Posted on October 7, 2012 by betsylerner
I never mind coming home. I’m a person for whom travel presents a great many challenges (too many and unpleasant to elaborate here). What I love is coming home and returning to my beloved rituals. Especially opening mail, separating the wheat from the chaff, the catalogues, the invitations to join AARP, the circulars from Best Buy. There was a royalty check, a check from giving a talk to graduate students at an esteemed university, just enough to keep me going in the fantasy of This Is Your Life as a writer/sock puppet. I am highly disciplined and will not crack my People until I get my fat ass back to the gym. I scan the contents of The New Yorker like a doctor reviewing a medical chart, interested and distracted at once. I put bills here. I put my husband’s bills there. I have two letters from a friend from graduate school. THese I also put aside for later, only to savor.
What do you do when you get home?
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Posted on September 27, 2012 by betsylerner
I want to thank everyone again for making one of the most superb reading lists I’ve studied in a long time. I’m choosing Intrusions by Ursula Hegi. I loved her book Stones From the River, and I always like to read books about how writers suffer. In fact, I have quite a library in the genre and had never heard of it. So, thank you.
RUnners up: Room by Emma Donaghue. I’m always interested in books about extremely dark issues that become bestsellers, the received wisdom that dark books don’t sell. The Library of Shadows sounds deliciously scary. Crossing to Safety is one of those book I feel I SHOULD read. Why can’t I want to? NIPPLE ALERT on The Chronology of Water. Whoa. Too much nipple for me and it’s the kind of title that might sound good at first glance, but then….On The Beach by Nevil Shute has always been in the back of my mind. I read Middlemarch. Fair and Square. Wishful Drinking is a great fucking title. And I’ve always meant to read A Fine Balance (another great title).
But my favorite new title is Joseph Anton. This was Rushdie’s humble name for himself when he was in hiding. THe Joseph comes from Joseph Conrad and the Anton from Anton Chekhov. While I’m away next week, please add as many of your own pseudonyms using the “Rushdie Method” as you can manage. Mine, of course, is J.D. Sylvia
p.s. will the Hegi recommender send me his or her snail mail address to askbetsylerner@gmail.com to collect your THREE books!!
p.s.s. the best “Rushdie Method” name gets a signed copy of FFTT and a photograph (a mystery photograph)
p.s.s.s. have a great week. I’ll miss you. Back on the 8th. Miss you already.
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Posted on September 26, 2012 by betsylerner
The high holy days. As a teenager, it used to mean getting stoned outside the synagogue behind the playground named for kids who died. Why did I become irreverent instead of reverent. Why did I hate everything and everyone? Today in temple, I watched an older man rub his wife’s shoulders, then knead her neck, then run his hands up and down her back. The first knuckle on his index finger was crooked and rigid with arthritis; soon his whole hand would be gnarled like tree roots. I prayed he would stop when I noticed another man rubbing his wife’s back a few rows up. What the fuck is this, I wondered, an epidemic? Then I said kaddish for my father and for my sister, and then for some reason Lucy Grealy, who came into my thoughts unbidden. Then I went to a break the fast party and a woman came up to me and said, “You wrote that book. The fat book. You’re not that fat.”
I hope that all of us who keep writing are written again this year into the book of Life. Are you hanging in?
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Posted on September 26, 2012 by betsylerner
Thanks for all those suggestions you erudite motherfuckers. I’m going to need a little time to go through the comments again and pick a book (and a winner). I’m exhausted. Cutting deals. Crafting editorial letters. Reviewing royalty statements. Judging jackets. Dinner with rock stars. Slipping into a coma on Metronorth. Is Jimmy Fallon cute or is he the kid in the third row who always kept looking back at the kids in the last row and encouraging them with weak laughter? I’ve been an agent for twelve years. If this were the program I’d get some badass coin andf tell my tale at a meeting where the folding chairs scuff the linoleum and the basket we use for collecting donations is made out of synthetic wicker.
What are you hiding?
