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Writer

THE PRACTICAL

Making David Sedaris Laugh

L E SSONS L E A R N E D ON T H E BO OK T OU R

book snobs ask, Are you reading at the Tattered Cover? At Dark Delicacies? How about Codys? Or Barbaras? Or Powells? A book tour is just as exhausting as doing oldtime vaudeville on, say, the Shubert circuit. It includes appearing at the Strand in New York CityBooks & Books in Miami, FloridaLemuria in Jackson, Mississippi. Its a long series of one-night engagements sandwiched between early-morning ights and train rides. Left Bank Books in Saint LouisRainy Day Books in Kansas CityMalaprops in Asheville, North Carolina. Late in life Mark Twain lost most of his fortune and was forced to pay the bills by almost constant tours of this sort. Thats how he died: The stress killed him. Vromans in Pasadena, CaliforniaBooksmith in San Francisco Elliott Bay Books in Seattle. In Portland, Oregon, Powells City of Books is the equivalent of playing the Palace. Each room of the city-block-sized building is named for a different color. Please understand, each of these rooms is the size of most independent bookstores. The Green Room, for example, is the stores main entrance. For years Powells staged book events in the Purple Room. The drinking fountain in the adjacent Rose Room is legendary because longtime employees swear that the ghost of the stores founder, Walter Powell, occasionally appears there, almost always on Tuesday nights. The Orange Room is where the store buys used books, and insider sources report that surly, less socially apt staffers are relegated to work there. The Orange Room is the Alba of Powells. For years a canister of ashes moved around the store, bumped from shelf to shelf. These were the cremated remains of a book lover who wanted to spend eternity at this, his favorite place. In the street entrance to the Orange Room is a column sculpted to look like a stack of books, and its sealed inside this stone column that those ashes found their nal resting place. The Pearl Room is on the third oor, where the Rare Book Room occupies one corner and the rest is given over to art, architecture, lm, and erotica books. My insider sources swear the Pearl Room is the stores cruisey sexual pickup
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C H U C K P A L A H N I U K is the author of Fight Club (Norton, 1996), as well as twelve other novels and two books of nonction, all of them national best-sellers. He lives in the Pacic Northwest.

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spot. Otherwise, its a gallery, a won- Fight Club, hers, Little Miss Strange (Al- ing consisted of people sliding their derfully big, empty space where authors gonquin Books, 1997)were published open books past her while she leaned present their work almost every night. within a few months of each other. She over them and wrote her name at arms The trouble is: Nobody teaches you was succeeded by Steve Fidel, who co- length. The game changer was the tour how to do a book event. A publisher ordinated author appearances until he when she hurt her leg boarding her might send you on a tour to promote joined the Peace Corps and went to ight and had to be taken to the emera b o o k , b u t w o nt gency room upon arrival. With coach you about what the help of painkillers she did Nobody teaches you how to do a book event. to act ually do while the Powells event that night, standing in front of A publisher might send you on a tour to promote transformed. She touched the real, live readers. Its books. She hugged her fans. theater, butusually, a book, but wont coach you about what to actually Giddy, she laughed and juggled for t he aud ienc e her two tiny Yorkies, to everyinconceivably boring. ones delight. do while standing in front of real, live readers. Go look for yourself. At Powells you see the litCheck out a few nights erary gods at their not-best. Its theater, butusually, for the audience at Powells. Its one train E x hau sted f rom week s of wreck after another. sleeping in a different hotel inconceivably boring. But theyre wonderful bed ever y n ight. St ar ved. train wrecks. In the interest of full dis- work in Budapest. Both worked with Lonely for family. Hungover. Here closure, I studied writing with Joanna hundreds of authors. they are. W hen Bret Easton Ellis Rose, the person who for many years Through my friends at Powells I came to promote his story collection, organized author events and publicity learned that Amy Tan doesnt like to The Informers (Knopf, 1994), his novel at Powells. She and I were students in touch people, or books. Its for some American Psycho (Vintage, 1991) was Tom Spanbauers weekly workshop, reason having to do with germs or still freshly stuck in everyones craw. and our respective debut novelsmine, viruses, and most of her autograph- So many politically outraged people

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telephoned the store, threatening to plant bombs, to throw pies, to splash red paint on him, that Ellis spent the evening in a scrum of bodyguards. When Jonathan Franzen appeared to promote The Corrections (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001), he told what seemed like wr y, funny stories about the local publicist who was escorting him around town. Unknown to him, everyone in Portland adores this woman, Hallie. To date, the Portland literati still spit on the ground when his name is mentioned. Hell hath no fury like an audience of Portland book snobs. Few stores manage author events as well as does Powells. There are seats for everyone. The microphone works. Theres no competition from any loud espresso machine, and they even cease overhead annou ncements. The except ion was when Diana Abu-Jaber launched her lovely novel Birds of Paradise (Norton, 2011). Her reading there was inspired. Spellbinding. Listeners were enthralled as Diana built dramatic tension. Nothing existed outside of the sound of her voice until Attention, Powells employees the PA speakers blared, Does anyone have a copy of The Catcher in the Rye? The narrative spell was broken. There were a few nervous laughs. Still, Diana forged on. Reading clearly, enchantingly, she built to a new climax, and just at the cusp of her payoff Attention, all Powells employees Does anyone have a copy of The Catcher in the Rye? Twice more she pushed on past the interruption, and twice more the announcement drowned her out. By the

