Coughing with Michael Chabon

The New Yorker Festival opened Friday, the annual three-day bonanza where famous authors, writers, directors, actors and editors sit on stages in front of large audiences and discuss their craft in theaters across the city. I'd never gone before. Usually I'd see an ad in the New Yorker touting the event, but I'd see it a week or two after tickets went on sale, which is what happens when the magazines pile up on a table in the living room. Finally this year I saw the ad in time. Two minutes after tickets went on sale, I bought a pair of them.

Sunday I'm attending a conversation between New Yorker editor David Remnick and writer Ian Frazier. Two of the best in nonfiction.

But on Friday I saw one of my writing idols, Michael Chabon. The author of Wonder Boys, The Yiddish Policemen's Union, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, numerous other novels and a couple of nonfiction collections appeared onstage with fellow author Zadie Smith, another writer who can not be introduced at an event without the moderator throwing the word "acclaimed" before her name.

Smith read a nonfiction piece, a story about her father, a World War II veteran who didn't want to be known as a hero or brave, even though he was both.

Chabon followed. Instead of reciting passages from one of his famous books, he read a work in progress, a treat for those in the audience, many of whom have surely consumed all of his published words. The piece focused on a home birth. To describe it beyond that would be impossible, except to say all of Chabon's skills - from the descriptions to the humor to the incomparable word play - were on display.

About three-quarters of a way through Chabon's reading, I suddenly, inexplicably, horrifyingly, embarrassingly, choked. I wasn't drinking or eating. I didn't have any gum in my mouth. But somehow I found myself blurting out a cough, followed quickly by another and the feeling in my chest and throat let me know this would be a long coughing spell, which quickly devolved into a coughing fit. I left my seat almost immediately and retreated to the rear of the theater. It felt like a piece of popcorn had lodged in my throat, but the last time I ate popcorn was at a movie three weeks ago. If it was popcorn, I had more problems than a cough.

I coughed several more times in the back of the theater before finally going out the door to compose myself. Thankfully, another attendee took attention away from my mysterious medical issue. As I walked to the rear of the theater, I watched three people drag a young man who had fainted. They pulled him out into the waiting area, sat him in a chair and stayed with him until he recovered. Could have been the heat. Or maybe it was Chabon's graphic description of a bloody vagina that made the poor guy woozy. As brilliant as Chabon's writing is, a bloody vagina is still a bloody vagina. And, actually, because of Chabon's skills, the mental images are even clearer. I'm sure the guy blamed the heat.

My coughing stopped and I returned to my sixth-row seat for the question and answer session. One woman asked how the writers feel about fiction compared to nonfiction. Smith finds nonfiction easier to write, Chabon's the opposite. Another woman said she'd come all the way from Berkeley to see Chabon. It quickly became obvious - from her body language, longing in her voice and reluctance to leave the microphone, even after Chabon answered her question - that I didn't have to worry about being accused of being the attendee who would most likely stalk Chabon. If the moderator hadn't pointed to another person who had a question, the lady might still be standing there.

Like many in the audience, she was impressed by Chabon's ability to write about childbirth and wondered if there'd be an equivalent event that men go through. "Whaling," he said.

I walked to one of the two microphones and asked my question. I've spoken with other writers about Chabon's famous use of similes and metaphors. No one uses them like Chabon. They pop off the page, one after another, sometimes three or four in a paragraph. On a journalism board, during a discussion of similes, a few writers debated whether you should use a simile if it takes more than a few minutes to think of it. In other words, if you have to slave over it for too long, it's probably not any good. I asked Chabon what's it like for him. He conjures up phrases that no one else would think of, but after you've read them, it becomes impossible to imagine the person or event being described in any other way. He writes sentences I've memorized by heart, lines that should be required reading in all English classes and recited even before schoolchildren say the Pledge of Allegiance each morning. In his review for The Yiddish Policemen's Union in New York Magazine, Sam Anderson listed some of Chabon's best lines:

The detective's ex-wife "accepts a compliment as if it's a can of soda that she suspects him of having shaken." In a crowded apartment, two babies are "stashed away on the balcony like disused skis." Rain is "tossed in vandalistic handfuls at the windshield."

Similes! I was talking to Michael Chabon about similes. This is like asking Magic Johnson about the art of the half-court bounce pass. It's like asking Warren Buffett about investments. It's like...well, some other simile.

