My Book Tour: The Award Show

February 12th, 2009

I’m just back from a seven-city bout of bookflogging and tabletop dancing. I’ve shown my ankles to smart and lively book lovers in NYC, Durham, Miami, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Seattle, and Columbus. I am a very, very grateful man.

In the manner of a self-involved awards show honoree, I’d like to place my right hand over my heart to denote earnestness, and bestow the following awards:

MOST UNFOUNDED EXPRESSION OF ANXIETY:  My mother, on the eve of our mutual appearance on a community radio show in North Carolina called “Carrboro Book Beat,” asked me, “Is this going to be dressy?”

MOST FLATTERING ASSESSMENT OF MY WHITEBREAD CHARMS: After a banter-driven conversation with interviewer Warren Etheredge in front of a Seattle audience, a friend of Etheredge’s asked me, “So, Henry, are you a New York Jew, too?”

MOST THRILLING ENTRANCE: My sister, with seven of her friends, in a white limo, to my Books, Inc. reading in San Francisco: possibly the first time that “white limo” and “independent bookseller” have appeared in the same sentence.

BEST REACTION TO A NOT-ENTIRELY-POSITIVE BOOK REVIEW: “How To Live” character Sylvia Miles said to me of one  slightly dyspeptic book reviewer, “He wouldn’t ‘get’ someone like me. His idea of avant-garde is Arlene Dahl.”

MOST SEMIOTICALLY-CHARGED MOMENT: Given a Sharpie, I was asked to sign James Thurber’s closet at the Thurber House in Columbus.

STRONGEST EVIDENCE THAT MY WORDS ARE NOT FALLING ON DEAF EARS: Immediately after I uttered the statement, “I’m agnostic” at Books and Books in Coral Gables, the bookstore’s lights went off for three seconds.