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Posted on September 24, 2012 by betsylerner
It’s starting. THe quest for the perfect three or four books to bring on a little vacation next week. So far, I’m thinking about the Hunger Games (you might have heard of it), Salvage THe Bones by Jessamyn Ward (won the National Book Award) and one or two more. Please suggest just one book. If I take your suggestion, I will send you three books. Does that sound like a good deal?
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Posted on September 23, 2012 by betsylerner
My Guy! Aaaron Paul! Winner! Congrats, Beautiful.
Posting live from the Emmy’s and I just want to say that I feel honored to be nominated in a category with as many talented and brilliant and wonderful actors and just being in your esteemed company is a prize. And I want to thank my acting teacher in the ninth grade and our housekeeper who read lines with me and and my TA freshman year at Harvard and my personal shopper Freddie and the third fry at Five Guys, you know why. Does my peel on tan look as bad as your peel on tan. Does this dress make my ass sag? I want to thank the brilliant creators, the team of writers, you guys are the best and make me look so good. HBO THANK YOU for doing what you do and giving artists the opportunity to be…artists. I want to thank the cast and crew, oh god, you are all so talented. Squeal! Thank you thank you thank you.
Is it me or is Amy Poehler showing more bosom than ever before? Is it me or is Tina Fey’s hair stylist a meth head? Does Kristin Wiig need one? What’s with the color, girlfriend, you are not a mahogany dresser. Is it me or am I bleeding?
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Posted on September 21, 2012 by betsylerner
Guys: CHeck this out. I finished watching the last episode of Breaking Bad Season Four and started googling myself and by that I mean surfing the web. I found a little movie some guy called Brandon made of Food and Loathing. It mocks all the most important scenes and an Asian teenager plays me, Betsy Lerner. I just want to say that this kid really made my day. This sort of mockery is what it’s all about. I deserve it. I love it. I eat my own vomit. If you feel like having a laugh, at my expense, check it out. I gotta go to St. Dunkins and buy a box of munchkins.
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Posted on September 20, 2012 by betsylerner
Plagiarism is in the air. Fareed. Jonah. And I’ve heard some writers, in the wake of these revelations, wonder if their own prose is squeaky clean. If they haven’t “accidentally” been influenced by other works and if they’ve inadvertently taken another writers words. I went to a parents’ breakfast at my kid’s school the other day and cheating was a big topic. The head of the school said that most of the cheating occurs among the best students. NOt the kids trying to get a passing grade. But those trying to be perfect, to get an edge. I don’t really know if cheating and plagiarism are rampant, but I don’t think that it happens inadvertently. You know your own writing like you know your own hands. Stealing other people’s words is the lowest of the low.
Cheaters, liars, plagiarists. You got any stories?
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Posted on September 19, 2012 by betsylerner
A few clients brought this story to my attention. My first thought was that it’s a wonder it doesn’t happen more often. Let’s face it, agents can be cunty and a lot of writers are…living on the edge. For a period of two months while I worked at Doubleday, I received packages in the mail (no return address) that contained effigies made of clay, buttons, sticks and what appeared to be human hair. I brought each one up to HR and was convinced that one day they would be bagged and presented as evidence in a trial where I am the one in a body bag. SOmetimes writers just show up without an appointment at the office with their manuscripts in hand. I’ve learned to just say thank you instead of reciting some hollow policy about not taking manuscripts because this person might be packing. I do not want to die in the line of duty.
Do you have a revenge fantasy?
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Posted on September 18, 2012 by betsylerner
Today, I had a breakfast meeting with an editor (egg white omelette with mushrooms and onions), and she took out an iPad and walked me through her company’s catalogue and more specifically the books she had acquired. She was able to enlarge photos with a flick of her finger. WHen I looked up from the tablet, I was staring at Steve Jobs and he smiled and nodded, yes, Betsy, you too can come with us. And then the woman continued and the jackets were fabulous and her quick descriptions were smart and pithy. And I thought that I probably had more than a few projects that might work for her, that I would show her. But I couldn’t get over the pad even though it was a brilliant presentation.
Why am I so old? How old are you, technologically speaking?
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Betsy Lerner 