Dave Eggers/Sarah Vowel Reading at
Posted by: Liz | From: July 28, 2003
Dave Eggers/Sarah Vowel Reading at Tonic: Sat 26It was a great night. One that is still leaving a tingling fingerprint on my heart, making me want to do something productive. So I guess I’ll do this.
I met J after school and we went for a quick dinner at Zen Palate. I was confined to these awful $5 high heel sandals I had, since my other ones broke, and they were really fucking up my feet with a badly placed seam that dug in along the ball of my foot. We found some comfortable flip flops and J bought them for me (to my immense relief), playing the role of the heroic boyfriend who saves the lady from awful, crippling pain. Thank god for him. We made our way down to Tonic where the event was taking place. It was early, but there were a few scattered people waiting outside. All the McSweeney’s people were already there, setting up inside.
There was a prolonged kerfuffle about the amount of chairs available. Even thought the promised 60 were set up, it still left half the room empty, meaning the 100 others the room’s capacity would allow would have to stand. From my perspective, this was not that big of a deal. Yes, it is inconvenient, and given the choice, sitting down is generally preferred to standing, but given the caliber of people reading this evening, I hardly doubted people would mind standing. But Dave had other ideas. People standing just really rubbed him the wrong way. And I don’t mean to sound as though he were being unduly unreasonable about the issue, but he was really troubled by the idea that there would be a standing crowd. It was almost as though he couldn’t admit to himself that the people (his fans) like him enough to genuinely not care about standing. It almost pained him to think about this. Dave stressing out just causes Scott and Ted to stress out, which causes everyone else to stress out. The people at Tonic were being as understanding as possible without completely losing it at this stress. But no matter. After much running around, things went off fine (Krista and J even pulled a miracle move and came up with 40 more chairs for $30 after scouting the neighborhood. Unfortunately we weren’t able to use them, but that’s highly impressive none the less.)
Question: What do Dave Eggers and Voldemort have in common?
Answer: People are afraid to use their full names. Much like "He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named," Dave is referred to (by those close to him) only by "Dave" or general nods in his direction. When introducing herself, his publicist told me she was "that guy's" pubilcist. I understand this, mostly.
Dave held a brief meeting before the reading about the nonprofit modeled after 826 Valencia he wants to start in New York. We were charging people as they went into the meeting to avoid confusion later. There was a tremendous line formed by this point and I was sure that everybody was going to take advantage of this meeting to get in early. After all, they just had to say they were interested in the nonprofit and they could have slipped into a chair in the air conditioned room to listen to Dave speak for 30 minutes and then be secured a great space for the following reading. But either morality or ignorance kept the vast crowd at bay and only about 30 people slipped in early. By the time the reading started, it was apparent the line held way more people than were going to be allowed inside. I wriggled inside and ended up at a stool for the readings.
Sarah read first and did this fantastic piece on the battle hymnal. She is such an amazing person to look at and hear. She is hard to see in separate pieces; like she exists only as the whole of her parts and not singularly at all. Very powerful, yet not domineering, presence.
Then a McSweeney’s editor read a piece on his dad, which was very funny.
Finally Dave read. He talked a bit more about his nonprofit, then read a short story from the perspective of a 13-year-old boy who is sort of in love with his 50-year-old neighbor, but doesn’t quite have the emotional maturity to figure out his feelings or actions relating to his fascination. A lot of it read sort of like a boy version of the Steven the dog letters he wrote for issue 5.
A band played some music and Dave went out to sign books and whatnot. I noticed Janeane Garafalo’s name on the guest list and Dan confirmed that she did in fact show up, with punky white hair. Man, wish I’d had the chance to meet her.
Dave signed books like only he can: self-consciously, graciously, and with careful flippancy. One guy brought a blank canvas on which Dave drew a canary-like bird with wooden planks instead of feet. At the top he wrote, “I tried.”
After everything settled, the McSweeney’s crowd and others made it to a little bar in the East Village. Poor Mark is only 18 and made the mistake of admitting that when the bouncer asked him his age. J offered to forget the after party and go get ice cream with him, but the idea was so so so very far from what I wanted to do that I didn’t let him consider it for long. I mean, I felt bad for the guy, but there was no way I was missing out on this time to chill with these amazing people.
Ben Greenman showed up and I chatted with him for a little while. I mostly ended up talking with Sloan, Dave’s publicist at Vintage. It turns out we know a few people in common and we chatted publicity/publishing shop and it felt nice. Although talking with her is like talking to someone from a different planet, where the language is the same but the experience each of us are having could not be more starkly different. She is truly a cool person. I fell a little in love with her the way I do with most people from Random House. I can’t help it. I have a school girl crush on the whole publishing house. I love all the components that make it up. I get weak in the knees. But it only encourages my adoration when all the people I meet from there are dynamic, well-adjusted people with great ideas and intelligent things to say. I almost have too much respect for Sloan to be entirely jealous of her, but talking with her nonetheless made me sad to think about my job. blech. Anyway, J had class in the morning, so we left pretty early to get some ice cream and head home. It wasn’t until I was in bed later, lying in the darkness and thinking about the evening that I desperately wished I had stayed longer. There was such a nice vibe of relaxed people and general good will. I feel so enlivened to even get to experience things like this.
Nights like this I could weep at sheer luck that brought me to New York, to Brooklyn, the the Store, to J, to these events, to my life added up at that exact moment. It was a joy of knowing my life would have always felt something empty if I had not experienced what I did, met who I met. I need these moments to get me through the rest of the crowded subway/desperately poor/miserable job/dirty city days. Because they do more than balance—they make everything worth it. People will stand and stand.
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