Here’s a story by Creative Loafing Atlanta editor and columnist, Wyatt Williams. I’ve known Wyatt for a while, but am mostly familiar with his nonfiction. So this was refreshing and impressive: this cool story about a book critic writ large, or small, depending on how you look at things.
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The book critic had some difficulty convincing the publicist to send a review copy, which wasn’t typically the case. A good publicist knows to be enthusiastic, to send an endless barrage of bubblewrap-packed manila envelopes, to anticipate the needs of a critic. In the case of this specific publicist, that was an apt description. She was sharp and perceptive and eager in her emails. The critic often thought about how much he liked working with her, even though they didn’t technically “work” together. He expected some hassle with this request, as usually comes with large, expensive things, but also expected the publicist to be on his side. A critic of his stature, he thought, deserved the occasional perk.
She answered his first email with a simple, “I’m sorry but that’s not an item that we had planned for press coverage.”
His second email, a promise that the planned coverage was worth the expense, was returned to him with a quoted explanation from the client’s distributor citing impractical logistics. This was her complicated way of saying, “My hands are tied.”
He tried proposing a logistical solution; she retorted with an unsatisfactory half offer.
When that didn’t work, she tried honesty: “I can really see where you’re coming from and you know I’ve always admired your passion, Harold, but you must know that they’ve weighed the cost-benefit on this and would’ve pursued coverage if that had been indicated as necessary. And from an entirely personal and off-the-record perspective, you know the whole idea of these things is to be available via Amazon search when a doctor or lawyer is bored and had possibly one too many glasses of wine and has one-click shopping enabled and more or less accidentally purchases something that he already owns in different formats but can excuse the purchase by virtue of treating himself even when he didn’t mean to. And, Harold, you have to know it might be different if you were placing the review in Rolling Stone, but it’s a goddamn literary magazine. And Elizabeth is terribly busy this week. I’m sorry.”
He responded in kind. “Theresa, I’m not trying to be difficult here, but I’m happy to send over the demographic numbers from the last subscriber survey to assert this point: I don’t think you could find a better venue to reach doctors and lawyers who happen to have one too many glasses of California cabernet or oaked Brandy on a thrice-weekly basis and keep one-click Amazon shopping enabled at all hours of the day on their mobile devices – which are, by the way, a roughly even split between Apple, Android, and Blackberry operating systems – and I can virtually guarantee that they read the review section in a kind of dull, “forcing themselves to do it” post-work stupor that will be absolutely shattered by finding a review of something else, not a book, that reminds them of an age when tumescence was possible without two blue pills and an oxygen tank. Off the record on my end, too.”
A day later, he decided to go over the publicist’s head and email Elizabeth.
So, the book critic received a shipping document explaining that the review copy would arrive the following Friday morning via box truck to the magazine’s shipping dock. It took less than five minutes for the two Portuguese deliverymen to park, open the back door, and unload the shipping pallet. The review copy was about four feet by every measure, a black cube shrink-wrapped in layers of plastic. It looked small in comparison to the towers of unsold back issues of the magazine, despite being many times larger than any review copy of anything that had been previously delivered to the office. The shipping and receiving manager signed the deliverymen’s paperwork then called the book critic’s desk phone, as he had been politely instructed to do the day prior.
Though the book critic had spent considerable time weighing the massive cultural import of the review copy’s contents and even, as he had indicated in his emails with the publicist, the significance of the review copy as a physical object, he only now realized the personal logistical issue established by it’s presence. This would not fit in the back seat of his Toyota Prius.
That afternoon, he employed the Craigslist-advertised services of two mustached men with a pickup truck who needed to borrow a pallet jack from the magazine to load the review copy onto the flatbed of their Ford Ranger. The book critic followed them in his Toyota Prius to his driveway, where they realized that there was no simple and direct way to unload the shipping pallet from a truck bed three feet off the ground.
One of the mustached men started to tear at the review copy’s shrink wrapped exterior with a utility razor and, seeing this, the book critic let out a sound of horror that caused both mustached men to assume that he was suffering a life-ending heart attack. At the moment they realized he was not dying, the editor walked inside and emerged with a delicate pair of fingernail-trimming scissors. The mustached men watched him in silence while he carefully trimmed the plastic wrap away. The book critic was relieved to find only one small wound where the careless mustached man’s utility razor had grazed the review copy’s exterior packaging.
