“You ought to talk to your publisher,” said the radio host. “They’re really overselling you.”
She was the substitute host of a high-rated show out west, and as I took my seat in her studio I didn’t want to seem like a rube–like a superannuated author on his first book tour, which is, however, what I am–so I just said, “They are?”
“Yeah,” she said, holding up a sheaf of promotional material. “Every bit of publicity your publisher writes and sends out about your book–it all says, ‘Amusing, witty, laugh-out-loud funny, et cetera, et cetera.’ But the thing is, it isn’t funny.”
“It isn’t?” I said.
“Not at all. I’m reading it over the weekend and I’m like, ‘They said this was funny!’ I’m like, ‘Jeez, this is really serious.’ A few good lines, I guess. But not funny. At all. Tell your publisher.”
“I will,” I said.
“Frankly, I’m not so sure we would’ve had you on if we’d known. ”
“Really?”
“Headphones!” she cried suddenly, sitting bolt upright. “On air in ten seconds!”
Let me be clear: I’m not complaining. This was not the worst thing that happened to me over the last several weeks, as I humped my way from city to city trying to force people to buy this book I’ve written. About the early morning flights with the sting still fresh from the previous evening’s nightcap(s)–I’ll complain about those. And the surly skycaps–I’ll complain about them. The traffic jams that freeze the downtown of every city in America, the cluelessness of rental car clerks, the hallucinatory illogic of airport security–believe me, there’s no end to my bitching.
But about the stone-headed radio host? I will not complain. I don’t dare complain. The reason is simple if not entirely honorable. I’ve been transformed from a mild-mannered hack, whose deskbound livelihood entails typing and making phone calls, into a traveling salesman, tirelessly hawking a product. And as a salesman I have assumed a posture of total sycophancy toward anyone who can help me move units.
Salesman is not a role I’m cut out for. For one thing, I have until now been able to arrange my life in such a way as to avoid the professional activity I dislike above all others–speaking before an audience of my fellow human beings–and it turns out that selling a book involves a nearly endless series of events which require me to speak to an audience.
Nevertheless, I have managed to turn this shortcoming of mine into a little joke that I use at the beginning of my talks: “I wanted to be a writer,” I say, “so I wouldn’t have to be a talker,” which serves to lower the audience’s expectations and also elicits a mild laugh, which in turn relaxes me a little bit. Xanax helps too.
But not always. Speaking at bookstores is a particularly nerve-racking form of the art. It occurs at very close quarters: usually in a nook tucked amid the stacks, with folding chairs arrayed in a semicircle mere inches before the podium. The front row is so close that if the speaker fainted–always a risk in my case–he would fall into someone’s lap.
Such intimacy means no sign of weakness escapes notice; every wobble of the author’s voice is picked up, every quiver of the hand is seen. I gave my first talk on a warm June evening, and the temperature in the store rose to the high eighties. I was two minutes into my talk when the first drop of perspiration fell. When I was halfway through, it seemed as though a puffy little rain cloud had settled over the podium, releasing a gentle shower onto my handwritten notes and making them all but illegible. I glanced briefly up at the audience and saw a young woman turn to her date and wipe her brow with a theatrical back of her hand.
But I’m not complaining. I have yet to faint. For the most part, the radio interviewers have been friendly and not stupid. Even better, with only two exceptions I have been spared the humiliation of arriving at a bookstore for a reading only to find that no one has bothered to show up to hear me. On one such occasion the store owner took such pity that she insisted on occupying a front-row seat herself, as a way of encouraging others in the store to join her. It worked. Before too long three or four customers sat down too. “One reason I wanted to be a writer,” I said, “was that I wouldn’t have to be a talker.”
She laughed and laughed, and within three minutes she was completely asleep–lost in mouth-gaping, adenoid-exposing, head-rolling slumber. But I’m not complaining.
ANDREW FERGUSON
