2004-06-05 - 10:01 a.m.
This Is What You Want, This Is What You Get
Yesterday at lunch, I told Sher how I really don’t like being happy, as right in the middle of a happy high, something always happens to fuck it up and bring the mood down to an unrecoverable low level. A parent dying on your birthday, a relative’s fatal accident on a holiday, the death of a friend on the way home from a great evening of getting wasted—these things tend to ruin a mood. My theory was tested last night when I went to see a popular author read from his new book.
The evening started out all right and the author seemed amiable. He came out before his scheduled start time and began signing books. The sycophantic audience was courteous enough once he began reading. Much to my delight and to the delight of the other obsessive-compulsive germ-a-phobe I befriended, the girl sitting behind us who coughed and sneezed throughout the entire hour-and-a-half pre-show wait was able to sit quietly once the author started reading.
The author, a short, thin neurotic man with thinning hair and bad teeth began reading, and the audience roared. Flashes of light went off every so often as people took photographs. After he read his first story, he addressed the photographers saying that he’d exhausted all of his facial acrobatics. The audience once again laughed and, as he began his next story, flashes once again went off. He looked directly at the person sitting in front of him and sternly said, “Don’t do that!” As other flashes went off, he stopped and reprimanded the audience telling them not to take his photograph. People complied and the evening went on, the author visibly uncomfortable and flubbing his readings. After his outburst, people still laughed at his stories, but somehow, they didn’t seem as funny as before. At the end of his reading, he apologized for being cranky and said that he’s self-conscious about his teeth and his gut and other things. The odd thing is that, in one of his most popular stories (and many others), he daydreams about becoming famous and being recognized by his soap opera heroes.
I don’t get it. Did he not know that his fans would want photos of him (although I don’t know why) or photos of them together? He was there to sign books, but what did he expect? I mean, come on—really. Dear author, you are a celebrity, regardless of how minor. Why include your photo on your book jackets? Why include publicity photos on your agency’s Web site? Why not be J.D. Salinger and lie low? Why not go back to apartment cleaning?
It reminded me of the time I went to see a venerated, recovering-alcoholic, indie-rock singer perform his morbid songs about women and booze. His fans sang along with his oh-so-pained, faux-deep lyrics. The guy stopped the show a few times and told the audience to stop singing. He said they were confusing him, and that he couldn’t hear himself sing. It was all I could to get him some booze and tell him to lighten up.
