Read Online Although Of Course You End Up Becoming Yourself by David Lipsky - Free Book Online
Authors: David Lipsky
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were like big superstars, and I was like …
[Jay McInerney, Lorrie Moore, and others]
So you were at Yaddo with some literary heavyweights and you fell into that sort of casino mind-set?
[Turns off tape: He’s careful.]
Sometimes at parties. It was more just, you know, you’re a student, you’re a writing student. You’re young, you are by definition immature. And you have these ideas about why people are in the game, what they want. And most of the ideas degenerate into—devolve into—this idea of how other people are gonna regard you. So you look to these people who are well regarded, and regard them as having made it and all this kind of stuff. And I don’t know if
Rolling Stone
readers are interested, it’s just—most bright people, something happens in your late twenties, where you realize that this other, that
how
other people regard you does not have enough calories in it, to keep you from blowing your brains out. That you’ve got to find, make some other détente.
[This is his friend Mark Costello’s vision of what happened to David. Mark was curious, from the beginning, to see how David would make out in the field; he lived this part—the positioning and business politics—this version of the literary life with David. David, starting out, called it the “publishing episcopacy;” a world of bishops and competing dioceses.
His friend Jon Franzen sees a different novel: a David who tried for adulthood and had trouble getting there.
Writers can be especially awful, about measuring each other and about touching fame. There’s a famous New York story about a movie made of a very well-known—Pulitzer Prize, etc.—novelist’s book. Halfway through the shoot, from location, the novelist’s agent receives a call. An assistant answers instead. The novelist immediately says, “You know X?”—insert famous actress’s name here—“I banged her.” Writers eye and measure the celebrity world and don’tknow how to deal with the portion that falls to them; because what they’re selling is not their features, physique, or their charm; it’s more personal, it’s their brain, their
them
, and so they get as anxious about that as a starlet would about nose or waistline. How do I husband this thing that’s earning me praise and money? How do I protect and expand it? And what is it people like about me anyway?]
And I am weak enough, and easily enough plunged into these little worlds, that it’s just real good for me that I’m not part of it anymore.
Easier to say that now, though? With Infinite Jest in magazines and on covers of book reviews? With your readings jammed?
I would like to think you’re wrong. Here’s what I was ready for: I am proud of this book. I worked really hard on it. I was pretty sure that it would fall stillborn from the presses. But that within three or four years—like
Girl
sells better now than when it first came out. I thought, hopefully it would sell well enough so that at least Little, Brown could think, “All right, we’re eventually gonna get our money back,” so that they would buy my next thing. In all earnestness I say to you, that was my expectation, that’s what I was ready for.
When did counterindications come?
When
Vogue
and the fashion magazines …
[The tape side runs out.]
… trust the idea of people who read
Vogue
and
Elle
and
Harper’s Bazaar
buying four-and-a-half-pound fairly difficult pieces of work. Y’know, when they said
Newsweek
wanted to send a photographer, I think I began to get the idea that there was—I thought maybe Little, Brown had just …
My first thought was fear. ’Cause I thought, “Wow, they’ve really kicked up the hype engine. And this means I’m gonna get
smeared
.And shittily reviewed, at a much more public level than I would have before.” So it sort of accumulated.
[Simple thing: everyone sees him differently. Bonnie Nadell, his agent, as a sensitive person she was protecting. Franzen, as a friendly rival and
[Jay McInerney, Lorrie Moore, and others]
So you were at Yaddo with some literary heavyweights and you fell into that sort of casino mind-set?
[Turns off tape: He’s careful.]
Sometimes at parties. It was more just, you know, you’re a student, you’re a writing student. You’re young, you are by definition immature. And you have these ideas about why people are in the game, what they want. And most of the ideas degenerate into—devolve into—this idea of how other people are gonna regard you. So you look to these people who are well regarded, and regard them as having made it and all this kind of stuff. And I don’t know if
Rolling Stone
readers are interested, it’s just—most bright people, something happens in your late twenties, where you realize that this other, that
how
other people regard you does not have enough calories in it, to keep you from blowing your brains out. That you’ve got to find, make some other détente.
[This is his friend Mark Costello’s vision of what happened to David. Mark was curious, from the beginning, to see how David would make out in the field; he lived this part—the positioning and business politics—this version of the literary life with David. David, starting out, called it the “publishing episcopacy;” a world of bishops and competing dioceses.
His friend Jon Franzen sees a different novel: a David who tried for adulthood and had trouble getting there.
Writers can be especially awful, about measuring each other and about touching fame. There’s a famous New York story about a movie made of a very well-known—Pulitzer Prize, etc.—novelist’s book. Halfway through the shoot, from location, the novelist’s agent receives a call. An assistant answers instead. The novelist immediately says, “You know X?”—insert famous actress’s name here—“I banged her.” Writers eye and measure the celebrity world and don’tknow how to deal with the portion that falls to them; because what they’re selling is not their features, physique, or their charm; it’s more personal, it’s their brain, their
them
, and so they get as anxious about that as a starlet would about nose or waistline. How do I husband this thing that’s earning me praise and money? How do I protect and expand it? And what is it people like about me anyway?]
And I am weak enough, and easily enough plunged into these little worlds, that it’s just real good for me that I’m not part of it anymore.
Easier to say that now, though? With Infinite Jest in magazines and on covers of book reviews? With your readings jammed?
I would like to think you’re wrong. Here’s what I was ready for: I am proud of this book. I worked really hard on it. I was pretty sure that it would fall stillborn from the presses. But that within three or four years—like
Girl
sells better now than when it first came out. I thought, hopefully it would sell well enough so that at least Little, Brown could think, “All right, we’re eventually gonna get our money back,” so that they would buy my next thing. In all earnestness I say to you, that was my expectation, that’s what I was ready for.
When did counterindications come?
When
Vogue
and the fashion magazines …
[The tape side runs out.]
… trust the idea of people who read
Vogue
and
Elle
and
Harper’s Bazaar
buying four-and-a-half-pound fairly difficult pieces of work. Y’know, when they said
Newsweek
wanted to send a photographer, I think I began to get the idea that there was—I thought maybe Little, Brown had just …
My first thought was fear. ’Cause I thought, “Wow, they’ve really kicked up the hype engine. And this means I’m gonna get
smeared
.And shittily reviewed, at a much more public level than I would have before.” So it sort of accumulated.
[Simple thing: everyone sees him differently. Bonnie Nadell, his agent, as a sensitive person she was protecting. Franzen, as a friendly rival and
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