His answer? They're easy for him. When writing fiction, he might occasionally struggle with plotting the story or other big-picture situations. But those unique phrases that liven up every page of his books are practically effortless. I don't know for sure whether he believes a simile is worthless if you have to spend more than a minute thinking of it, but that's only because he's probably never done it himself.

The event lasted a little over an hour. On my walk back to the subway, I strolled in front of the poor guy who passed out at the event, as he asked his female companion what exactly happened. Nothing much. He fainted and had to be hauled out of a theater in front of a few hundred people while ushers and security looked at him with a mixture of pity and anxiety.

And he missed hearing the best writer of his generation read his work and discuss his craft.

Death of a bookstore

The first time I went to the Barnes & Noble at 66th Street and Broadway in New York City, a mentally disturbed middle-aged man in blue jeans and a Yankees hat screamed at me in the store's cafe area. He accused me of being a gay Irishman. He said I was in for an ass-kicking. It was April of 2004 and I'd only been in the city a week or two, so the confrontation served as my introduction to that Barnes & Noble and life in New York. He sat at a nearby table, ignoring his book while yelling at me. I briefly made eye contact and immediately regretted it. Finally I picked up my bag and left the cafe. The other customers probably considered me a coward, even as they cowered away from the lunatic who now sought a new target.

In the six years since that incident, that Barnes & Noble became our most frequently visited store in the city. Over the years I've bought dozens of books from there and spent hundreds of hours wandering around the massive store. It had three stories of books, a basement full of DVDs and CDs, and a fourth floor cafe that was also home to hundreds of magazine titles and, on at least one day, a deranged reader who loved the Yanks. It will all be gone in four months.

Last month, Barnes & Noble announced it would close the store this coming January. The thing that kills million of New Yorkers - high rent - fatally wounded the store. The current lease was ending and the increased rent "made it economically impossible for us to extend the lease," said a spokeswoman. A Century 21 clothing store will take its place. Barnes & Noble itself is in trouble, as Amazon, e-books and a changing publishing world conspire to damage the behemoth chain that has, of course, also been the downfall of smaller bookstores.

Some people feel little sympathy for the company's plight, citing those closures of small, independent bookstores who may have been victims of Barnes & Noble's once-overwhelming success. Feel bad for Barnes & Noble? Might as well feel pity for the fall of the Soviet Union.

But I will mourn this store's closing, for what it means to the company's future and, more importantly, what it means for publishing.

The store at 66th Street holds special memories for me. One day in September 2005, I sprinted up the escalator to the third floor, then walked to the sports books. There in the football section, near some John Feinstein books, sat my just-released book, Keeping the Faith. There were three copies. It was, obviously, one of the coolest moments of my life. Nineteen months after sitting in the cafe while a disturbed man threatened me and I wondered what in the hell life was going to be like in New York, I bought a copy of my own book from that store.

However, nostalgia has little to do with my regrets about the store's demise. There are still numerous Barnes & Noble stores in the city - there's actually another branch just up the street, at 82nd and Broadway. The closing frightens because it's just one more sign - a four-story sign - that the book industry is going through tough times. Like newspapers, magazines, movies, and television, the book world is struggling to adapt to the difficult economy and the changing media world.

Walk into any Barnes & Noble today and you'll be greeted by a display for the Nook, the company's entry into e-book readers. The sales folks are helpful, knowledgeable and enthusiastic. They talk about its virtues, reliability and convenience. And I have absolutely no desire to ever own one.

No matter what happens to bookstores, people will keep reading and they'll keep reading books, only they might be reading them on screens instead of on paper. Whatever keeps the industry alive, I support, though the money authors earn on e-books is nothing compared to what they now make on the real thing. Maybe that can change.

But I still want book books. I want to browse and buy, hold them, drop them, write in them and page through them. In the end it's always about the words, but for me it's also about the packaging. I read a screen all day at work and sit in front of one while writing or surfing online. Books provide me the one chance to unplug while unwinding.

And in today's world Barnes & Noble provides some of the best chances to do all of those things. Some people speculate that if the large chains eventually completely flounder, independent stores will regain their prominence. It's a romantic idea, though one that might not do much to help the publishing industry. I love independent bookstores and many still, thankfully, thrive in the city. But aside from The Strand - my true favorite store in the city, which, unfortunately, is something of a trek for us - the 66th Street Barnes & Noble has long been our book-buying paradise.

