Let me be forthright about
Posted by: Liz | From: February 25, 2004
Let me be forthright about my invite to this Paul Auster party last night. We got an invitation at the office addressed to Agent Who Left. Since I am in charge of the mail it is up to me to decide if the mail is really supposed to be for our agency or if it needs to be specifically redirected to Agent Who Left. Sometimes the line is fuzzy. Fuzzy with the words “Paul Auster.” And I have to make an executive decision. In the case of “Paul Auster” I executive decided my way to the party.Also keep in mind that I thought I was going to a church. I thought this because the invitation only gave an address and I googled it and the address for “Beautiful Temple” popped up. This beautiful temple, however, turned out to be the publisher’s house--an attractive home in the middle of SoHo with a spiral staircase and lots of art on the wall. And you know how you’re supposed to be fashionable late to things? The reason for that is because when you are on time, you walk into a publisher’s house and the only people there are the publisher, the editor, the publicist, the bartenders, and Paul Auster. And it’s a little awkward.
The publicist made a point of finding out who we were. I mentioned the agency and she said, “Oh, so you must know Ms. Editor!” and we smiled and looked over at Ms. Editor and had to say, “Oh, hi, um no actually. But uh nice to meet you! Hey.” And the publicist narrowed her eyes and said (rather suspiciously), “Hmm, well the invitation lists came from several different sources. Haha.”
Haha…whew! Ok, where’s that wine! Poor J, who doesn’t drink, had to grapple with discomfort on a sober level, whereas I had the aid of alcohol to begin the smoothing over. Ms. Editor got me a glass of wine and (oh no) started chatting with us about who we knew. I mentioned the agency again. “Oh! So you work with Agent Who Left!” doh! “Oh, actually she left to start her own agency.” Ms. Editor was clearly shocked. “But I just had lunch with her last week!” This was the moment when it couldn’t have been clearer that the invite was meant to go to Agent Who Left. Luckily, Ms. Editor seemed flummoxed by the fact that she somehow managed to lose track of AWL, despite having seen her a few days ago, and our awkwardness cancelled each other out.
Then the publisher came up and pointed his finger at me. “I know you!” Clearly, he did not. “Oh, haha, I’m not sure. I’m Liz, nice to meet you.” He was insistent, “I’ve seen you around at these parties maybe.” Parties? Plural? “Uh, maybe! Small world. Haha.” He looked me over once more and again said he was sure he knows me from somewhere, and ambled away.
About this point, more people started flooding in, so we could lose ourselves a little in the crowd. After the first glass of wine, I started to relax. The whole thing was sort of a funny New York moment, with Paul Auster standing in the corner (dark and brooding) and big ups in the publishing business swarming around. We did find ourselves talking to a couple of nice guys from Grand Street who admitted to being sortof party-crashers themselves, proving you gotta seize these opportunities as they come up.
The publisher gave a nice speech and everyone toasted Paul and clapped. We were about ready to leave, but we couldn’t do so without first introducing ourselves to the man. This seemed simple enough, but as we edged our way closer I began to panic a little, trying to think of something nice to say. What wouldn’t sound clichéd and dumb? Oh god, nothing! We stopped a couple feet away and conferred while Paul entertained a woman in front of us. Suddenly it dawned on me that he had written my favorite song for One Ring Zero’s author project . Goldmine! I shook his hand, mentioned the song and, people, he lit right up. “You like my song?” He tapped the blonde woman on the arm, “Hey they like the song I wrote! How about that!” It was perfect.
J later explained to me that this was because all authors, deep inside, want to be rock stars.
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