The Whispering of The Famous Writer

Note: The Famous Writer is not based on any living writer, though I once attended a reading where the brilliant poet Alan Dugan abused and mocked the faculty wives.

I have often posted about my creative long-distance book group.  We read literary fiction, pop fiction, nonfiction, and Emily Dickinson. One year we formed a Folio Society collective and chipped in to buy beautiful books which we traded around to inspire a return to the classics.

We also attend readings by famous authors.  Although my mind sometimes wanders during the readings, I enjoy the Q&A at the end when the intellectual, friendly, casually-dressed audience members ask earnest questions about influences or query the interpretation of a difficult passage.

Sometimes these Q&A’s do not work out at all, and this was the most egregious of them. The room became histrionically electrified as the Famous Novelist denigrated the audience.

The PR woman  had spent the day chauffeuring the Famous Novelist around town and making stops at what she primly called “watering holes.”  He was ticking off “famous bars” on a list, which she explained were not famous, but he wouldn’t listen.  They walked across sticky floors and sat at the bar, where he bullshitted and got very drunk.

It is fair to say that he had not sobered up for the reading.  As he read his lyrical prize-winning novel, he sometimes dropped to a whisper. He might have whispered the entire reading if the bookstore owner hadn’t scowled and ahemed loudly.

“You’re just f—ing stupid,” he told one plucky woman during the Q&A.

“Actually I’m not.”  You could tell she thought he was  f—ing stupid.

He accused one elderly man of not reading the book. “That is a f—ing puerile criticism and the answer is in Chapter 29, which you obviously didn’t read.”

Another flustered interrogator called him the new Fitzgerald.

“I don’t admire Fitzgerald.”

After the reading, he stalked off to a bar around the corner.

“That’s it.  He can find his own way back,” the PR woman said.

She drove away, and who can blame her?