Introducing Someone Who Introduces Someone Who Introduces Howard Dean
This weekend, I served as Saturday-night emcee for DemocracyFest, the second annual party thrown by activist liberals who are mad as hell but aren't going to take it anymore. The show was at Stubbs', a rock-n-roll ranch in downtown Austin, and Howard Dean was the main attraction. Dean showed up early and therefore went on stage early, and...oh, this is boring for you, isn't it?
I told several jokes, including this one: "Howard Dean's been getting a lot of grief lately for making the outrageous assertion that the Republican Party is dominated by white Christians. Well, that's pretty strong talk from the leader of a party of mixed-race bisexual Wiccans." And I introduced a few people: a high-ranking official in the powerful corporate PAC One Vote, One Voice, and also Jim Hightower and Jesse Jackson Jr., who I'm sure was none too pleased to walk on the stage after someone who'd just claimed that he'd spiked his orange juice with liquid amphetamines. If anyone is looking to book me for similar gigs, my speaking fee is $2000 a half-hour, or the highest offer. That means you could get me for 10 bucks (plus meals and bus ticket), or I might cost you $10,000. Literally, a crapshoot.
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If any of you are coming to this space for the first time because you saw my essay about shedding my literary persona in the New York Times Book Review, welcome. Anyone who's not new to this space probably saw the piece two weeks ago, when I emailed out galleys to my 17 regular readers. Please ignore all "controversy" surrounding the piece, as it is part of a vast right-wing conspiracy to destroy me.
I have jacked my year's reading up to 28 books. I'm getting close to clinching my 50-book goal. Like my beloved Suns, I'm always stronger in the second half. Take whatever odds Vegas is giving you.
Number 26 was the lovely Natasha, by David Bezmozgis, a very self-assured and moving short-story collection about Russian Jewish immigrants in Toronto in the 1980s. I would put this book at the very high end of recent "literary" fiction, whatever that is, and, in fact, I think it's been a bit mischaracterized as a short-story collection. It's more like an immigrant version of Jesus' Son, with the same sense of passing time and the same cumulative effect. Young Jewish writers spend a lot of time imitating Issac Bashevis Singer by writing thin semi-parodies four times removed of his world, but Bezmozgis's book is a legitimate and vividly detailed account of a search for modern-day Jewish identity. Highly recommended.
Number 27 was Perfect Madness: Motherhood In The Age Of Anxiety, by Judith Warner, which a friend sent to the house after my family was attacked on Salon after I dared publish an article about some problems we were having with our two-year-old. The book is aimed at beleagured middle-class American mothers, so I ignored large swaths of it that really weren't aimed at me (though my wife read every word like it was Torah). But the core of the book is a cry for social change in a country that ignores the needs of all but the very rich. I totally agree with Warner: We need federally subsidized child-care in this country. There needs to be mcuh more public support for working parents. The military has the best child-care system in the United States, and it's subsidized by tax money. Why shouldn't the rest of us reap similar benefits? Except for health-care reform, and possibly pension protections, there's no more important issue facing American families.
Unless that issue is reading book number 28, The Areas Of My Expertise, by my very good friend and former literary agent John Hodgman. He is the funniest (and also the nerdiest) writer in America, and I'm glad he finally got off his ass and wrote a book. Buy it in October when it comes out, or buy it now and wait. Either way, it'll be October before you're howling on the toilet. At least for that reason.