The Awl

Hi, guys. Here is my heteronormative-as-fuck list of men to not fuck in 2k16.

Man-Literature-For-Men Man - Are Hemingway/DFW/Franzen bad authors? IDK. Life is complicated and shit, but your top author list should cite something not from the White Man’s Handbook for Looking Learned

The Christopher Hitchens/Malcolm Gladwell/TED Talks Guy - This man is gonna yell at you in an Olive Garden about how he took philosophy 101 and condescend to you about your worldview. None of this in 2k16. You want to act like you know something, you better actually know something.

The Ayn Rand Lover/Libertarian - Libertarians are people who read a Nietzsche quote on a desk calendar once and cemented up their worldview. No emotional children in 2k16.

The Male Feminist - This man is gagging to call you a cunt in bed. And maybe that floats your boat but there’s gonna be some half-hearted oral to follow so… he doesn’t get this one. Also, he WILL talk over you at a party about bell hooks. This man is the worst man because he has so assured himself that he is the best man.

Guys with No Guy Friends - In 2k15, we learned to back away from the woman who “doesn’t get along with other women.” The same is true of men who “don’t get along with other men.” They’re relying on platonic women for all the emotional labor in the world and aren’t gonna have a good relationship with you either.

A Man All About Space-Based Franchises - We fucked enough dweebs in 2k15. Star Wars is gonna leave the box office and, frankly, “nerd culture” is founded on talking loudly and sweatily over women. It is fine to like nerd shit but don’t be all about it.

“I’m Working On…” Guy - Unless that phrase ends in “my car,” run away from that man. He’s gonna be working on that play/movie/screenplay/adaptation of/book/novel/comic book for the rest of his days without any forward momentum or planning. He’s not “talking to” some agents. He’s talking to his mom and his diary.

The Wet Mop - This guy had hopes and dreams and then he fell down in a puddle. You’re walking around like a person who has her shit figured out, and he wants some of that. But you’re gonna try to lean that wet mop against something and it is gonna fall down again twice as hard. In 2k16, just leave that mop on the floor. Let it figure its own shit out.

The No-Bed Guy - Does this guy have a twin bed? Does he have a mattress on the floor? Does he have a futon? Does he have a mattress on a box spring on the floor? Does this guy have an air mattress? Does this guy just sleep on a pile of ex-girlfriend’s old scarves? Do not sleep with this man. If he isn’t bothering to invest in a bed frame and a bed you can comfortably fuck in, he won’t bother to invest in you.

The Finance Guy - Do not fuck this man. Have this man take you to dinner, and don’t fuck him. Have this man buy you some stuff, and don’t fuck him. Make this man take you to France, and don’t fuck him. Make him buy you a car, and don’t fuck him. Don’t fuck this man. It will drive him nuts, and he’ll think about you constantly when he is in the suburbs with two kids that have the names he thought about giving to boats, and you’re doing your part to destroy the capitalist system from the inside. Plus, he is 100% going to be bad at sex.

A Man with An Active Reddit Account - I do not need to explain this one.

A Man Who Reads Richard Dawkins - No one wants a man playing devil’s advocate between the sheets. 

The Man with Six Shirts - This goes back to No-Bed Guy. If a man cannot invest in himself, he cannot invest in you and you have THINGS TO DO. You have things to do and places to be and this man owns SIX SHIRTS. Do not reform this man in 2k16. Leave this man where he is.

The Man Who Mentions High School - Why? Why is he doing this? Does he have no plans for 40? For 30? Does he miss the days when his mom made him lunch and his only responsibilities were thinking about how he could be an astronaut but not actually doing anything to  be an astronaut? Get away from this man.

A Man with a Hoverboard - Either you are accidentally considering fucking a teen or you are considering fucking a lawyer. Either one should be illegal. No men who embrace high-cost fads in 2k16. They’re gonna think they can “trade up” at some point.

I mean it’s Buzzfeed, there’s really no surprise there

But then

OKAY SO THIS ISN’T A BIG DEAL RIGHT

WAIT GUYS WAIT

GUYS SLOW DOWN

IT’S ON MTV AND E! TOO HOW DID THIS HAPPEN

you got that right CBR

Bleeding Cool I feel the same (although given that it’s Disney now I can’t get my hopes up too much SIGH)

My affection for Hillary Clinton is hard to explain. It wins no fights and earns you no friends to admit it: Actual warmth, even protectiveness, toward this impossible, frustrating, contradictory, polarizing, disappointing woman. My finding Hillary intensely “likable” is weird, and I admit it. It doesn’t signify universal approval of her decisions. I can and do disagree with Hillary Clinton, regularly and strongly. But some part of me also hopes that Hillary Clinton is having a nice day. 

I’ve come to believe that, in some ways, saying nice things about Hillary Clinton is a subversive act. I spent much of this year working on a long project on how women are demonized in the media. Hillary Clinton was a fairly large part of that story – she had to be; if you want to talk “women that people hate,” she’s kind of unavoidable – and I spent a while sorting through Clintoniana, dating back to the early ‘90s, to find nasty things people had said about her, or common narratives about her personality. It wasn’t pretty – the worst stuff for Hillary was way worse than I’d expected, and there was way more of it than I expected to find – but it was also illuminating, in some key ways. I got a better sense of the pressures that she has to live with, and how they’ve informed her decisions.

I also realized that, unless you really take a look at those pressures, the narrative around Hillary Clinton’s “likability” is doomed to be inaccurate, in some way. She might even be very easy to dislike, if you weren’t looking at those narratives, or if you underestimated their severity. But, in my experience, trying to parse Hillary Clinton without also parsing Hillary-Hate is like trying to drink water without touching the glass. As long as you refuse to deal with the container, the actual substance tends to stay permanently out of reach. 