It has three levels of books. Like every Barnes & Noble store, this one possesses a unique smell, which I can't trace but was probably created in a lab devoted to soothing aromas. Company scientists mixed some old books and new coffee beans and created a perfume that each store pumps through the vents. First floor holds the new releases, which I'll always browse. Oh, Bob Woodward's got another new one. Guy's prolific. There's that new biography on Roosevelt. Michael Chabon's book of essays is finally out? Great. Glenn Beck writes novels?

The fiction's on the second floor, the classics mixing with romances and thrillers, poets mingling with hacks and essayists. I'll search for a good paperback or a classic I somehow avoided in school. The third floor's my favorite, the nonfiction. Sports, biography, history, film, TV, music, true crime, writing books, humor, everything. It's nearly impossible for me to spend time in that section without heading down the escalator clutching a book that will set us back between $11 and $25.

If Louise is with me, I'll inevitably end up in the cafe, where she will have worked on securing us a table. Unlike the stores in Minnesota, where there's always ample free space, the tables at this cafe seem to have a waiting list that's longer than the one for Green Bay Packer season tickets. The cafe workers frequently make announcements over the loudspeaker, declaring that cafe seating is for cafe customers only, and that if you do not have an overpriced coffee in your hand or a chocolate chip cookie stuffed into your face, you will either be buying one or ejected from the area. Your choice.

We'll sit there for an hour or so, reading through the books we've brought up, taking notes, sipping orange juice, avoiding the bookstore bouncers. By the time we leave, we'll have spent two or three hours on the premises. As we wind our way down and again pass through the nonfiction and fiction sections, we might stop to browse some more, entranced by the sight of all those books and the smell of all that coffee and paper. That's how we've spent dozens of nights during our six years together in New York City.

The store closes in January and we'll take our little family tradition to another store, in another part of the city. Our bookstore nights will survive, just as long as bookstores themselves stay alive.

For his next project: Eight articles about tissue paper

Coming up with original freelance story ideas can be difficult. Sometimes writers answer calls for work, farming out their stories to those in need of their literary talent.

Then there's this ad.

"I am looking for someone to write content for me on an ongoing basis. I need someone with great English skills that can provide quality work on time. I need 5 400+ word articles on Napkins, they must be well-researched and factual."

Starving artists and writers have been known to do just about anything for a paycheck. They'll have two part-time jobs as a waiter. They'll work at Starbucks. They'll dress up as a dog in Union Square and sell tickets to a pet convention. They'll donate blood, plasma, and other fluids. They'll steal from friends.

But napkins?

Is there an undiscovered world out there clamoring for 2,000 total words on napkins? Are sidebars about the rivalry between napkins and paper towels allowed? And if you research one 400-word article on napkins, are you going to have much left over for four more stories? Maybe you leave out absorption theories in the first two articles and save them for the third.

Here's Wikipedia on napkins. Wikipedia, which can produce 25,000 words on nearly any object, has little to say.
"A napkin (also in Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia: serviette) is a rectangle of cloth or paper used at the table for wiping the mouth while eating."

So maybe for the fourth story you examine why the Canadians, Brits and Aussies call it a serviette. Should be able to crank out 400 words on that history.

The ad continues, the poster requesting the final product within 4 days. Timeliness is always key in journalism, more so today than ever before. Yet it seems that an article on napkins can be submitted tomorrow, or in six years and the end result won't be much different. Four days. Why the rush?

"It is recommended that you search for the particular keyword phrase listed above at each of the top search engines (Google, Bing and Yahoo) and then look through the top 10 links on the first page of search engine results. This will give you an idea of what's ranking well and can help you in writing your own articles."

I assume there's some advertising pitch intertwined in this whole posting, something that helps some unknown company make money and as a non-advertising person I'm simply too dense to understand that. There's probably an inside joke here I'm just too slow to catch. I get that. But I still don't get what a search of napkin is supposed to unearth. There are some interesting stories I've heard of pseudo contracts being written on napkins, or someone sketches out a brilliant idea on a napkin while at a restaurant and later turns it into a hit movie. But how do you tell those stories in 400 words? And will the napkin be the centerpiece of the story, or is it more about the people involved and their ideas? The napkin would seem like a bit player. So then we're back to talking about how well it cleans your face after a bite of pizza.

A search uncovers tips on folding arrangements. Discount party supplies. Linen services. It's all there, the excitement of the napkin universe. Even as someone who could write 1,000 words in 45 minutes on the career of Chuck Nevitt, I don't know if I'd be able to come up with five stories of 400 words each on napkins.

"I DO check every article I receive for plagiarism and refuse to pay for plagiarized content."

And now we know the only thing more depressing than having to write about napkins to earn a check: Plagiarizing a story about napkins.

