a bit of a moan
Not a happy camper. It’s cold out, and I have a cold, or something – coughing, aching, nose blowing – for the third time in six months. Some time ago I bought a ticket to a stellar production of Uncle Vanya for today at 2. I am going to put on a mask and go, at least try to last for the first half, to wallow in Chekhov’s characters’ miseries instead of my own.
I am also feeling sorry for myself because of my book. It has been out in the world for almost four months and is still unavailable at Amazon, Indigo, and most bookstores. Yes, you can buy it from Ben McNally Books and from Mosaic Press. But people have been writing to me in frustration, and I have been writing to the publisher in frustration, and still, no change. After all that work and time – and money – lavished on a work of literature, it’s difficult to know that, for some incomprehensible reason, it’s still so inaccessible. Or perhaps not so incomprehensible.
A dear friend emailed, after reading my complaints, Why do you care so much about the money? Why can’t you just be happy that you’ve written a good book your friends like a lot?
It’s not the money, God knows; anyone in this business for money needs their head examined. Yes, I’d like to think I’ve written a good book, and I’d like people to READ IT. And to do that, they have to be able to find and buy it.
I know: first world problems, nothing nothing laughably nothing in comparison with what so many are enduring right now. I apologize. Just wanted to share with you that I am not always impossibly perky and upbeat. Sometimes I am down.
But the sun is shining, the cat is on my lap, I’m less sick today than yesterday. Need to get better – we’ve booked the studio for tomorrow to try to finish taping the audiobook. So I need to get my voice back to its normal level, from the gravelly depths to which it fell last week.
My amazing cousin Ted and I What’sApped yesterday. I didn’t know that he is the executor of the wills of Martin Amis and the great editor Robert Gottlieb and friends with his widow Maria Tucci, who tells him stories of making Mike Nichols laugh. Ted is good friends with the superb writer Stacey Schiff. He gardens and cooks and has a huge collection of valuable antiquities. Quite the guy. His partner Henry is working on restoring the Alice and John Coltrane Home, “the spiritual home of jazz,” near their home in NY. Wish we lived closer. He is almost my last remaining extended family, at least, the ones I know.
Yesterday I dragged myself to the Bay to pick up a suitcase I’d ordered online – recommended in the NYT’s Wirecutter as by far the best carry-on, and at 65% off, I couldn’t resist, needed a new suitcase for upcoming trips. But … it’s tiny. So small, recommended for a week’s travel. I’ll be in Europe for nearly 3 weeks and am known for the vast amounts with which I journey. Can I make the shift to taking almost nothing? The thing is, I’ve realized – no one is looking at me. No one in Paris or London cares if an elderly Canadian wears the same thing day in and day out, or is out of fashion. No one cares.
Still, it is an awfully small suitcase. Not sure I can do this.
Okay, time to get dressed, you slovenly creature, and march into the day. That you can do.
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