“I loved this book. All your books. I’m a huge, huge fan,” I told Mary Gaitskill when I met her yesterday in advance of our Lit Up interview. It was so horribly awkward to say this for some reason! It always feels oddly humiliating to confess to being someone’s fan. I’m not really sure why!  But I was glad I had said it when, toward the end of our conversation, we started talking about fame, how unpleasant it must be to be Rihanna-level famous and how many people aspire to being famous anyway.  Mary’s theory is that people confuse fame with love. That seems right. I don’t think it’s because people are stupid. It only starts to seem obvious that notoriety of any kind is a barrier between you and other people after you have experienced a taste of it. 

Toward the end of our conversation I said something I had been thinking about for a while: Sometimes, when people who claim to admire me meet me, they act mean to me. I understand why, I think. They need me to fail a test of some kind during our interaction. They’re looking for flaws because they admire some things about me but not others and they need confirmation one way or another about their undecided feelings. Or they want me to know that they aren’t some kind of sychophant FAN, that we are peers and they aren’t impressed by me.  I know that this is what’s going on because I’ve acted both of those shitty ways in my interactions with people I’ve admired over the years. 

Recently I was #blessed to receive an advance copy of So Sad Today, which I read very quickly and enjoyed thoroughly (as much as one can ‘enjoy’ a book about living with a mental illness, anyway) and then gave to Emily. When I dropped it off at her house her kid was a little fussy.  Emily comforted him while we chatted, sort of murmuring nonsense stuff into his little ear and gently bouncing him, at one point repeating “Why so sad? Why so sad?” to him in one tone of voice in between saying something completely different to me in another, and then I said “So sad today!!” and we both looked at the book and at then at Raffi and laughed.  I look forward to running this joke into the ground.

What I liked about So Sad Today is that it takes the experience of severe, chronic depression and treats it, not with a detail-obsessed, third-person remove (here I am thinking about that David Foster Wallace story, “The Depressed Person”) or a first-person from-the-trenches account, either highly medicalized or ending in triumph (I once took The Noonday Demon to the beach. “Your beach read is a book about depression?” – EG), but as a joke.  A dark joke, with intense repercussions, but a joke.  Don’t get me wrong; So Sad Today is, as the title suggests, very sad.  But it is trying to make the reader laugh.

I also treated my severe chronic depression like a joke.  What I mean by this is that I didn’t take it seriously. I didn’t do anything about it for a very long time, and when someone tried to talk to me about how I was, really, about my depression, a close friend or medical professional, maybe, I would almost always lie or change the subject, in a way I considered to be a ‘joke.’ But it wasn’t a joke, because my behavior was a. a deflection tactic, prima facie, and b. not funny.  If a friend asks how you are, and you say, “Fantastic!”, or worse, “You know, fantastic!”, relying on their ability to read between the lines and intuit that by “you know”  you mean “You know the nasty hoodie I call my “Darkness Visible” sweatshirt that never leaves my house? Well, I’ve been wearing it for 6 days straight,” you are not being funny.  

With acquaintances and strangers it was much worse. “Ha ha!” I’d think.  “This person doesn’t know that by ‘Fantastic!’ I mean, ‘I feel like I want to die 7 out of every 10 seconds!’  What a hilarious brilliant use of irony! God, I’m funny!” Right, yes, because all of this is so fucking hilarious and my own health will never be important enough for me to do anything about, because I hate myself – how funny.

Are all my jokes about listening to Mogwai and crying really jokes?

Are my jokes about listening to Mogwai and crying  just like 7 years ago really jokes?

I remember around the time I was doing this a lot, laughing at my awful inside jokes with myself about how I was actually “fine,” I also was a few months into a job that I had hoped would be temporary but ended up being pretty permanent.  My responsibilities weren’t enough to fill a complete 8 hour workday, so I spent a lot of time in a beige cubicle clicking around aimlessly on a computer and a lot of time hungover, because clicking around aimlessly on a computer was something I could do quite competently while hungover. Also if I was hungover almost daily I could attribute how bad I felt to the hangover, and not something scarier about my brain chemistry and general disposition. None of this was doing that brain chemistry and disposition any favors as far as feeling purposeful or worthwhile or hopeful about the future, either, but that didn’t seem obvious or even connected.  

Anyway, it was right around lunch, late October or November, grey and disgusting outside, and I was “fine.” An all-office email went out saying there was Turkish food in the conference room left over from a meeting, first come, first served.  The innocuous stampede of people moving towards the free food that always formed like clockwork 2-5 minutes following the receipt of such an email low-key amused me the way it always did – “People love free food!  Ha ha, we’re all such broke animals and life is nothing but a struggle to push someone else, at least one person, beneath you” – and I joined it.  When I reached the buffet there was not much left, and nothing I really personally enjoyed (a small list of things, growing smaller by the day), but I put some random food on my plate.  This way at least I would not have to eat my packed lunch, which was doubtless horrible, like all meals I prepared, or go outside in the rain to waste money I didn’t have on something else that would probably also be bad.  Then the person in front of me in line turned around quickly or stopped suddenly or maybe I wasn’t paying attention and just walked right into them – whatever, the end result was that my plate flew out of my hand, up, high in the air, fully revolving at least once, and landed food-side-down on the carpet.  I can see a way in which this is spectacular and pretty genuinely funny, but in the moment I thought everyone in the room already hated me (because who didn’t?) and I hated myself for being so clumsy and awful, and I burst into tears immediately, right there, in the conference room full of my nice, bookish, nonthreatening coworkers.  I knew I was way overreacting so while the person I had bumped into or whatever apologized I ran out of the room and into the stairwell. I didn’t even pick the plate up from the floor or try to clean anything, which for me and my identity as a Helpful Person is a huge-ish deal.