The review copy was opened, unloaded piece by piece and then reassembled in the book critic’s living room.
Because the delivery of the review copy had to be coordinated weeks in advance, the book critic had ample time to plan the listening party. He secured the services of a talented bartender who had created a cheeky menu of themed cocktails: a dark but sweet brandy drink rimmed with brown sugar, a scotch-and-beer highball known as Wild Horses, the Keith Moon upside-down pool punch bowl, and so on. A photographer and a caterer were hired, as well.
Invitations were sent electronically to a guest list that included primarily professional acquaintances of the book critic and a few old friends. The book critic had not made friends outside of a certain professional circle in a very long time. Within a certain world, though, he knew just about everybody. The publicist, whom he had never met though she was employed by a firm in town, was included on the list despite the fact that she had not emailed him a single time since the exchange about the review copy.
What the publicist had not told him was that the review copy was actually a loaner, a copy that needed to be returned. She had meant to email him about this, she had, but she hadn’t liked the way he’d gone over her head. She didn’t want to be outright rude to him in an email. She liked his work and took a quiet pride in helping facilitate it, but she didn’t know how to strike a balance between disapproval, bad news, and a heartily enthusiastic hope that they could still work together. Her reticence evolved into outright inaction, the fact went unmentioned, and the party invitation had arrived in her inbox.
The full run time of the review copy was just shy of twenty-four hours, which the book critic assumed would be too long to expect anyone to stay at a listening party but just long enough to encourage people to stay or come and go in the style of Warhol-ish endurance-art happenings. He had wanted to throw that kind of party, unreasonable and extravagant and weird, when he was younger, but it never happened. Now that the magazine paid him enough money to own a house and allowed him a reason to know enough people who might attend a party, he felt finally accomplished, that the coming-of-age novel of his life was arriving after forty-five years.
The matter of timing for a twenty-four hour party seemed obvious. Starting at midnight and ending at midnight could only be exhausting followed by exhausted. Starting at noon on Saturday and ending at noon on Sunday allowed people to percolate in as they would any backyard summer party, to wear straw fedoras and wide-brimmed sun hats, to bring a cooler of something despite being told it was unnecessary, to stay late if they were among the inclined, and to anticipate the pleasures of a sunrise and catered brunch and the universally wonderful feeling of having an unobligated Sunday that comes as the invisible garnish on a Bloody Mary (or, in this case, a Let it Bleed on the cocktail menu).
As the book critic lay in bed trying to sleep on the nights leading up to the party, another problem nagged at his mind. The artist’s talents had inarguably waned in recent years. The work had taken on the kind of bloated, inarticulate qualities that happen to also possess a man’s body as he grows in age. He felt afraid that to have the diminished quality of the later work coincide with exhaustion, inevitable in the party’s third act. It would be a depressing end to a party.
That Friday evening, sitting in his living room and looking at the review copy, the book critic realized that the chronology could be simply reversed. The party could begin with the most recent and lesser work. The early enthusiasm of arriving at a party would buoy the mood and anticipation would build toward the work improving, getting younger and faster and more distinct and plainly better. The morning would bring triumph, rebirth. The book critic could hardly believe he hadn’t thought of this until now. He took two Ambien and slept through the night.
The early crowd was smaller than the book critic had hoped, but it grew enough by the evening to have the vague but essential feeling of a success. A few guests were surprised to hear that the invitation was not a joke, that the book critic really did intend for the party to last the full run time of the review copy. A few others noted with admiration the details the book critic had thought of: the guitarist’s autobiography playing in the bathroom in an audio book edition read by Johnny Depp, the archival footage projected on the living room wall, the man in the American Flag leather jacket who had been hired to simply ensure that the review copy was played in proper chronological order. In this case, of course, proper meaning reverse.
Throughout the night, the book critic had a persistent feeling that the publicist may have arrived or would or had and left and he had not met her. She had electronically RSVP’d to the invitation, a fact he had confirmed on his mobile device five times this evening. The crowd was just large enough that she might have slipped by him, mingling in some tight circle near the corner of the room. He wondered if she was particularly short and therefore harder to find by simply scanning the heads in a crowd.
