There are a lot of best-of-the-year lists—best films, best restaurants, best books, etc. I’m honored that THE DOORMAN makes an appearance on a few of those lists, including the New York Times’ 100 Notable Books of the Year.
This is not one of those lists.
Aspen Literary Festival. A perfect mix of authors, including friends and a few assured debuts and some hugely accomplished writers; a beautiful town, with plenty to do; great programming; a really nice hotel, Aspen Meadows; and a convivial atmosphere.
As Aspen’s Saturday-night cocktail party was winding down, a lot of people were headed to a big dinner. Jess Walter and I both knew that we were not invited to this dinner, but it wasn’t clear if that was purposeful, or an oversight (it wasn’t), or if we should go anyway. We didn’t. We barely knew each other, but we spent the next few hours together at the bar of the Hotel Jerome, and now we do.
The historic Dock Street Theatre in the French Quarter of Charleston SC, for the Charleston Literary Festival. A beautiful building, in a beautiful town.
For me book clubs are almost always deeply rewarding experiences. They’re the most natural of all possible appearances, conversations without a stage or a microphone or a recording, without the possibility of book sales on the far side, nor the dread that no one will show up. Most book-club invitations come to me via someone I know from some corner of my life, and of the dozen-plus I accepted this year, my favorite was from an old high school friend. It was a small group, and included a couple of people I haven’t seen in forty years (!), which brought me great joy. Plus it was in the apartment house next-door.
“Oh my god, I’m so tired, I’ve been up since this morning.”—Maria Semple
Larry Scheper’s clinic at the public courts in Beaufort, SC. $20 for the hour! I had so much fun, I did it twice.
Balthazar. It’s one of my favorite rooms, and one of my favorite menus. The joint is always full, and just the right amount of loud, in the perfect location—the middle of SoHo, which for me is the middle of NYC. The staff treat me well, most especially by allowing me to linger indefinitely. I often stick around till the dinner crowd starts to arrive.
Chief, who as you know if you ever get the end of these things, is not my dog.
The Grey, Savannah GA.
I proposed this one for the the 92nd Street Y: “The New York Novel in the New Gilded Age” with me, Rumaan Alam, and Jenny Jackson, moderated by the Y’s own Lucas Wittmann. As you know if you read my prior post, poor panel comportment is a pet peeve of mine (alliteration, though, I love), and I deeply appreciate the flip side: being on a panel with great writers who know what the hell they’re doing on a stage. Which is not unrelated to knowing what they hell they’re doing on the page.
Michael Lewis’s hour at the Aspen festival was like a master class in how to do this well: tell stories, don’t describe stories; do not attempt to sell the book; be funny.
Cynthia Weiner’s A Gorgeous Excitement, which I purchased at a bookstore, and read, and loved, and wrote to the editor to say so, then we turned that email into this blurb: “I love this novel, from its gripping first sentence to its chilling last, and the relentless drumbeat of menace in between, capturing all of the things that were thrilling and wonderful and scary and horrible about growing up in New York City in the mid-’80s, which are all the same things that teenagers go through everywhere, in every era, just more of it.”
Ron Currie’s The Savage, Noble Death of Babs Dionne: “An ambitious novel that revolves around crime but that’s really about class, prejudice, addiction, exploitation, war, trauma, loyalty, friendship, and above all about family. A remarkable achievement that’s also a deeply enjoyable reading experience on every page.”
Ties are cop-outs, I know. But here I am, copping out, recommending two books I would not have read if not for the same great festival, Aspen: the debut novel Flat Earth by Anika Jade Levy, which is like a combination of Emma Cline, Jay McInerney, and Jenny Offil; and Jess Walter’s beautiful, haunting story collection The Angel of Rome.
FSG did some very creative things for THE DOORMAN, including a poster campaign plastered around Midtown Manhattan, and a summer-reads event co-hosted with Air Mail at their West Village shop. But I think my favorite was the giveaway on the beach-bound Hampton Jitney for Memorial Day weekend: putting the book not in front of the widest possible audience, but the audience most likely to be interested in the book.
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