Once I was safe in the stairwell sitting on the bare concrete landing I cried and cried.  I could not stop.  I thought about how I was crying over pretty literally spilt milk and cried even more about how stupid I was.  I cried about how there was tzatziki or something all over my dress, which was old and stained already and didn’t really fit me or look good anymore because I had lost weight and also chopped off all my hair, and how I didn’t have anything else to wear that I didn’t also hate, at home or in the world, and about how if I tried to shop for something new I would just loathe myself for all the money I had ever spent and didn’t have and then I wouldn’t be able to actually make a decision and buy something, anything, anyway, just like I could not currently  make a decision about the most inconsequential things, such as as to whether to eat my packed lunch or go out for food or go back to the conference room and clean up my mess and get some different Turkish leftovers.  I kept crying and crying, really awful, uncontrollable, silent but wet Claire Danes-style sobs, for a long time.  I would slow down for a while but I couldn’t really stop.  Finally I just left work for the day, even though it was maybe 1:45, because I thought I was probably going to die.

We hyperbolize as a way to express ourselves strongly.  If we prefer a certain shade of nail polish, we’re obsessed with it. When I don’t like someone, I say they’re worthless.  I wanted to die, it was so terrible, we say, about an inconvenient travel experience.  

The thing about depression is that it does not recognize hyperbole. Life is worthless, you are worthless, none of this will ever change and things will always be this way, except the future, which while staying the same will also somehow certainly be worse. You know these to be facts the way you know your birthday and your eye color.

My Darkness Visible hoodie might be a punchline, but it is not a joke.  I spent a long time not really understanding the difference, but now I do.

“‘We convince ourselves we can own the identity of the anxious or depressed person.  Then it sneaks up again.’  It’s like I got this.  Then the mental illness is like, No, I’ve got you.”

I read that and felt like I had been kicked in the stomach.  I might have actually involuntarily said, “oof.”  I cried some, not as much as on the day of the Turkish food buffet, but some.  

I am better now.  In February, I finally started seeing a non-crappy therapist.  In March, I began seeing a non-crappy psychiatrist. Sometime in April I started feeling better.  I remember I was walking to or from Emily’s house, waiting for the light to change on the corner of St. James and Greene.  I felt weird.  I wasn’t dreading something I couldn’t understand or describe, I didn’t instantly hate everything I saw and felt, nothing annoyed me, I didn’t wish I was in bed.  I didn’t feel empty or raw or worthless, or like I needed to be alone in the dark. I hadn’t cried yesterday or the day before. There were things I wanted to do in addition to seeing Emily that day, and I knew I would do them.   Is this a good mood? I wondered.  Is this what being in a good mood feels like?

Mid-September. Early evening. Hudson Malone. Doug and Paul are sitting at the bar, both nursing Maker’s Mark neat.

PAUL: So. Harper Lee.

DOUG: Minting money.

Still?

You bet. Making bank everyday. You have no idea.

Not surprised. She’s a god. People love that goddamn book so of course it follows that Watchman would break big. (Doug laughs here) What?

Well…

Well what?

We dodged a bullet, is all. This had the potential to devolve into a huge mess.

What do you mean, potential? It was a mess. Front page of the Times, colleagues contradicting each other. Editor hadn’t read the book, others at the company didn’t know about it, lawyer making up stories about the provenance of the material.

Could’ve been a lot worse.

I’ll say. Fucking elder abuse.

Think what you want, man. All I know is the State has spoken and we are free and clear. The broad was determined to be compos mentis.

Fantastic. You should’ve used that in your advertising campaign: “Lee Compos Mentis. Watchman Lives.”

I actually wrote down the ruling (Doug begins scrolling through his mobile). You have no idea how many goddamn questions I was getting from customers. I was fucking terrified we might have to pull the thing. Here it is, and I quote (Doug reads this with emphasis): “There has been no evidence of manipulation, abuse or neglect.” Courtesy of the Alabama Department of Human Services. I served that statement right up to the folks at Books-A-Million. They were getting antsy when all this shit was breaking in their backyard.

I bet.

Thank god it all worked out in the end.

(BEAT)

Still. It’s not a feel good story. Know what I mean? The broad outlines are concerning. Not what you want people talking about in the run up to publication. (BEAT) It raises serious questions about our industry.

You should fucking talk with that new guy.

What new guy?

Leinenkugel.

Who?

The guy who is not Stieg Larsson.

His name is Lagercrantz. David Lagercrantz.

Whatever. It’s the same thing.

It’s not the same thing.

You’re right. Larsson is dead. Lee is alive.

He was dead when we acquired the trilogy. (BEAT) We never had a body. Now we have a body.

(BEAT) Is he Jewish?

Who?

Leinenkugel.

Lagercrantz. And I don’t fucking know.

Larsson wasn’t a Jew.

How is that relevant?

Just sayin’. Shouldn’t everything line up?

The only thing that needs to line up is his book next to number one on the New York Times bestseller list.

Which it has.

Exactly. (BEAT) We’re giving readers what they want. We’re giving them more Lisbeth.

And we’re giving them more Atticus.

Bingo. (BEAT) I’m sure at some point we’ll both be asked to pay reparations.

(BEAT)

PAUL: You hear what’s going on over at Conde?

