TEV features a guest report from writer Katherine Darnell on the Dave Eggers/Jim Shepard reading in L.A. last evening.
So a couple years ago, Dave Eggers came to Malaprop’s in Asheville in support of You Shall Know Our Velocity. My bookclub was in attendance — I’d pulled strings and secured us third-row seats (my one moment of total Asheville power, can you tell how drunk with it I still am?) — and Eggers was charismatic and funny as billed. You have to understand it was like a rock star frenzy in the store: I talked to a friend who works there the next day and she said, “I’ve never seen anything like it. Women kept calling and asking us to pass along their numbers,” and then just shook her head like this wasn’t the kind of thing she went into bookselling for, to pimp out brainy chicks.
Now the other thing you should know is that my bookclub is made up of awfully glamorous gals — you can tell we’re glamorous because of our code names: Cinnamon Girl, Minx, Sex Kitten, The Celebrated Fox. (I’ve got the least sexy name: Sweet Tart. I’m agitating for an upgrade.) We’re like the Pink Ladies except with valid ID and a stupendous working knowledge of Middlemarch. Except after standing in line for an hour to have our books signed, in this atmosphere of riotous Eggers idolatry, we are thoroughly cowed & shy & dejuiced of our moxy. The whole interlude of standing around has taken on the psychic dimensions of waiting for an audience with the king.
So we finally reach the table where Eggers is signing. And my friend Joy goes up first, to have a couple books signed for the teenage son of a friend of hers. She looks very solemn and pale. Eggers smiles at her but you can tell he’s tired. And he takes the books and says, “What’s your name?”
And Joy stands there and you can see her struggle with the fact that the books aren’t for her, but for her friend’s son, so her name, Joy, is, in fact, not the issue; and you can also see her decide that this seems like a lot to explain and this guy looks tired; and then you can see her just sort of socially strangling on the whole complicatedness of the situation the way people-who-have-been-made-shy do. And so, in answer to the question “What’s your name?” she goes with the name of her friend’s son, which happens to be,
“Rod.”
Really, that sequence — “What’s your name?” “Rod” — is one of my all-time favorites, up there with the time my friend Ben Choi, thrown from the hood of a car during a game of “Starsky and Hutch” our junior year of college and concussed, was taken to the doctor. Pen poised to write a prescription for painkillers the doctor asked, “Any allergies?” “Yes,” said Ben. “Salmon.”
You should seriously be considered as a Dave Barry replacement as his “funny” columns have become tired and pasty. Between this and the posting in which you use the line Maud Newton considers the funniest thing she’s ever read, you’ve hooked me as a reader for life.
How exactly was the game of Starsky and Hutch played on the collegiate level? Was it against another, visiting, University???
Enjoy,
Comment by Dan Wickett — 9/2/2004 @ 5:41 am
That’s hilarious! We only ever played TJ Hooker, which involved nothing more than lying on the hood doing bong hits. Thems was the days, eh?
Comment by Jimmy Beck — 9/2/2004 @ 9:20 am
Dan,
Imagine “Starsky and Hutch” more as an intramural sport. This is how I understand the events of that night, which took place on the quad in front of Frost Library: My friend Dan Purcell had, as it happened, a spanking-new Ford Tercel, which was being utilized for the game. Ben jumped on the hood and was grimacing through the windshield as Dan swerved and tried to throw him off. I am not sure who was “Starsky” and who was “Hutch”, nor even who was “the white hat” or “black hat”. Only that — as observers relayed it — Dan got too into “the moment” and swerved too sharply and Ben was thrown off.
Ben and I had another game we liked to play which made peculiar sense to ourselves but, it seemed, no one else. We called it “Bullet In The Gut”, and it was based on that scene in “Catcher in the Rye” where Holden Caulfield is punched in the stomach by the pimp and is making his way to the bathroom and starts pretending that he’s been shot. Basically, to play “Bullet in the Gut” you just announce, as you’re walking along with your friend, “Bullet In the Gut” and then start staggering and gripping your stomach. It is, as Jimmy would agree, even better if you play it with a bong.
Comment by CAAF — 9/2/2004 @ 9:44 am
Hysterical. My best comparable college/medical story was me being taken into the med centre early in the morning in a compromised state. A Chinese nurse took my blood pressure and looked concerned before announcing, “You dead.” My idignant reply was, of course, “I can assure you, my dear, that I’m not.”
On the subject of Eggers, whatever happened to Mark Leyner, who I think was funnier (and briefer)? Did he fall off the planet? “Et tu babe” was a classic.
Comment by Kevin Wignall — 9/2/2004 @ 12:06 pm
Mark Leyner is still around. He’s goes by “Neal Pollack” now…
CAAF, you are so funny. Thanks.
Comment by George — 9/2/2004 @ 7:59 pm
None of our college games took place in cars:
A) Body Abuse – two dummies standing at opposite ends of the dorm hall, assume 50 feet or so. Hands spread in cross form so hands touch each wall. Player a throws tennis ball at player b. Moving is a form of chickenhood and so even if the ball was headed at your nose or groin you did not move;
B) Hall football. Nothing like a little three on three in a closed space (what, four feet wide?) and a carpet the thickness of that paper we used in kindergarten. The most fun was to be tackled into the jam of an open door head first; and possibly best of all
C) Golf out the window. Just as stupid as it sounds – place ball in middle of dorm room, open window, swing through ball. Amazingly enough, nothing was ever really damaged outside, but once one sharpshooter broke his stero on the rebound off of the wall, the game was permanently moved to the floor’s bathroom. This constituted two windows, one on the side with the toilets/urinals, and one on the other side of the wall, with the showers. It was a safer game as those just watching went to the shower side and hung out the window. There was really no sweeter moment than hearing somebody on the toilet side connect with the ball and then hear richochet sounds of the ball hitting the wall, the stalls, the toilets, and of course, the cursing swinger. One guy couldn’t play golf so he used a baseball bat. We on the other side heard about four loud, no, really loud, clunks: ball hits bat, ball hits wall, ball hits doorknob in the head, bat hits floor, doorknob hits floor, holding head and trying really hard not to cry.
Enjoy,
Comment by Dan Wickett — 9/2/2004 @ 8:19 pm
CAAF, this post (and the nickname) convinces me that you and Laura Lippman were separated at birth.
Comment by Sarah — 9/3/2004 @ 1:03 pm
Thanks all. Sorry to be so tardy returning to Comments. The past couple days really were a misery as the Creature from the Phelgm Lagoon.
Dan, the first two games sound remarkably boyish but I would def. have stepped up to play the last one with the golf. Like releasing a Superball in a confined space.
Sarah, I only wish I could be Laura Lippman (who in all sorts of ways is cooler than me, including having written her first novels while working a tough job). She’s fantastic. Speaking of authors, the name actually resulted, in part, after a member read Donna Tartt’s The Little Friend and thought that must be what I write like.
Comment by CAAF — 9/4/2004 @ 9:42 am
CAAF,
Oddly enough, now that you mention it, I don’t recall any females ever stepping up to play either body abuse or hall football. And yes, much like a superball, only with a hard cover.
Glad the phlegm monster has returned to the lagoon.
Enjoy,
Comment by Dan Wickett — 9/4/2004 @ 10:52 am