It wasn’t until the very late night or the early morning sometime before sunrise but after a considerable number of Wild Horses that he was unable to stop himself from writing the publicist an email from his mobile device.
“Did you come and I not see you? I thought you were going to come, it wouldn’t be possible without you.”
She had dressed for the party a number of hours earlier, but had paused, unable build up the confidence to drive to the book critic’s house and let him know that the review copy did not belong to him, that it was a loaner. That’s when she saw the email.
During this time the artist’s work became rapidly younger, less refined. The book critic had assumed that this would be a good thing and it was, at least in terms of energetic enthusiasm. He saw a young freelancer, someone that might have the stuff for a staff position at the magazine, lift up the Keith Moon upside-down pool punch bowl and pour it directly into his face. His living room had become the unofficial dance floor.
But the artist was also more grating at this age, a quality that the book critic did not like acknowledging because it drew attention to his age. At this moment, he also did not like letting himself admit that the only people left at this party were much younger than him and all on drugs that didn’t work well with his body anymore and a few of them had been screwing in the bathroom and hadn’t come out in a long time.
When the publicist did arrive, she let herself in and stepped over a few people who had passed out on the floor and walked to the caterer, who was serving Sticky Fingers Buns with Let it Bleeds to a few people gathered around one end of the Beggar’s Banquet table. She took one of each, trying to look for a way into the conversation, which wasn’t actually happening.
“I love this song,” she said enthusiastically to no one.
She walked past the man in the American Flag leather jacket, who was very clearly in charge of the review copy and grinding his teeth with a painful-looking vigor, and past a circle of people who apparently only spoke to other people wearing fedoras, and then past a few white containers of trash that had been sorted into responsible designations of recycling, compost, and refuse.
Eventually she recognized the book critic, who was rounder than he appeared on his most recent book jacket and slouched in a wrinkled dress shirt on his love seat. She sat down next to him, determined to say that he couldn’t keep the review copy, that it was a loaner, but he started speaking first.
“Do you know what I think about when I meet a person these days?”
“No. What?”
“That the person is going to realize that all of your hair has fallen out since the last book jacket flap and that you’ve gained a hundred pounds and don’t care about pressing your shirts anymore. My name is Harold.”
“I’m Theresa.”
“Oh,” he said, aware that she could now perceive on his face the thought that her email avatar was similarly deceptive, that her hair was less straight, more frizzy and that the picture had been taken from an angle that obscured the fat, whatever it was called, that hangs under a person’s chin.
They sat and talked on the loveseat until “Not Fade Away” came on and the book critic started quietly crying and drunkenly mumbling something indecipherable about youth and beauty. Outside, the sun was now painfully bright. The publicist decided that this was not the time to tell him that the review copy was a loaner.
A month later she sent him an email.
“Just wanted to check in and see what you thought about the review copy.”
“The review is coming along fine. I’ll be sure to forward two copies to your offices when it runs.”
The review did not come along fine. He ran a 300-word blurb, exactly the thing he had promised not to do. The client was asking about the whereabouts of the loaner and she had stalled them longer than was professionally acceptable. She finally sent him the email.
“I’m going to need for you to return the review copy. I forgot to mention that it’s a loaner.”
“They’re not happy with the review?”
“It’s not that, I promise. It just somehow slipped my mind that it was a loaner, my fault, sorry.”
“No, I understand,” he replied. In another tab, he pulled up an online marketplace to purchase a copy for the return. At the moment his cursor touched “Buy Now with 1-Click,” he understood how little he cared about largess, about perks, about getting all these meaningless review copies for free. It mattered to do this miserable work with the help of another person, to work together, even if they didn’t, technically.
The book critic took two Ambien that night but couldn’t sleep anyway and tried to write the honest, long consideration of the artist’s work that he had promised to write and found again that he couldn’t do it and then he hand wrote all of the lyrics to “Not Fade Away” on the back of an old photograph but then that seemed impossibly teenage and fake romantic and lusty. He didn’t feel any lust; this wasn’t about lust. He only wanted to work with her. Then he wrote a single sentence – “what a drag it is getting old.” – in an email and clicked send and was pretty sure she would get the joke.
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