High Adventure at the Printer's Row Book Fair!

Took part in the Printer's Row Book Fair yesterday. They put me in this panel discussion called "Young Author Interactive" in the Nelson Algren Tent.

The moderator was the literary director of the national endowment of the arts, and this was his third panel in a row he was moderating. The "crowd" was comprised of my girlfriend, a few stragglers, and some former co-workers of the only other panelist.

Perhaps the highlight for me was the moderator asking me if I realized this was a "Y.A." book when the word "fuck" is used 3 times on the first page. I thought that was really funny and laughed a stammer of an answer. We had fun up there. The moderator said it was his favorite of the panels, probably because me and the other guy, Andy Behrens, were actually entertaining and not all that serious about the "great burden of litera-tour."

There were no questions from the audience. Andy asked me what books I read as a teenager, and I got to tell the story of being a freshman in high school and having to do a book report on a biography. My Dad wanted me to write about Chuck Yeager. I wanted to do it on Keith Moon and the book "Full Moon: The Amazing Rocknroll Life of Keith Moon" by Dougal Butler, easily the funniest book on rocknroll ever written, complete with a glossary in the back of U.K. slangterms (like Irvine Welsh's books) and rhyming slang. I'll never forget my Dad driving home from the Altamonte Mall looking at the pictures of "Full Moon" during stoplights, getting increasingly angry at me, culminating in the furor erupting over the picture of Moon leaned over his girlfriend's backside, hand on her pantied ass, with the caption, "Keith with a little piece of his girlfriend Annette."

Anecdotes like these gets laughs at book fairs. If you're the least bit funny and reasonably personable, you tend to go over well at these things, because I guess so many writers just mumble like so many indie-pop college deejays in the middle of the night, and their answers to questions are about as interesting. You don't even really have to be all that funny, either. That's what really struck me about that "Reader's Manifesto" book that came out a few years back...how so many of the blurbs talk about writing that's "laugh out loud funny," and most of the time it's more obvious than a sitcom. It's just that a writer is expressing anything beyond the usual workshopped emotions is a surprise to everybody.

Mr. Kogan had asked me to do this before he was a guest on the talkshow, because I guess he liked that I could be coherent at 8AM to be on his radio show. That's cool, but of course, the worry is becoming the literary equivalent of George W. Bush: a pretender.

Because...shit...there is the nagging sense of "what am I doing here?" Here amongst the literati. It's not a Blackout kind of crowd--that's for damn sure--and it was strange to hear the nervous twittering laughter of the dozen or so audience members just because I said I've done readings in bars. How the hell else is the writing going to get out there to people who don't read?

But the interview segment was enjoyable and in the end I was glad to be a part of it. Afterward, Andy and I sat at these tables so people could get their copies of our books purchased. The line was not long. In fact, it was a lot like that scene in "This is Spinal Tap" when they were there to sign copies of "Smell the Glove" in the record store completely devoid of customers. I did talk to a nice lady who bought a copy of the book for her nephew who is also in a band. Surprises like that--that this book is being read by somebody beyond at least two degrees of separation--is gratifiying. I almost want to apologize to people (half the fun of hanging out with Jimmy from the Tyrades lately is exchanging self-deprecations about how we suck--Jim and his band, and me and my writing) I don't know who purchase this, but then I think it's just cool people are reading it.

Then Sara and I walked around. It was a perfect day outside, the kind that happens once every 25 years or so in Chicago--and literally thousands of people were wandering around browsing for books. It's the same feeling I get at the Metro on the last day of Story Week, when hundreds of people show up just to hear a bunch of writers read their work. This kind of thing isn't supposed to be happening at a time when supposedly nobody reads anymore.

We peeked into this rare bookstore in the middle of Printer's Row that I had always been too chicken to go into for fear of being too low-class or something. The place was amazing, and actually a Columbia student is one of the employees there. He removed from under glass one of the volumes of the complete works of Mark Twain that were personally signed by the man both "Mark Twain" and "S.E. Clemens." These went for $7000. $1000 was what they wanted for the Olympia Press first printing of "Lolita." Artifacts like these make me drool like record nerds holding the A&M Sex Pistols seven inch.

Then it was off to Old Town, to play drums in the practice space. Put away the all-access purple laminate that says "author," and let Sara take home the complimentary tote bag. Go to a bbq where Hoben will play Radon. Get off the panel and go back to life.