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A New Slutty Trend I Like
I’ve been saying it for years. A decade maybe. Since Limited Too started doing bandeaus that one season. None of you know...
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Paperback launch party June 6.
Free drinks from Tumblr!
Featuring THE...
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yes okay nice
This is John Kenney. He wrote a great, funny, smart, emotionally true novel called TRUTH IN ADVERTISING. I will be in conversation with him tomorrow, January 25, for his book launch at Greenlight Bookstore.
Five years ago I left a man and it was messy and I went to Portland for the summer and when I came back to Brooklyn it was still messy so I went to Los Angeles for a while and there, at last, things seemed to be getting less messy, and I was working well and going for long walks around the hills of Silverlake every morning and I was drinking less and I found a yoga class I liked and freelance work I could do long distance and I started to remember what I was like before I was this person who was in a relationship that had gone bad.
And then, after a month of this way of life, I broke my ankle. I broke it very badly and I had to have a horrible surgery and I could not do anything but sit in this house in Silverlake for two months while I recovered. I popped Percocets and watched episodes of “Intervention” and did a passable job on my freelance work and read Olive Kitteridge and thought about someday writing a book exactly like that, but set in the suburbs of Chicago. I was in a tremendous amount of pain. I was bored out of my fucking mind. I couldn’t go anywhere because there were all these awful cement stairs that led to the house, and I couldn’t manage them by myself. So I was trapped in this house for months.
I hated those stairs. They were what was between me and sunlight. Me and the person I had been close to becoming again. Why were there so many stairs? Whenever I had to go to the doctor’s office I had to slide down those stairs on my ass, wincing on each step. Sometimes I would just open the door and lean up against it and stare at them, thinking dark thoughts. Those stairs, fuck those stairs so much.
I walked over there yesterday, to the place I had stayed, and took this picture, and they looked as ominous and dangerous as I remembered. I had an unpleasant physical reaction to them as I approached the house. My body chilled, and I was queasy. I took the picture, and got the hell out of there.
The spring after I got the cast off I wrote a novel about the whole experience. And then I threw it away. When you write a book you have to want to spend a long time with it. After you sell it you have to edit it a bunch of times, then you have to learn how to talk about it, then the book comes out and you do a bunch of readings and interviews, and it ends up being a long haul. And after I wrote about it and had processed it, I didn’t want to live with it anymore. To wear that cast for two more years? No. So I threw it away.
People are always shocked when I tell them I have thrown away a few books, but it’s actually a powerful act. As powerful as it is to publish something, it’s just as powerful to recognize you can walk away.
My UK publisher is cooking (or baking) something up over there in London.
This morning I was thinking about when I sold my first book.
I was on a plane back to New York and there was bad weather and we hovered over DC for an hour before they decided to land us there instead. Then we sat on the plane for another hour. The plane started to smell. There was no food left. It was 10 PM. There were a bunch of high school students on the plane, a class trip, and they started to get noisier and rowdier. I could not find anyone to befriend, and they wouldn’t let us use our phones. I read all of I Am of Charlotte Simmons on that trip, and that book is long.
Finally, they let us off the plane. We had to wait another hour to get our luggage. Then they told us they wouldn’t be putting us up in a hotel for the night. Instead, we’d all be getting on a bus back to New York. (In another hour, naturally.) My phone was nearly dead but I managed to get online long enough to see that my agent had emailed me to let me know that someone had bid on my book. I looked at all the miserable people around me. Even the high school students had stopped talking by then. I had not managed to make a travel buddy, so there was no one to tell.
We all stood in line, in the cold, waiting to get on the bus. I ended up sitting next to an oversized French ophthalmologist, in town for a convention. He barely spoke English, so I could not even make him my last-chance travel buddy and tell him my good news.
I stayed up all night on the bus though, smiling to myself. First book.
My pre-pub events start this weekend and are spread out over the next few weeks: a panel discussion here, a couple of bookseller conferences there, and one speech in front of 120 librarians, for which I have been told to, “Bring your A game.” (Those librarians do not fuck around.)
I am nearly 41 years old and I pretty much always feel like I need a nap, so my strategy is to get a lot of sleep, not drink too much, and always eat the salad appetizer. (And wear orange pants on gloomy days.)
I hope I get to see a lot of you very soon.
Stop being such a precious little princess and start writing again already. If you think you’re so special why don’t you write something special? Don’t waste time griping about minor, irrelevant bullshit that isn’t truly getting in the way of you accomplishing your work. You’re know you’re the only thing getting in the way.
(My pep talks always tend to be sort of hostile.)
I’m reading with Kate Christensen tonight at Greenlight Bookstore. Gonna wear polka dots and talk about New Orleans. See you there?
More info here.
Ain’t nothing like seeing your book cover all blown up and pretty.
An abbreviated version of a true story:
I was at a party this weekend and I was talking to some guy and when he found out I had a book coming out he said, “Oh, who do you aspire to write like?” And I said, “Me.” And he said, “No really, who?” And I said, “No one but me.” And he said, “No but come on, who do you want to write like?” And I said, “Me.”
And then he said, “Do you want to know who I want to write like?” And I said, “Sure.” And he said, “Jay McInerney.”
Fin.
I lost the weekend to this book.