Q&A session, she was almost in frustrated tears. What no one knew was that a larger drama was taking place. When anyone loses a child at Powells the store goes into lockdown. The Catcher in the Rye

books. Its a kind of reverse miracle to see that this profound story came from this profane source. Authors, even brilliant ones, get ustered, act badly, but at Powells you can shake their hands. Yes, the same hands that wrote The Joy Luck Club and In nite Jest. Its amazing.

HIS br i ng s u s t o D a v id Sedariss appeara nce in Portland. David is the only person whos ever given me good advice on what to do at a public reading. Glorious advice. In the interest of fuller disclosure, David gave me this advice in Barcelona, where he and I were spending a week. We were there with Jonathan Lethem, Michael Chabon, and Heidi Julavits, doing a week of public readings and media inter v iews at somet hing called The I nst it ute of North American Culture. Rather a deep-pockets project that prompted Michael to the conclusion that the CIA was funding the whole shebang and our real agenda was to promote goodwill for America, not an unlikely idea after September 11, 2001. David Sedaris Anyway, it was in Barcelona that David and I went shopis the coded cue for staff members to ping one afternoon. At an open-air ea market, I was peblock all exterior doors and prevent the lost or kidnapped kid from leaving the rusing a box lled with antique chandebuilding. There are other book titles, lier crystals, silently debating whether representing other crisis situations, but or not to spend two hundred euros on really, you should read Birds of Paradise. a deck of swastika-emblazoned playing cards issued by the Naziswere they an Its a wonderful book. More i mpor t a nt t ha n seei ng a eternal totem of everlasting evil, or just seamless, perfect show, the magic in poor taste?when apropos of nothof Powells is that you see these au- ing, David said, I cant believe youre thors in the esh. Tired or grumpy really gay. In response, I pointed out the fact especially tired and grumpy or loaded on painkillerstheyre living proof that I was wearing pleated pants and a t h at ac t u a l hu m a n b ei ng s w r ite pink silk shirt. I was in Barcelona with

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my partner of many yearsas was he. And I was haggling over eighteenthcentury chandelier crystals to hang on my Christmas tree. I said, The only thing that could make me more gay at this moment would be a cock in my mouth. And David laughed. And not just a polite laugh, he brayed. I still marvel at that moment: I made David Sedaris laugh! Beyond that, while we shopped, he told me to never read from the current book while on tour. Always read from the next one. Doing so builds reader awareness of your upcoming work. It rewards the audience members by giving them something exclusive. And it beta-tests the new material to see if its actually as funny as you imagined. As if to illustrate the last point, the next time I saw David was in Portland. He was telling an anecdote at a public reading. In front of hundreds of rapt listeners he described sitting in the lunchroom of a medical examiners ofce, at a table of people eating food. Talking

shop, cramming sandwiches and potato chips into their mouths, they were watching an autopsy in the next room through a large window. The subject was a dead boy, eight or nine years old. At the book event David worked his audience, describing the dead childs blonde hair and unmarked body. The boy looked perfect, as if he were just asleep. Hed fallen on his bicycle, and now he was dead. Among the readers present, you couldve heard a pin drop as David described in slow-motion detail how the attending physician cut across the childs forehead and peeled aside that lovely face the way youd peel an orange. Among the lunchroom observers, someone pointed out the stripped skull and the exposed, magenta-colored musculature. His mouth still full of half-chewed tuna sandwich, this man said, See that, there? That color of red? Thats the color I want to paint our rec room. Everything about the story shouldve

worked. The setup, the pacing, the payoff. David Sedaris is a brilliant storyteller. But this was Portland, Oregon, the capital of Earnest Empathetic Sincerity. At the punch line, no one laughed. Hundreds of faces just stared, their eyes brimming with tears. A few sniffed loudly. Okay, one person laughed. I laughed. Give me a break it was a hideously funny story, but the beta test had failed. Needless to say it did not go into his next book. And at the insensitive braying those hundreds of weeping heads swiveled to glare at me. David had laughed at my joke in Barcelona. Id laughed at his in Portland. And now all those readers who loved him had someone safe they could hate. And, no, I didnt buy the Nazi poker deck. This essay is taken from My Bookstore: Writers Celebrate Their Favorite Places to Browse, Read, and Shop , edited by Ronald Rice, published in November by Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers.

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