DOUG: No.

Corporate hired a consulting firm to audit all the magazines.

Ugh.

That’s not the worst of it. I gather employees need to account for like every minute of their day.

Seriously?

That’s what I’m hearing.

God. I hope that never happens to us. Can you imagine? I don’t do anything.

Neither do I. (BEAT) I talk to reporters. Sometimes.

I talk to customers. Sometimes.

So we both do something.

But that accounts for what?

Fifteen minutes a day. Tops.

Say there was a consultant asking you about the rest. What would you tell him?

I’d tell him I spend the rest of the day reading. And thinking. And jacking off.

That’s what editors get paid to do! (They both laugh).

Talk about a soft gig. Read a few pages. Convince the brass to write a check. Then celebrate at a long boozy lunch with the agent.

A lunch where the agent stares down the bill as if it were a found fossil.

They never fucking pay. Ever.

What a goddamn business.

(BEAT)

PAUL: So I get a call from an editor at Vanity Fair. She says “The consultants are monitoring everything we do online.” And I was like, well, that’s a given. Companies monitor everything all the time. It’s been going on at Random House for years. They have a team of Germans collecting all of our email and social posts and feeding them into the Hadron Collider. Then she says, “They are producing detailed reports based on our activity. I just got mine. One section reads: ‘email response rate 53% and very slow – 489 minutes. Company risks losing business to competitors as a result.’”

Wow.

The thing is: she is slow on email.

Still.

They’re also making her wear some kind of fitbit.

No.

Yes.

A fucking fitbit?

They want to monitor her physical activity and mental acuity during the day.

Jee-zus.

Listen: it’s all coming our way, Doug. This is how companies conduct business in the twenty-first century. Everyone likes to knock Amazon publicly, but the truth is, privately, in corporate boardrooms, companies want to emulate them. Everything is preparation for the cull.

(BEAT)

PAUL: Laura wears a fitbit.

DOUG: Mary Kay too.

What the fuck is up with that? I mean who gives a shit how many steps you walk in a day.

I hate fucking steps. Isn’t that why we have cars? (BEAT) I hear these things monitor your heart rate too.

Just what I need when I’m out on the road with an author. A prompt from a fitbit telling me I’m having a fucking heart attack.

Stairs climbed. Hours slept.

Kale you’ve eaten.

Aren’t our bodies capable of telling us these things?

The scary part is that all of this data is being fed to HR. They’re tracking everything we say and do. Target was the first. I’m sure there will be others.

What happened at Target?

They’re providing all their employees with fitbits.

Oh boy.

The guy who runs fitbit is telling companies that his device will save them millions of dollars by driving down healthcare costs.

This is not a good development for book publishing.

No it is not.

I mean ours is basically a sedentary population of drinkers and smokers.

Correct.

Who’s gonna want to insure us?

No one.

We’re all going to die at our desks.

Fuck. (BEAT) I’d like a fitbit to monitor this (Paul lifts up his glass and gulps down the rest of his drink. Then he motions to Quinn). Quinn. Two more.

(BEAT)

DOUG: How is Davis?

PAUL: Still on the dole.

Wow. I didn’t see that comin’.

Neither did I. I mean the guy bled Brooks Blue for twenty fucking years and they cut him like bait.

I get that part of it. New guy comes in, wants to flash his shaft, first thing he does get rid of the guys who don’t marry up to his vision. What I don’t get is the long tail in all this. I figured he’d have a job the next week.

Me too.

He’s a smart guy. Always made his number.

Always. Plus he knows the rag trade inside out. And as far as I can tell, his colleagues loved him.

But he didn’t buy into the vision.

No he did not.

(BEAT)

Thank God Murray has a saleable vision.

What is it?

“We need to find those fucking pages for The Reverend.” (They both laugh) He’s got a SWAT team moving through Alabama right now. (BEAT)

What about Sonny? What’s his vision?

Grim. Always grim.

A man after my own heart.

It’s an effective style of management. Keeps everyone on their toes. 

(BEAT)

And Markus?

Happiest CEO I’ve ever met. The guy has an oompah-loompah band trailing him around the building.

Not surprised with the year you’re having. Girl on the Train. Grey. The lost Seuss. Leinenkugel. (BEAT) What the fuck is it with all these lost books?

I don’t know. All I know is that when we find ‘em we milk the shit out ‘em.

(BEAT)

Were you in on the auction last week?

Everyone was in on the auction last week. The proposal went out to fifteen hundred fucking people. Matt Damon got one. On Mars.

We had a good meeting.

We did too.

She’s smart. Funny. Solid on the page. (BEAT) Still. It’s a big nut.

I know.

I say good for her. If someone out there is willing to lay down a marker, she should collect.

My problem is with the valuations. They aren’t based on the merits of the project. They’re based on what others will be bidding. It’s how the market gets made these days. (BEAT) Updike had it right.

How so?

He never took an advance.

Really?

He would write a book, send us the pages, and then we would negotiate on the phone.

No agent?

Never.

He was an honorable man.

Yes he was.

Who does that anymore?

No one.

Now we bid on pages.

On outlines.

On one-page summaries.

The minute someone starts a blog, they’ve got representation. I had an agent from WME send me an email. “Take a look at this tweet,” he says, “I think there’s a book here. Call me.“

Jee-zus.

I get name calls from agents all the time. “So and so is writing a book,” they’ll say, “You interested?” And then when you say “possibly” they say “We’re setting bids at ten million.”

It’s like fucking Hollywood.

