: $5 (cash only)
Reservations recommended: (212) 563-7488
more info: http://www.thepit-nyc.com

A tale from the dusty trail

As it happens, I'm not the only remotely-heard-of writer in my family. My Uncle Fred is a well-known figure on the Montana cowboy poetry circuit. He and his wife are quoted this week in this article on Reuters.com.

Uncle Fred's work is whimsical, catchy stuff. I'd be proud to say I got some of my writerly inclinations from him.

The World According to John Irving

I'm still in a bit of a daze from the utter awesomeness that was last night's John Irving reading, and all of the weird life and art revelations that occurred as a result.

I wasn't exactly revved when I got there at about 5:00 to find a Barnes and Noble goon parked by the front door accosting customers to ask them if they were there for John Irving. And then, I received the first of what would be many repetitions of the Official John Irving Reading Rules:

1. You do not talk about the John Irving reading.
   
2. John Irving will ONLY be reading and taking questions. He will not be signing.
   
3. A limited number of pre-signed copies of Until I Find You are available for purchase. They will go on sale at 6. There are only 200.

I think the Barnes and Noble staff, on the whole, felt a little put-out by having to host such a big event. Most of them (barring the B&N manager who wrangles most of the readers at the Union Square events, about whom I know nothing except that he's generally awesome) were incredibly surly.

The policy of selling pre-signed copies, by the way, was kind of stupid, being that it really penalizes those of us who bought the book the first day it came out. Most of the people there were fans, right? Don't most fans want to read the book as soon as possible? I'm not buying that book twice. It wasn't that good. I mean, Irving is like pizza and sex in that he's good even when he's bad, but that doesn't mean I have another thirty bucks to throw at him. They should have had wristbands or something, the way Tower Records does it.

Anyway, I snagged a second-row seat, and got wrapped up in an extremely good book, so I was occupied for the duration of the two-hour wait, during which I heard the Official John Irving Reading Rules pretty much every ten minutes in pretty much exactly the same words.

Finally, John Irving arrived. I've never been to a reading quite like this one - before he went onstage, he paused so that he could be snapped by a gaggle of photographers, paparazzi-style. He was impeccably groomed and dressed, and he carried this aura of celebrity that was unmistakable. Even if you didn't know who he was, and even if he wasn't being accosted by half a dozen photographers, you'd know that this guy was Important. The best comparison I can make is that it was sort of like the time I saw Prince play at Madison Square Garden. As with Prince, John Irving's ego is palpable, but not in an overly obnoxious way. It just takes up the whole room. He's great, and he knows it. I'm certain he wakes up every morning, looks in the mirror, and says to himself, "damn, I'm John fucking Irving, and I rule." I know I would, if I were him.

This plays into my specific interaction with him, actually. The thing I have wanted to know for the entirety of my ten-year-long John Irving fascination is: in The Hotel New Hampshire, Lilly Berry laments that she can't get started writing unless she believes that what she can write could be as good as the ending to The Great Gatsby. This has been playing on an endless loop in my head ever since I first read it. So I wanted to know if this was at all autobiographical, and if this particular brand of writer's block was something he himself had ever gone through. "Do you ever find yourself paralyzed by that sort of greatness," I asked him, "or maybe even, at this point, by your own greatness?"

Everyone seemed to think that was pretty funny, including John Irving himself. (Let the record show - I made the world's greatest living author crack up.) His response, while not directly addressing my question, was thoughtful and candid. He said that his greatest source of writer's block is his great indecision over which story to start next, and he often finds himself hopping from project to project when this happens, and setting aside something to come back to it a few months later with a fresh perspective.

At the end of his answer, I said, "I think you should know that I write because of you." And he thanked me, very genuinely, and then I said "I'm not sure if I should be thanking you or cursing you for that." And he thought that was pretty funny as well. Of course this led to an onslaught of people trying to tell him their life stories instead of asking questions, which is my biggest reading-related pet peeve, but what could I do? This was probably my only chance to thank/curse him for that, and so I nabbed it, and tried to do it as politely and un-self-involvedly as possible.

What I took away from this whole experience is that maybe I need to approach what I'm doing with a little more Irving-esque bravado. Granted, he has the proven chops to back it up, but he's not afraid of sucking, and I think that's important to note. He's just concerned about putting the stories on paper, and damn the torpedoes. I think maybe operating under the notion that I'm awesome is the only way I'll ever accomplish the huge task of finishing a novel.

