Norman, Where Have You Been All My Life?

Okay, so I will admit something straight off the bat: I've never read a book by Norman Mailer. Never. I've known in that small part in the back of my brain where I shove all the things I know I should do, but don't want to, that I need to get around to reading some of his stuff; if nothing else, give a gander to the two Pulitzer winners he had.

Now that that's all out in the open, I'm going to just quickly say that Norman Mailer may be my favorite author of all time. Not having read a single, solitary word he's ever written in a book, I may be in love with a dead guy. Wonder why?

The Daily Beast published online a series of letters he wrote to various friends, colleagues, and two to reviewers. I love this guy's moxie and his style--the tone of his letters was artfully sarcastic and beautifully cynical. I love this guy. Have I already said that? Let me say it again. I love this guy.

Norman Mailer, where have you been all my life?

Freakishly Long

Okay, so this is going to be a freakishly long (and likely somewhat rambling) post because I need to wrap up loose ends. I'll create a little numbered listing type of thing because that might help. I said it "might," do not hold me to that because that phrase is an attempt at exculpatory language and can't be used against me in a court of law.

#1: 24-Hour-Read-a-Thon.

First off, I cannot type that phrase ("24-Hour-Read-a-Thon") without always mis-typing it as "24-Hour-Read-a-Thong," which (although funny) is weird, right? Second, I posted this blog (click the link to go there) saying I was going to try to update throughout the day as kind of a semi/quasi live blog of my adventures. However, I was a douche bag and didn't do that. Here's my run down (post 10:55 AM)

11:35 AM

I drove up to the north side of Indianapolis so I could get poised for the John Green event; went into Borders and was immediately off-put by their signage that Borders Club members (of whom I count myself because I've got a card that says I'm a member) can get one free hour of Wi-Fi with a purchase of $5 or more. Seriously, WiFi costs money at Borders? I only get one hour free? That's totally bogus--if Chick-Fil-A can provide free WiFi, Borders should be able to. So, with that negative image in my mind I went to find the Paper Towns display (which was easy because it was large, well marked, and directly in my path about 15' inside the store); however, I saw that the book was $19, and I'm notoriously cheap. Seriously, I hardly ever buy hardback books and I generally like to read books from the library and/or from the 1/2 price book store because I'm so cheap. I picked up Green's first book, Looking for Alaksa, at 1/2 Price Books for $5, and got a second-run paperback edition of An Abudance of Katherines for $4. I had a really hard time justifying paying more than double the combined cost of the first two books for the third book. I'll get it, I promise, it's just that I'll wait a bit. Plus, and this is a bit of a rationalization, I prefer paperbacks because they're more lightweight and often smaller, so I can fit them in my purse and carry them with me--something I love to do so as to always have a book on hand.

12:00 PM

Daunted from all that suckage at Borders, I took my person and my free time over to the mall and got a great little crappy Chinese mall food lunch (steamed vegetables and two spring rolls from Panda Express) and sat in the food court reading The Sparrow. This book is seriously awesome, and I love it. So good. Can't say it enough. So good. See, I just repeated it.

1:35 PM

I was caught up on The Sparrow, so I left the food court, stopped by my car to pick up my copy of Beloved and walked over to Borders to get myself a seat for John Green's appearance. Whilst waiting for John Green, I was reading Beloved and loving it. Seriously (am I saying that a lot in this post?), Toni Morrison deserves every single award they give her. I was reading the section about Sethe's milk being stolen and Halle hiding in the loft of the barn, and Paul D not being able to talk to him when Halle had the butter on his face because Paul D had a bit in his mouth, while sitting there and I thought I was totally going to lose my stuff. I was like 2 seconds away from devolving into a big sloppy crying mess in front of a crowd of strangers. So tragic. So beautifully written. Awesome writing.

2:00 PM

Then, the show started, and we started to transition away from awesome. I do like John Green, I promise with everything within that I do. However, there was something surreal about this event that was kind of like an out-of-body experience that I'll describe in Section 2 of this post. Weird. Anyway, Green's funny and provided some opinions and read some great portions from his book, and then I left.

3:35 PM

I drove home and met my sister at our block party that we went to under duress because we wanted to be neighborly. Anyway, we high-tailed it out of there as soon as we could.

