I think I’m done with the five part series on fame. It’s all such a mind fuck anyway. There’s no winning the fame game because everything fades. Because someone else will be anointed, crowned, bequeathed, and beheaded. Of the many lies I hear writers say is that they would just be happy to have their book published. That’s like not being asked to dance after you’ve put on your party dress and stood eagerly all night on the sidelines. It’s like being the last girl at the bar, 3 a.m. with your legs shaved. You are the tree in the forest no one heard fall. The nail in your own casket.
How are we to understand this desire to write and the desire to be read. Are they the same or different? Is writing enough in itself. Would you quit if someone told you that you will never be published?
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The all time best moment of my life was at a Christmas party last year. This scene actually happened IN FRONT OF MY DAUGHTER. I am introduced by the host to a young woman:
When Food and Loathing was published, something exciting happened. I was invited to go on The Today Show. How the publicist scored this, I will never know. In short order, I was told that I needed a) a new look and b) media coaching. The shopping trips resulted as they always have since fifth grade: in tears. The media coaching was worse. A petite, perky woman with frosted hair, a fat belt slung around her hips, and bright lipstick tried very hard to get me to sit up straight, look into the camera, and break me of the habit of going silent after a questions was asked, which apparently made me look brain dead. DNR!
This begins a five part series on fame. I met with a publisher who talked about a writer we both knew at the beginning of his meteoric career. Now, twenty years later, this writer is still a big deal. The friendship had its ups and downs over the years, but the two were solid now. I asked if the quality of the friendship was still as good. No, not really, the publisher answered, he’s changed. How, I asked, though of course I new the answer as soon as I asked it. Fame.
Meds? Check. Passport? Check. Notebook? Check. Panties, socks, striped shirts. Check. Secret project? Check. Powerbars, pencils, lucky necklace, crap magazines, manuscripts. Check. Did I say Passport? Jesus Christ where did this day go? Going to London to bid farewell to one of my dearest friends and the agent who taught me the only thing you really need to know: play it straight. No matter what mess I was in, I could call Abner for advice. He’d listen carefully, turn it over, you could feel his mind working like a master chess player, and then he would say, you know, I think you should play straight. Every time I went to London, he found a new restaurant for us to try that specialized in Dover sole because he knew I liked sole. And every time, after I took a few bites, he’d look at me and smile and say, “how’s the sole?”
I met a BDP (big deal producer) today who was amazing. When he was a PYT, he optioned a magazine article from New York Magazine that became Saturday Night Fever. Saturday Fucking Night Fever. Bam! Better yet, he wasn’t a one hit wonder or the kind of person who keeps talking about his one big thing. I once had lunch with an agent who had one hit, and he literally talked about it all through the lunch. I had no idea what he was talking about but played along, or played dumb. When I got back to the office, I discovered that the book he was talking about was TWENTY years old.
It’s the Jon Stewart hour after a long Monday. I have a stack of manuscripts that still need reading and a 378 page Restoration Hardware catalogue. It is the mother of all RH catalogues. There’s a also a Garnett Hill and Eddie Bauer, but they seem lame compared to this tome from RH. I realized some time ago that home decor catalogues were almost as good as Valium and twice as addictive. I tell myself to read at least one more proposal. But I just want one little peak inside the catalogue. One little peek at the nickel finishes, the “antique” sconces or the generously proportioned mirror recalling the shape of Moorish windows — a zinc finish lends the wood molding an aged patina. I wonder if I could do mash up of Pride and Predge with Restoration Hardware? Maybe I could do a mash up of my ass and my face.
I have a little problem, among many larger problems, and I’m going to break the news here and first on my blog, among my nearest and dearest strangers: Whenever I write, I fall asleep. Boom! One minute I’m typing and the next I’m out, nodding off in front of the monitor. It wouldn’t be so embarrassing if it didn’t also happen in front of my writing partner. At first, I tried to pretend it wasn’t happening, like the way you head snap at the movies or the opera and hope the person next to you doesn’t notice. As if.
Betsy Lerner 