Just in from a late night of boozin’ and brawlin’ at a launch party for The Orphanmaster. I love nothing more than knocking back a few diet Cokes and confronting the author’s sib when he confessed he hadn’t read her book yet. Yeah, let’s take it outside. Was that me who said you have to be supportive of your siblings? Me, from the Cain and Abel Driving School. And there are all the people from your life like some insane Facebook page come to life, who ring around the rosy and cheer because it isn’t every day or everyone who can bring a book into the world. A book. A book. A book. Jean looked so beautiful up on the podium, taking us through a series of slides depicting New Amsterdam and Dutch habits and fashions (muffs!) of the time. It was an ingenious way of introducing the world of her novel. I could have watched a hundred more slides because she so deftly explained what was special about each one and it was infectious. I looked around at the people and everyone had their best fifth grade face on.
Someone asked how I came to represent Orphanmaster. Well, I’ll tell you. I met Jean at Columbia. She was a year ahead of me and her poetry was amazing. She was amazing, not like all the other beret wearing monsters. She was bright, alive, and had no patience for nonsense. I admired her and was intimidated by her. She shined her light on me and we became friends. And then I became her editor for her non-fiction books, and then her agent. Can you believe it. Jean! We’ve been married for 27 years. Congrats, old friend.
Do your sibs read your work?
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I’m in a good mood. I admit it. Sorry, August. But since I’ve been back, there’s been a lot of good news. So much so, that a) I’m sure I’ll be hit by a car and b) leads me to believe that going away for ten days might be the ticket instead of sitting at my desk and gnawing at my limbs and digits. The truth is I’ve learned over the years how to compartmentalize the agony associated with waiting to hear if an offer will be tendered, if a book gets reviewed in the NYT, if there will be a movie deal, if there will be a Turkish deal, if the jacket will be beautiful, if the title will be perfect, if the writer produces a book better than he or she thought possible, and beyond what anyone expected. I first learned how to wait as a teenager waiting for guys to call. Here’s what I could accomplish while waiting: organize my drawers, whiten my teeth, decoupage a box I bought at a tag sale, tweeze my eyebrows beyond recognition, re-read Me, Natalie, and eat a pound of pasta. As an agent, I handle the waiting by getting busy with administrative duties and sometimes slipping into a movie.
You know how when you don’t bring an umbrella, it rains? I didn’t bring a notebook on this trip, didn’t bring a sad copy of my screenplay, didn’t even have a pen in my pocketbook. In my previous so-called life, this would have been anathema; more: treason. I always traveled with at least one little notebook, usually a loose leaf the size of a deck of cards and in it I scrawled ideas, line for poems and always words whose meaning escaped me and that I would dutifully look up when I arrived home. Not this time. It was a wing and a prayer and a call for rain.
I am aware that I use this blog primarily as a place to work out my problems and give voice to the exquisite agony of writing and publishing. And that I indulge a particular kind of melancholy that infuses much of my day and relationship to writing and to art. But over the years I’ve had some peak days that I would be remiss in not mentioning. When I got my first promotion, when I received the Tony Godwin prize for editors under 30. (Yes, I was once under thirty.) When my author and friend Kim Wozencraft got a million dollar film deal for her first novel and we went to the Brasserie and ate steak and drank martinis. (Later at the office, I puked and fell asleep under my desk.) When two books I had edited (Prozac Nation and Autobiography of a Face) were well reviewed on the same page of the New York Times Book Review and both of their careers took off (both books still in print). Working with Temple Grandin. Selling my own book and buying a Cartier Tank watch. And yesterday at the BEA.
I spoke to graduate students at Columbia today. The usual. How to find an agent, how to put a proposal together, how to turn your dissertation into a trade book. How to write a query letter. To attach or not to attach pages. Make multiple submissions or not. All the important talmudic questions in the great book of publishing life. Walking through the campus, I gave a nod to the staircase that leads to Dodge Hall, home of the writing divisions. I still remember my first day of school, intimidated beyond belief, attempting to look cool and like I knew where I was going, when I tripped and was splayed out on those steps. Before I could even tell if I was hurt, I popped back up and hoped no one had been looking. The fall caught up with me later, or it foreshadowed greater collapse to come. But I always remember that fall, the symbolic freight it imported on a young woman thrilled out of her mind to be attending an MFA program, to starting her life after a disastrous undergraduate careerl
Everyone keeps asking me what I think of Girls, Lena Dunham’s new television show for, by, and about twenty-something women and women who remember what their twenties were like. They assume I will REALLY like it. First, I fucking hate it when people makes assumptions about what I will and will not like. (I hated Welcome Back Kotter, ET and Joni Mitchell.) Then, I feel suspicious; why are they assuming I will like it so much? In this case, obviously Lena Dunham’s size twelve body is to blame, then her “quirkiness,” her dysphoria. I had an allergic reaction to the show at first. But I kept watching, mostly out of jealousy. Lena Dunham is, like, 25 (I’m not going to pedia her, you can look it up if you care). And now ,five or so episodes in, I’m really liking it. It asks you to like it on its own terms, unlike most half hour comedies that will go down on you they’re so desperate for approval. Not Dunham, she takes off her clothes and drops her drawers, but you don’ t really know what makes her tick or what she’ll say next. I think that’s what I like about it: it’s not completely predictable. She’s a really good writer, too, god damn her. And a really good director. How! How! These kids today, they’re so fucking talented. My college age intern admitted that he watched it, called it a guilty pleasure, and then asked that he not have to talk about it. Say no more.
Betsy Lerner 