It’s worse. I mean in Hollywood, at least someone is getting laid at the end of the transaction. Our business is Hollywood without the sex.

(BEAT)

PAUL: It’s a fucked up industry. And it’s not just the money. It’s the cast of characters. They’re interchangeable. You get fired from Random, Penguin hires you the next day.

DOUG: With a better title and more pay. Same company! You can’t make this shit up.

The talent pool is much deeper in other industries. You’re competing against thousands of applicants. We don’t have the same subsets of candidates. We basically have that fucked up publishing program at Columbia. You ever see those kids? They’re like the cast from a Whit Stillman movie.

Caviar kids.

Seriously. None of them have ever held a job. Take a look at their hands. Pale pink and manicured. Even the guys.

I’m from Texas, man. They ain’t my people.

Mine either.

Anyone can fuckin’ read. I want people who know how to work. Who drive Ford F-150s.

Here’s to that, man. (They toast)

(BEAT)

DOUG: So what’s Davis doing?

PAUL: Playing a lot of golf.

Cocksucker.

Handicap has come down by 5 strokes.

We both need to get laid off.

He’s been on fifteen interviews over the past three months.

Any prospects?

Hard to say. These guys have you over a barrel. And the entire process is so fucking grueling and demeaning.

How so?

The hoops they make you jump through are unconscionable. He went on a six-hour callback interview last week.

Six hours?

Yes. This after having spent a day meeting with all the senior execs at the company last month. So they’ve already tapped his ass for a day and a half and now he has to come back for a battery of tests. Aptitude, personality, emotional intelligence.

It’s a full time job interviewing for a fucking job.

He has to meet with a fucking shrink. There’s a part of me that wishes I was in his shoes so I could say to one of these guys: “Why don’t we just go out and have a drink and an honest conversation about the world, rather than running me through a battery tests?”

Whatever happened to trusting your gut?

Gone. This is the era of algorithm-tested, big data-collected, evidence-based assessments. (BEAT) He had to agree to a follicle test.

What is that?

They pluck a hair from your head and send it to a lab for testing.

Seriously?

Yes. My understanding is that strands of whatever you’ve been smoking or snorting or ingesting stay in your hair for years.

No way. (BEAT) Who would agree to that?

Anyone who wants a job at Anheuser-Busch.

Seriously? The company that gave us “Up for whatever?”

You bet.

What a bunch of fucking hypocrites. I will never drink a can of Budweiser again.

Right? (BEAT) Not that we would drink it in the first place.

Seriously. I feel like writing to the president, saying “Who do you think you are, encouraging citywide public intoxication then having prospective employees tested for a little weed. Get a fucking life, dickhead.”

Kids today all smoke weed.

I know.

They smoke more weed than cigarettes.

That’s probably a good thing. (BEAT) We need to smoke more weed. I bet you Harper is smoking a doobie in Monroeville right now!

Here’s to more weed! (They both toast).

(BEAT)

DOUG: What would happen to us?

PAUL: You and I?

Yes. I mean supposing we were to get the can tomorrow.

Which could happen.

Definitely.

According to Ta-Nehisi, we’re the embodiment of white exceptionalism.

You and I are basically unemployable.

That’s what I was thinking.

Quinn. Two more.

(BEAT)

Hard to have an honest conversation in this business anymore.

How so?

Editors. They’re not interested in hearing bad news.

No they’re not.

Most are in denial.

Denial is an essential attribute if you are going to achieve any measure of success in this industry.

Books fail all the time.

The moment they go on-sale.

They’re dead in the pre-sale.

And no one wants to talk about it.

Actually that’s not true. Sonny wants to talk about. Guy runs the most successful shop in book publishing and all he wants to talk about is “why things aren’t working.”

He sees and knows. The entire industry is a dumpster fire waiting to happen.

I had a producer from NPR call me the other day. She was sorting through a few story ideas and wanted to talk on background. She asked me if I had read the story in The Bookseller about the Mann Booker longlist nominees and I said “Yes” and then she asks me if I was surprised about the figures they quoted and I said “No.” Then she says, “So it’s not an aberration, four figure book sales?” And I was like, “If you were to examine the ledger of any book publisher in America, you would see a great wash of titles that sell in the low to mid four figures. This is not a trend but rather a constant.” Then she starts asking me about the PW story that quoted the Authors Guild saying the majority of writers in the world do not make a living wage. And as I’m talking to her I’m beginning to see where she is going and hearing these stories play out on the air.

I can’t believe our tax dollars subsidize this shit.

Right? Imagine waking up to, “On NPR this morning, Awards Can’t Stem Anemic Book Sales.” And then a follow on segment, “Why Authors Can’t Make A Living Wage.”

(BEAT)

Yet here we are.

Basking in the glow of Harper Lee’s millions.

Amen to that, brother.

Yesterday our puppy Carmella started acted strangely after lunch. Lethargic, then twitchy and then, and this was awful, she toppled over. I picked her up and in two minutes we were in the car driving towards the vets. We live on the east side of town, the vet is on the north side. We got off the interstate and sat at a traffic light. I was saying the puppy’s name, she wasn’t responding (bad sign). But then she would look up at the window when I cracked it (good sign). The twenty minutes went like that. Good sign, bad sign, good sign, bad sign. Our last dog, Lucy, died in the car on the way to the vet’s last October; and I still hate to drive by this particular intersection where we were stuck in 4 o'clock traffic when she started to have a seizure and I was saying her name, over and over, and Lowell said, “Is she still with us?” in a falsely calm voice, because the poor fucker, he was the one having to drive, and so I think for both of us yesterday being at this particular intersection had a layer of awful re-enactment. (And it is weird to be sitting in the car and having animal drama happening in your car and wondering do the other drivers realize? And what drama do they have going on that I don’t realize about them – stuff with their kids, or worries about their parents, or friends, or their health– and oh my god all these cars and all these people sitting in them in just this quarter-mile patch of earth what about all over this entire baked over-trafficked earth.)

