Tomorrow, I’ve been invited to give a reading at a bridge club and then play bridge with the members. I don’t think any other author that I know of has ever had to prove themselves at card table. Like for three hours. The good news is that Bridge players really want to play more than hear me gas on, so the reading will be super brief. The downside is that my game isn’t all that good. Next, a woman making a documentary about Bridge is interviewing me before the whole thing gets going. I’ve always wanted to be a talking head.

Are you ready for your close-up?

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Guys! A package arrived today. Inside was a copy of The Bridge Ladies (UK edition, ahem) specially stamped with one of the world’s most illustrious booksellers logos: Shakespeare and Co, Paris. It was sent to me by one you incredibly beautiful mental patients who hang out here at The Lerner Institute for the Chemically Imbalanced. I don’t want to embarrass her, but since the envelope was thrown away before a return address could be procured, I have to publicly thank NOVEMBER. Thank you so much. And if anyone else wants to start sending gifts, don’t be shy.

What’s the best gift you ever received? Material gift.

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I’ve been bingeing on Friday Night Lights this weekend (when I’m not reading Sophocles), and among the many things I love about it is how every single character is a great American stereotype, and yet they all feel very true to me. It’s almost like the more cliched they are, the more I believe in them (true blue quarterback, drunken hottie best friend, beautiful cheer leader they are both in love with, stalwart coach, loyal, supportive wife with the longest waviest red hair and good sense, painfully shy guy, painfully awkward guy, sexy girl flunking out, etc.) I’ve been able to predict how every story line was going to conclude, and I still cried at the end of every episode. My whole writing life, I’ve admired subtlety, nuance, ambiguity, grey area, etc. Why am I so in love with Tim Riggins?

Who is your favorite stereotype?

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I’ve had the great privilege of working with Neil deGrasse Tyson since 1989 when he published Merlin’s Tour of the Universe. His new book, Astrophysics for People in a Hurry debuted at #1 on the New York Times Bestseller List and is still there a month later. Congrats, Neil! I urge you to take a peek if you’ve ever wondered about stars and galaxies and black holes and dark matter, and ultimately your place in the universe. Until I read Neil’s books, I thought I was at its center. Spoiler alert:

What’s your place in the universe?

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In-between-projects jitters. Everything tastes like Diet Pepsi. Can’t find anything. Waiting for the weather to change. Invited to twenty parties, going to none. The dog is hiding in the blue room. I have 38 letters from a high school lover. I have 17 boxes of pictures and ticket stubs and photo booth strips and post cards. My computer is nine years old. I just got a check for $700. I have friends I don’t call. I play bridge in the middle of the night with strangers from all over the world. I have an idea. It’s vague and involves love.

What you got?

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When I was a lost and deeply depressed graduate student at Columbia University, I had the great good fortune of having a poetry workshop with Denis Johnson. I had read his first collection of poetry, The Incognito Lounge, many times, usually at my favorite cafe in the west village. He was gorgeous, his voice sonorous. During our first class, he seemed to be having some kind of panic attack because he couldn’t speak. And when a student kept hounding him, he fled to the bathroom. I fled the program a few months later. I wrote to Denis Johnson and told him that I was hospitalized and something of what I was going through. Some months later, he replied. He encouraged me to get well and go back to school if I wanted to. He encouraged the school to take me back. Most of all he encouraged me to keep writing. When he died earlier this week, I had a vision of him sitting in Riverside Park watching the silky waters of the Hudson go by.

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Thanks for all the great suggestions. The clock is ticking down. Now I want to be really petty. Shocking, I know. Lately I’ve been getting what I consider to be specious fan letters. They are from people who claim to love my writing, love The Bridge Ladies, love love love. Then, because they love me so much and feel so connected to my writing, they want to share theirs with MOI. One person wrote, “I think you’d make a great agent for me.” Another said, “because I love your writing so much, I’m hoping that you will love mine.” I think it irritates me so much because I just want to be like other writers, not a writer-pimp, which is I guess what I am.

Does anyone else around here have an identity crisis when it comes to being “a writer?”

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I’m going on vacation next week and the contemplation of what books to bring begins. I don’t use a Kindle or anything like that, so the selection of 4-5 books is a high wire act. There’s airplane reading, sitting in a London Park reading, reading on trains, in cafes, in bed. There’s the pull toward classics, the curiosity of the contemporary, the prize winners. I want to read Kay Redfield Jamison’s book on Lowell, but it’s a big boy. I’m also halfway through a couple of books, do I bring or leave them behind with their pouty faces?

Any recommendations?

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In a hotel, watching morning TV, waiting to give a book talk at a synagogue in Philadelphia. The thought pops into my mind: why am I alive, how many years have I been on Lithium, why can’t I remember the middle of the only poem I had committed to memory? Why is my dress tight? Why am I wearing a dress? Why isn’t my movie screening at the Tribeca Film Festival no matter that I don’t have a movie. Why do I always flood the bathroom?

HOw’s your morning going?

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When you finish a piece of writing, I recommend: printing it out, reading it aloud, make notes with a pencil, input the changes, put the pages in the potato bin for ten days to two weeks.  Reread, delete 2-10,000 words, read a major Russian novel, ask a trusted reader for feedback (no first degree relatives or people you’re fucking). Ask another reader. Revise again, read out loud again, potato bin, writer’s workshop or retreat. Find a therapist.

What do you do when you finish something?

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