October 13, 2011
YOU THINK YOU GOT PROBLEMS... (self-reference alert):
A Shelf-Obsessed Writer (JAMI ATTENBERG, 10/13/11, NY Times)I can't remember when I first became obsessed with the cafe's free bookcase, but sometime in the last year it was suddenly so, and I was regularly making pilgrimages there. I took books home to read, and brought others in to replace them. I noticed which ones were snapped up quickly and which sat for too long. I rooted for the galley of Emily St. John Mandel's smart novel "The Singer's Gun" to find a good home, but felt a little smug about another novel -- which sucked up all the press in the universe when it came out, even though it was not its author's finest work, not by a long shot, and one might wonder if perhaps the author was even phoning it in -- which no one touched for weeks.
But mostly, I waited in both terror and anticipation for my own books of fiction to show up on the shelves someday. Surely someone in the neighborhood had read one of them, I told myself, what with my being a local author and all. But if someone did bring in one of my books, what did it mean? Was it that he had read it once and did not treasure it? Or was it that he had read it and found it so delightful that he wanted to share it with the world? And what would happen next? Would it sit there, gathering dust, or would someone pick it up and take it home? What would I -- and my fragile writer's ego -- do then?
Reader, I forced the issue. Two weeks ago, I brought in the three books I'd written. I had to know what would happen. And so, while the feisty protesters occupied Wall Street, and our armed forces served our country so admirably in foreign lands, and all over the world every minute doctors and nurses saved lives, I stalked my own books for five days.
...I once found a copy of my first book in the discount bin at Borders.
Posted by oj at October 13, 2011 7:10 AM
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