4:35 PM

We drove over to our church and participated in the harvest party/missions conference. This was a wholly uninteresting experience (although I ate three of the tastiest hotdogs EVER). I tried to read some more while in the pew without being obvious.

8:15 PM

We got home and watched three episodes of The Wire and I read more of Beloved during this. There's something about watching The Wire that's like swimming. You don't realize the toll it takes on you while you're at it, but afterward you're completely bushed and want to go to sleep.

11:45 PM

Sleep. Sorry, I majorly sucked at the 24-Hour-Read-a-Thong. I'm such a douchy loser.

#2: John Green Appearance

The concept of Paper Towns is fabulous--one of the fundamental characters in the book is purposefully written so as to be unknowable, people think they understand her, but they don't. This is a giant allegory for the human experience--we can never truly know the pain/suffering/emotions/experience of anyone other than ourselves. This is both a good thing (allowing us to exist because with perfect empathy we would implode) and a bad thing (we trivialize and/or dehumanize others' experiences because we project our perspective onto their life).

What's so wonderfully ironic about this is that this is why I didn't have the most super stellar time at this book reading event that I had hoped to have had. First off, John Green is a brilliant writer (I'm reaffirming this). Second, he is genuinely funny. Third, I tend to have unrealistic expectations that are unnervingly vauge and will change capriciously, making it essentially impossible to please me. All that to say, I had built up these expectations that going to this event would be like the greatness of watching his YouTube channel magnified by like 100 times or something. Unfortunatley, and this is probably entirely my fault, it was exactly like watching his YouTube channel--no different except that he was talking in person at a Borders, rather than me watching him on my computer at work. Second, (this might be an oversaturation thing or some phenomena of our media-obsessed culture), but many of the questions were similiar to things that I had seen him speak about previously on his video blogs and could have predicted the answers that he gave--there were no new revelations (again, I remind you that I think I had anticipated some fire breathing or other great dog and pony show tricks, which was my fault).

It was just so weird because he starts off with a reading of the book (brilliant) and talks about the message of the book. And the experience that I'm having at this book reading, which mind you, I think I'm the only person experiencing these emotions because it seems as if everyone else is seriously blitzed by the event, is exactly what this book is talking about and I'm thinking that this is so weird because it's like I'm outside of the book or something. So weird. Very existential. Whatever. I can't truly describe the weirdness of the experience because it doesn't truly make sense on a rational level.

I left there thinking that: 1) I should not have built the event up in my own mind so much beforehand, that was unfair toward the author on my part; and 2) Authors (and actors and anyone else with any degree of "celebrity") are just people. I wondered why I would go out of my way to have him read an excerpt to me (which he's done on his blog)? I understand that it's a thing to show support for the author, but also purchasing a copy of the book is a means of showing support. Whatever, I'm probably weird and too in my own head space to get a firm grip on reality right now.

#3: The Library/Graphic Novels

I love the library. Love it. Like in the way that I can build up expectations and the library never ceases to surprise me with its goodness and ability to please me. I went on Sunday to renew the movie Great Expectations because I still hadn't watched it. Anyway, I was browsing around and stumbled into the Graphic Novels section and picked up some seriously choice works. I have a love for anyone who can do something really well--play the cello, draw comics, speak another language, whatever. I find true genius in many forms, and am wowed by the people who do great graphic novels. I'm just starting to find the genius of this, but here's what I checked out: Graphic Novels: Everything You Need to Know, The Making of a Graphic Novel, 300, 1602.

I leave you with this quote about graphic novels:

"Far from being literary fiction’s halfwit cousin, the graphic novel is actually its mutant sister, who can often do everything fiction can, and, just as often, more." - Dave Eggers [Source]

The Final Solution

Answers, answers everywhere! Okay, so like two weeks ago I wrote this blog proclaiming my fear of autographs. The next day I posted this blog as a possible solution to my sticky scenario. The second blog elicited feedback that the author might not be 100% down with that little situation. Anyway, I sent an email to said author, John Green, and here's the response I got:

Yes, I very much think you should go, and I am happy to sign that printed out blog post (or anything!). The important--and most fun--part of the event is the reading/talking about books/answering questions part, anyway. Hope to see you in Indy!