Before the Q&A, Irving gave a brief talk about the autobiographical origins of Until I Find You, and then read a bit from it, and I think now I'm going to have to go back and reread parts, knowing where it comes from. I still think he didn't manage to make the truly bizarre elements as convincing and engaging as effectively as he usually does, but overall, the book didn't suck, and now I can say I at least understand what he was trying to do.

So while I haven't yet gotten him to inscribe something, I have at least interacted with the man, and that's pretty cool. Honestly, while I understand why he doesn't inscribe (he'd be there all night!), it is disappointing. Back in the day, he was apparently quite the inscriber. Radar magazine reports this month about a copy of The World According to Garp belonging to an unnamed now-well-known female author, inscribed "We should never be ashamed of 'that' night".

Actually, I think when I finish my book, I might just start inscribing all of my signed copies like that.

Interrupting Radio Silence for Some Tunes

I haven't been writing in here because I've been trying to make myself write elsewhere, to varying degrees of success. Wouldn't you rather I did that, for my sake?

Anyway, I have some great thoughts that I hope to dispense in here once I have gotten my ducks in a row for my upcoming KGB event (you're coming to it, aren't you? August 23rd, yo), but for now, all I wanted to do was let you all know that I have a new set up at Coup d'Taco, which will air tonight at 10 p.m. You can click here to listen live, or you can just download the podcast. That works too.

I'm so vain, I probably think this wikipedia's about me

It started out innocently enough - in the process of looking up information about my hometown on wikipedia, I found a couple of factual errors and made corrections, and then started adding information about a couple of the nearby historical sites. My parents have served on the board of the local preservation society, you see, and in their spare time they collect and sell old Montana postcards and photos, so I've had some background in this sort of thing. (Truthfully, I think that's why I ended up majoring in history.)

Pandora's box has been opened, I'm afraid. I've now been looking up all sorts of things I know a little bit about and correcting spelling and grammar (wikipedians apparently suffer from widespread commaphobia). I've long been a collector of arcane facts, and I have an editor's soul, so it's a great diversion for me.

And then I joked to some friends that it would be funny if I had my own Wikipedia entry. And then my friend Ray took the bait. Almost immediately, it was nominated for deletion. So other friends jumped on the chance to write a more factual, detailed entry (I couldn't resist jumping in and fixing a couple of things, which the article history will, embarassingly, demonstrate), and now I am fully wikified.

I suspect it will probably be down by the end of the day, and I won't be heartbroken...I realize that it IS a little bit conceited to have even encouraged it in the first place, and honestly, I do feel a little sheepish. And so I will go gentle into that good night, because like I said in my previous entry, aside from found a countercultural movement and co-curate a reading series, I haven't actually done a whole lot to deserve my own biography, and I freely admit this.

But know this, Wikipedia cops - someday you'll have to include me, because someday I intend to do something important and lasting.

Right now, though, I have to go send out some reports.

I don't want to go in the cart...I feel happy!

It's been a few days since I've swung by here, and I feel awfully bad about that, but my personal life has veritably imploded over the last week.

However, staring at the writerblog reminds me to write, so it's important to check in if only to remind myself that I can always be doing more, even when the world feels like it's caving in on top of me. (Which, honestly, it does right now, and for good reason, but my personal life doesn't go in the writerblog so you'll just have to take my word for it.)

I do have some good news to report, though. On August 23rd, I'm going to be doing my first-ever reading at KGB. Also on the bill are Ned Vizzini, Christopher X. Brodeur, and Nick Antosca (who doesn't have a website, but I assure you, I've seen this kid read a few times and he's incredibly, sickeningly talented).

When I first started investigating literary-scene-type stuff here in the city, I put KGB on my list of eventual daydreams. I figured I'd get there someday, after I'd been published somewhere of consequence and had more or less arrived. But if it happens sooner than I thought, I'm perfectly okay with that! (I felt the same way about working for the company I'm in now, actually. It felt like a pipe dream until I got a job there less than a year and a half out of college. And I still love it!)

Honestly, I feel a little bit like I've somehow cheated the universe on this one. I would say that maybe I'm not giving myself enough credit by thinking so, except I'm nowhere near as prolific as someone who deserves this kind of opportunity should be.

Tomorrow night I intend to lock myself in my bedroom with the modem disconnected until I get some serious work done.