The Something: An unauthorized history of the thing that altered the fate of the misunderstood people of the Western World

As I search for ideas for a second book, I keep coming across a particular genre of books that simultaneously baffle and intrigue. I've read several of them. Some are really good, others aren't.

Louise is convinced my second book should fit into this classification.

I don't think there's an official name for these types of books. Basically, they are detailed histories of a particular subject - whether it's an animal, a product, a plant, a disease - that also offer in-depth looks at how the subject fits into the current world. They can be serious, quirky, strange, funny, tragic, and dramatic, and some of them possess all of those qualities. They also often have over-the-top titles that seem to inflate the importance of the book's subject. But once you read the book, you actually think, "God, he's right, the tuna has played a critical part in our world's history."

And they're not about subjects that anyone would realize make good subjects for such a book. A history of the Roman Empire? Sure, makes sense. Same for a detailed history of the auto industry.

But...
Salt: A World History

From 2002. Perhaps the best known of these books. It could even take credit for kickstarting the trend, as many of the other entries were published in the past few years, presumably in part because of the success of Salt.

I haven't seen any books devoted exclusively to the history of pepper, but there is:

Spice: The history of a Temptation
From 2004. Temptation isn't the first word that comes to mind when thinking of spices, but this book "demonstrates that, even in ancient times, spices from distant India and Indonesia made their way west and fueled the European imagination." They also improved sex lives.

Mark Kuriansky wrote Salt. He also penned Cod: A Biography of the Fish that Changed the World.

Fish lovers have lots to choose from. If cod's not your thing - or you're skeptical that it changed the world - how about Tuna: A Love Story, from 2008. I love tuna. In sandwich form, especially. The book's not about forbidden love or Bill Parcells, but is a call to action, as the author, Richard Ellis, shows how the tuna might be doomed in the ocean.

The tuna is sort of beloved. How about an animal that's hated? For that, there's 2007's Rat: How the World's Most Notorious Rodent Clawed its Way to the Top.

If I lived anywhere other than New York, I'd read that book. But I have no desire to know just how cunning and indestructible the rat really is. Not when I see at least one a week on the streets, acting like it owns the city. Which they do.

So crawling rodents. How about Flying Rats?

Pigeons: The Fascinating Saga of the World's Most Revered and Reviled Bird

I don't know, is it really the most revered bird? Give me the eagle. And reviled? In New York, certainly. But in the world?

For foodies, there's Bananas: An American History.

If that book seems too American-centric, how about the dramatic Banana: The Fate of the Fruit that Changed the World

Most people don't think of the banana in such terms. Most people are just too short-sighted.

And while the banana changed the world, did it save the Western World? No. What did?

The Potato: How the Humble Spud Rescued the Western World

Not to be confused with Potato: A History of the Propitious Esculent

Need a burst of energy?

The World of Caffeine: The Science and Culture of the World's Most Popular Drug

Or: Coffee: A Dark History

The dark history of coffee. Which is different than Skin: A Natural History

Speaking of stimulants, Cocaine: An Unauthorized Biography

Although short and simple, that might be my favorite title of these, as it leaves open the possibility that somewhere out there is an authorized biography of cocaine. One that enjoyed the full cooperation of coke and its friends, heroin and crack.

Thirsty?

Milk: The Surprising Story of Milk through the Ages

Lots of interesting details in that one, though I'm not sure how many people are surprised by its impact. If milk was once used as fuel for cars, then it might be a surprising story.

Sick of friends and family who criticize you for your love of mini-donuts and french fries?

Fat: An appreciation of a Misunderstood Ingredient, with Recipes

Reading these books can be frustrating for potential authors. A two-hour brainstorming session sparks a dozen ideas for new books. A quick check of Amazon crushes them in a few minutes. Everything's been written about, seemingly.

A Splintered History of Wood: Belt-sander Races, Blind Woodworkers, and Baseball Bats

Biography of the Dollar: How the Mighty Buck Conquered the World and Why it's Under Siege

And, finally, a book that received a lot of publicity and even more snickers last year. But it's a book that's actually quite fascinating.

The Big Necessity: The Unmentionable World of Human Waste and Why it Matters

Again, it seems like there's nothing left to explore here. Once you've written the book on human waste, where else is there to go?

Perhaps my only remaining opportunities (copyright pending):

The Semicolon: An Unauthorized Biography of the World's Most Confusing Punctuation.

Or Appendix: A History of the Body's Most Worthless Organ.