Best wishes!
John

What a wonderful guy, all willing to email back and forth with demented fans. He's great! (And I have my answer straight from the horse's mouth.)

I've Got an Answer

Some of you might have read this post yesterday (about my John Green book tour-related conundrum). Some of you even gave me some suggestions that got me thinking.

I think I've developed a solution. I formatted the content of that post and some responses onto an 8.5x11 size sheet of paper and printed it. I'll have him sign my blog about not wanting him to sign my book. [The image at right is a black and white rendering of what I printed in color.]

What do you think?

I'm Ashamed to Admit This...

...But I need to confess a short-coming I have and seek out your assistance.

The insanely talented author John Green (Paper Towns comes out on October 16) is doing a book tour for said book. There are two stops in my general area: October 18 (Borders on the north side of town) and November 4 (Election Night Extravaganza down in the Indy suburb of Greenwood).

It would be an understatement to say that I'm super stoked about this. What I'm not super stoked about is my lack of knowledge regarding book tours. What does one do at a book tour? I'm going to assume Senor Green is going to do a reading of the book, perhaps a Q&A, and then an autograph/signing line. That's where I get tripped up. I'm one of those weird people who eschews autographs--why do I want people writing on my stuff just because they're famous (to some degree)? I don't like the idea of that... never really have... I'm sure that makes me weird.

However, can one go through a line, wanting the opportunity to meet someone that you admire them for their dedication and creativity, but also tell them you don't want them to write on your stuff? Is that socially acceptable? Would a "creative type," such as an author, appreciate that idiosyncrasy of your personality?

If one does go through the line, sans seeking the autograph, I would assume said person would have to have a pretty awesome question and/or comment to share with the author. What would that be? I am clearly open to suggestions (drop them in the electronic comment box).

Today's Quote of the Day can be found over at the "What Was I Watching?" blog. Today it comes from "Gossip Girl," so you'll want to check that out too.

A New Feature

I'm adding a new feature to this blog (in case you couldn't tell by the title of this post). I like to call it, "Quote of the Day," (because that's original, right?).

Anyway, this feature should appear regularly (nearly every day of the work week), regardless of whether or not I post a full-length, unique "What Was I Thinking?" blog post. Additionally, this feature may appear as either a footnote to said "full-lenth, unique 'What Was I Thinking?' blog post," or its own truncated "What Was I Thinking?" blog post (with or without another full-length post).

These quotes may come from books I'm reading at the time, a great TV show I watched last night, a recent movie that's been tumbling around in my mind, some gem I picked up from the radio (all those who eschew NPR, beware), or it could take the shape of some good news from the information super-net.

To give you a sampling, here is The Quote of the Day:

"Good novels allow us to feel what the characters feel, no matter how dissimilar their circumstances and ours."

This quote is from a book review posted by Curtis Sittenfield (author of Prep and other novels) right here on the New York Times website. It's a good break down to answer the burning questions of "What is Chick Lit?" and "Can Anything Categorized as Chick Lit be Any Good?"

I'd like for all of you loyal readers to drop a comment below and let me know, if you could ask any author any question, what would it be?

[Editor's Note: I've started highlighting my tags in bold when they are referenced in the blog post... that should help to locate things if you do a search. Hope it doesn't make things more confusing.]

Biggest Cop-Out Ever

Seriously, I have now found the biggest cop-out in the history of the world, and I have some proof for you.

WARNING: Back story alert!

Okay, so the book Breaking Dawn was awful--bad writing (character development and plot were essentially a non-event in this book) and bad editing (commonly-accepted rules of English grammar and dialogue were also a non-event in this book). For more on this, check out the message boards at Amazon.com and Twilightmoms.com.

Anyway, the author is asked about this in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, and she reports that the reason the book has been so negatively received is because the fans' expectations were too high and too varied. Not because her writing and the editing wawful (and the fact that she admits in part 3 of the interview that she writes sans a greater purpose for her work).

Way to go, Stephenie Meyer--you are a complete and total sell-out. Well done! Kudos! You deserve more advance payments on books that are sub-standard! (You're a shining beacon for the English Department at Brigham Young University! Way to go alumnus! Steve Young would be proud of you.)



Check out the videos here: Entertainment Weekly.com Behind-the-scenes videos.