At the vet, there was someone waiting and we rushed to the back and a SWAT team of techs in blue descended on her. This too happened with Lucy, and I now hate that back room too. Carmella was still twitching and wobbling and couldn’t walk on her back legs, and kept wagging her tail apologetically about it, and the techs did their thing to help her as Lowell and I stood by, answering questions. “No she wasn’t in a garage unsupervised. No, no switches in food. She’s always on a leash. I don’t think she ate anything on the walk this morning but you never know. She’s very quick.” Etc. etc. etc.

She’s still at the vet’s this morning. Right now I’m waiting to hear how she did during the night. She was pretty good when I left at 8 last night. No longer wobbling, wagging her tail (good sign), but doped to the gills so not really herself either (neutral sign). The vet found her presenting symptoms perplexing and that’s why she wanted to keep her there overnight. She might have something wrong with her GI tract, or she might have eaten something toxic. Or (my private medical diagnosis): I loved her too much and too publicly and caused this illness to descend on her. Either/ or!

Here is the story I keep thinking of. We had left the vets for a bit so Lowell could get back to work (which haha good we’re not even thinking about the bill yet except it’s there like a ruinous $$$ cloud on the horizon) and I could get a sweater and a book to go camp by Carmella’s crate. She was holding steady; the techs said not to worry about leaving but I was of course worried that something would happen when we weren’t there. Lowell made me promise not to speed on the return and I didn’t but I still made the trip in record time, like a witch on a fucking broomstick, and I think if any of us have any powers to move things in the universe, I used up my full allotment for this year and the next to synchronize traffic in Asheville, North Carolina, at 4 o'clock on Sept. 15 so that I could get back to my sick dog lickety split.

So I was flying along, scared and distraught, and listening to the radio and the shitstorm of news and misery, and I passed a street that made me remember the 88 squirrels. The 88 squirrels happened four years ago, after Hurricane Irene, before Sandy. Our cat had brought a baby rabbit to the back porch. (The cat is now also deceased, was loved as besottedly as the dogs, but I think she’d rather you know that she was a really, really good hunter.) The baby rabbit was still alive. It had a slight nick in the neck but that was it. No other injuries I could see. We put it in a crate in our bedroom to recover itself and then planned to set it loose to hop back to its burrow with a tale to tell once it was feeling better. But every time I went to check on it, it seemed worse. Like a bundle of baby bunny misery.

I started calling around and found a website with a list of volunteer wildlife helpers who take in sick animals. I called the first name on the list.

The woman who answered the phone was older, judging by her voice. I explained about the baby rabbit. The woman said that it was getting worse because cat saliva is poisonous to rabbits. Even a small cut can be fatal unless the rabbit gets a certain kind of medicine. I asked if I could bring the rabbit to her.

“I don’t know,” she said. She sounded reluctant. “I’m very tired.” (My memory of this conversation is inexact but this was the gist.)

She seemed to consider. “You see, the rabbit’s going to need the medicine every two hours and I’m not sure I have the energy to stay up tonight… I’ve been taking care of a lot of squirrels lately.”

She explained. After Hurricane Irene, as people had been digging through the wreckage of houses on the North Carolina coast, they’d found a couple hundred injured squirrels and there had been an operation—I remember she used the word “operation"—to bring these injured squirrels to Asheville for treatment. She had taken in 88 of them. 88!!!!! Eighty-seven had gotten better and been released back into the wild. Now she was down to the last one, who had a broken leg. And she was tired, you know, after taking care of 88 squirrels for a month, and wanted to rest.

She asked me a couple questions about the rabbit – how big, etc. – and as we talked she seemed to change her mind, as if she couldn’t help herself, and said to bring it to her after all. It turned out that she lived only a few blocks from us, on a street a couple turns away that I didn’t know was there. When I got to her house her husband, maybe in his 70s, was walking around their yard picking clover to feed the rabbit. He was very nice and looked content, like he was the kind of guy who liked receiving directions to go pick clover. Though what do I know! There was a big shiny truck in his carport.

I was curious about the house – what it would be like after 88 squirrels had been camped there, and the chief thing I can tell you is that you would NOT HAVE BEEN ABLE TO TELL. No smells. Everything very home-y and neat. It was like a lot of the houses in the ‘80s: deep carpeting, La-Z Boys, flowered upholstery. Pictures of the grandkids on every table.

The woman, small and wearing a wildlife-related t-shirt, took the rabbit, administered the first dose of medicine, and then gently placed it in a container she had prepared with a heating pad in the bottom. She asked if I wanted to see the one remaining squirrel of the 88 and of course I did.

She took the squirrel from another container, the same type of plastic storage bin in which she’d placed the rabbit. She let me hold it. It had a wee little white cast on its back leg. Its tail was curled along its belly. It looked up at me. I looked down at it. I have never thought much about squirrels one way or the other, but all of a sudden I could see the squirrel-ness of the squirrel and the way it mattered that it existed.

Then we left. It was a little awkward because I felt like I should pay for the rabbit’s treatment??? But she said no, she gets funding from somewhere. I didn’t get to ask the questions that later occurred to me, like WHERE DID YOU RELEASE THE OTHER 87 SQUIRRELS and IS THAT WHY OUR NEIGHBORHOOD HAS SO MANY OF THEM???? And the question I would never ask but IS IT AWFUL FOR YOU WHEN YOU SEE A SQUIRREL DEAD IN THE ROAD OR…. IS THAT JUST A FACT OF LIFE YOU’VE COME TO ACCEPT.

Last week, I read The Sadness of T-Pain in The New Yorker. With just that title, I sat up a little straighter, put my listening ears on and got straight into mom rescue mode. T-Pain feels anything less than confidence and warmth? T- Pain feels … pain? This can’t be. I must hug this man and tell him I believe in him!  I have loved T-Pain forever and after I watched his VH1 Behind the Music, my loyalty to his music, his brand, his persona was solidified. Never once, never once did I jump on that “fuck Auto-Tune” bandwagon. This is a man from backwoods ass Florida who made a name and sound for himself against great odds. I said Florida. Y’all are not understanding how great this feat had to be for T-Pain!

This is the part that really got my goat.

T-Pain on Kanye West: T-Pain talked about being brought in as a consultant during the recording of “808s and Heartbreaks.” At one point during the session, Kanye wrote a song about how dumb all of T-Pain’s ideas were. He then proceeded, T-Pain said, to make “everybody in the studio join in with him to sing, like, ‘T-Pain’s shit is weak.’ ”

808s and Heartbreaks was deemed an “innovative” album for Kanye. He was praised as a special alternative snowflake for having real feelings of despair and loneliness while opting for an asymmetrical haircut. He was emo, rightfully so, as his mother had just passed and the album was a response to those emotions. But, you’re telling me Kanye paid this man to put a sound that he brought to the forefront on his album, to critical acclaim mind you, and proceeded to turn around and childishly bully him in the studio?  See, no.

When Kanye started Kanye’ing after his mother died, I would want to hug him and tell him it’s gonna be OK. I would want to reach through my TV when he was acting out with unbridled arrogance and questionable fashion choices and say, “You are loved. You are talented. You need some time to channel this into creative brilliance. I believe in you, Kanye.”

I liked Kanye. I rooted for Kanye when others had already seen the light. I went so far as to tell “haters” they were simply uncomfortable, possibly racist, for being critical about a confident black man who speaks his mind. “George Bush doesn’t care about black people” Kanye had me standing up at the edge of my bed in tears. Fucking say that, Kanye! I yelled. I was momentarily brought out of my sadness and disbelief over Katrina and catapulted into a deep political rage because this smart, fearless black rapper in a polo shirt dared to speak the raw truth to the American people. You fucking say that, Kanye, I yelled. But then. But then. Only years later, after marrying into that family, he turned into “Racism is not a real thing” Kanye, “racism is a silly concept” Kanye, “racism is stupid” Kanye.  Shall we open that wound for your review?

He said and I quote, “I wouldn’t call it racism… [it’s] a form of discrimination, or bigotry. Racism is a dated concept. It’s, like, a silly concept that people try to touch on to either… to separate, to alienate, to pinpoint anything. It’s stupid. It’s like a bouncing ball in a room with two cats, when you don’t feel like playing with a cat. Let them literally fight over the bouncing ball. And the bouncing ball has nothing, no purpose, anything other than that it bounces. That’s racism. It’s not an actual thing that even means anything. You know — It’s something that was used to hold people back in the past. But now there’s been so many leaps and breaking of the rules that it’s, like, played out like a style from the 1800s or something.”

I had egg on my face! I don’t like to have to backpedal! The fuck is this? 

I went to the Watch The Throne concert with glee. Paid all the rupees. Braved public transportation for that shit (if you know me, you know I have issues with city directions and courage). I saw his insanely expensive t-shirts with the special tags, intricate necklines and advanced screenprinting in comparison to Jay Z’s basic black Fruit Of The Loom crew neck not trying to reinvent the wheel automatically sellable because he’s smart, about his money and doesn’t need validation t-shirts. Yeezy is the king of doing too much, begging for validation and approval from people who will never see him as more than a cocky rapper. He doesn’t believe in stay low and build. He’s a hardcore proponent of inarticulately talk shit, be unoriginal, demand props.

I keep trying to find ways to explain it away because I want to see him shine (throw your hands up to sky). Had Kanye’s complicated period of mourning just morphed into a bizarre mental illness? To loosely quote him, “I’m not no” psychological clinician, but does he suffer from some serious narcissism coupled with some high highs and low lows? I almost don’t want to comment any further because mental illness is real and should not be mocked. I don’t know what he has or if he’s medicated. But for the sake of analytical brainstorming to get to a working theory, let’s say he’s just an asshole. Sometimes he drinks too much brown liquor. Sometimes he smokes too much. Let’s say that’s it and he’s just a cocky motherfucker. OK.

Why has he never stopped being an asshole though? It seems like he doubles down on being a dick with every personal appearance. With every personal decision. He says he introspectively reflects but he doesn’t! Impossible!

Over the years, he’s wanted me to co-sign some bullshit in the same breath that he fails to convince himself and the world that he was deserving of praise the likes of true innovators like Steve fucking Apple fucking iPhone ass Jobs. He told me Kim Kardashian was the most influential woman in fashion because he put her in American Apparel tube dresses in an array of neutral colors with a strappy sandal. We’ve been dressing around the hot shoe and doing neutral, comfortable jersey modal normcore since 2004, sir. He told me he fought for his place at the fashion table with grueling studies under lauded designers and then presented to me some pantyhose, a bunch of camouflage jackets from Rothco (you’re welcome, you’re welcome, you’re welcome), some $3000 moth-eaten sweaters and some overpriced, over-valued knit sneakers that look exactly like Nike Roshes. He told me he doesn’t want the kids to be slaves to brands but then he makes his clothing, which is highly sought after by likely broke kids, inaccessible. Question mark, question mark, question mark. 

On his fast ass teenage half sister-in-law’s sexual relationship with that other rap legend Tyga, he said, “He got in early.” I want to say in the same interview he pontificated on North’s future body shape. So we’re just gonna sexualize a toddler and a teenager in the same conversation? See. There’s no defending that.

And then last night at the MTV VMAs. *hangs head and gathers herself before resuming*

He bashed MTV, the network giving him an award, for repeatedly playing clips of him rudely interrupting a then unknown (to me, anyway – a happy time) Taylor Swift to the network’s benefit. But on the same stage, he put his lips together to openly ponder about that moment, six long get-over-it years ago, saying it had a lasting impact and sometimes, only sometimes, makes him think about his behavior. Sir, you are a necessary cog in MTV’s machine that never lets us forget “I’ma let you finish.” You showed up here in a training dog attack simulation outfit (in protest?) to accept an award they made special for you this night, where they had this little square-back girl you once dissed present you the honors. You, sir, are still in your feelings about that old shit we don’t even care about.

He went on to say he “doesn’t understand award shows.” Let me help. He has failed to accept that award shows are specifically not about talent or artistry. They are about Q scores and popularity. We are told to accept anti-Semite Macklemore, morally bankrupt Iggy Whatsherface and Sam Smith’s Tom Petty copycat ass as innovators in the fields of hip hop and R&B soul because they have the complexion and the ad dollars to warrant these “awards.” The sooner you get that through your thick skull, the sooner you can move on Kanye. Be rightfully confident in your shit, make your art and hush. We don’t need to be reminded and spoon-fed with your notions of greatness. When you kill some shit, we know. We forgive your weird outbursts and your overt abandonment of the black plight. We’ll bump your record, loud with the top down so everybody knows we’re up on that. We’ll like your little overstyled “simple” outfits. But you gotta shut the fuck up and let us decide. You are constantly offending us and it’s like at which point do we shake you and tell you to please leave us alone!

He keeps begging us to give him credit. For what?

In Kanye’s world, he invented biracial children and interracial love. Let us not look to slavery or swirly love found in the hopeless place known as the abolition movement, or as he’d say, “the 1800s.” He thinks he invented the rapper marries a white girl with a big butt blueprint. Ice-T been smacking that cosmetically enhanced sandbag ass for a decade plus and he started an authentically sick black metal band to boot. Pay homage, Kanye. Please. Oh wait. Kim’s not a white girl. She discovered racism last year during a nasty airplane incident nobody can corroborate and she racially identifies with a brown emoji now. So I take that back. *eye roll* He invented men wearing pink. Rich douchebag white frat boys been doing that for years. He invented the leather jogger. Rick Owens probably did that and even still, would you really want to be associated with this amazing trend? Running pants made out of thick, hot ass, non-breathable leather? OK swamp ass.That’s some oxymoronic bullshit. He invented wearing moccasin slippers with a ratty metal concert tee. Has he never been to a Bamboozle festival between 2004 to like now? Those Fall Out Boy fans with lopsided haircuts be done been in that outfit, dear. He thinks he invented the kimono as outerwear. Let us all #prayforjapan. He even thinks he invented mid-century modern design. No. He really thinks he’s the first person to like clean lines and minimalism. He is like, really feeling Mies van der Rohe, y’all. Meanwhile, (humor my design nerd moment here) he used fake Panton chairs, with the clunky extra support at the seat base, thus negating the genius of the seamless cantilever, at his wedding. So much for clean lines. WHAT ARE THOOOOSE?  

In fact, the only thing I can think of that he legitimately did invent, which honestly I wish he hadn’t, is that damn Taylor Swift. Take credit for that unending fake feminist girl power storm you kicked up if you like. I’ll allow that. That’s your little friend. Ride with her “squad” Kanye. Go over there. Fulfill her #squadgoals. She invented that term too, didn’t you know? She said “girls can play soldiers.” Girls have been dying (dead, gone, goodbye in the name of our freedom) in wars (guns, bombs, ie heads and limbs blown the fuck off) as real soldiers forever, Taylor. Please stop with this “playing” mess. She thought that quote was just so clever. Oof. 

Y’all. He wants me to bow down and die in his awe-inspiring presence but sir, you took your simple last name, a cardinal direction and found inspiration for your daughter’s name. Another. Cardinal. Direction. *cuckoo clock eyes*

When that family destroys and abandons him like they do and like they will (Scott, you did fuck up though), he will need us. We will be here with receipts too. Keyboard-clapping back in the komments sections for him. With an open door. A cup of tea and a warm embrace. As if none of this ever happened. You know black folks be the most unnecessarily forgiving people on the planet. We know this because George Zimmerman is still alive. We know this because we keep openly sharing original art, joyful dance, colorful language to be disrespectfully stolen for profit by Becky N Them. Will he be thankful? Probably not. But I won’t be back on the Ye Train until he apologizes to T-Pain. That was truly the final straw for me. He can tell a gang of ridiculous lies that I can easily dispute but that T-Pain shit? Nah. He can say he put Louis Vuitton on the map. He can take credit for legitimizing Jamie Foxx (another one I’m a true fan of) as a singer. He can say he created new, refreshing meaning out of the Confederate flag with Black Skinhead *eyes emoji.*

Say whatever you want, dude. But what you will not do is clown T-Pain and have me stand idly by.