Grace Reading Series

Lisa Selin Davis, the author of the fabulous novel BELLY is on tour with the FIRST FICTION TOUR, which brings a few first novelists all over the country to read in fun and booming bar settings rather than in your more sedate bookstore.

(If I sound funky this morning forgive me. I subsitute-hosted for Lisa at the KGB non-fiction reading series last night and my mind is still blown by Lisa Carver's variety show. More on that later. I think. If I'm allowed to even SAY what happened! Apparently things get more out of hand for a subsitute host than for a substitute teacher. That Ms. Carver. What a punk rocker.)

ANYWAY: Here is Lisa's first report from tour:

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Last night was the first reading of the First Fiction tour. Lenny Lopate did not want to talk to us (how could he not have wanted to talk to three first time novelists who wrote from the male viewpoint? Come on). He wanted to talk to Charlize Theron and Isabelle Huppert. I love Lenny. I love WNYC, but I don’t really want movie stars on there. I can turn on Entertainment Tonight if I want to check in with Charlize. How is Charlize doing, by the way? She looks terrific with feathered hair and shoulder pads.

So we had a small crowd, at a bar in a sort of black hole section of the Upper West Side -- 105th and Broadway. I sold three books, I think. Someone heckled me, and afterwards, he came up to me and said, “You’re wonderful. Can I buy you a drink?” in full slurred speech. I pointed to the man and child with whom I came, and he cocked his head as if not understanding. “I’m with them,” I said.

“So?” he asked, his chest puffing up in belligerence. “That means you’re not going to drink with me?”

“Yes. That’s what it means. Save your beer money and buy a book,” I suggest.

I think that perhaps New York is not a great spot for the tour. My friends have had their fill of my readings (not that they aren’t wildly entertaining), and, besides, we need out-of-posse attendees. We need to go to places where readings are a rare occurrence, where folks are hungry for culture and the cost of living is cheaper, allowing a little book-buying binge. Thus, I am off to Milwaukee this morning.

I arrived two hours early at the Newark airport, after dropping Sami -- who was my stepdaughter-to-be for the last two years, but is now my ex-boyfriend’s daughter with whom I still, temporarily, live -- off at school. Better to be early and risk grumping up, as I’m wont to do in airports.

What has happened to Newark airport? Everywhere I look -- not just in the airport, but, you know, almost everywhere -- retail spaces, or public spaces, have been transformed into luxury malls, and, yes, I would like a pair of Edwin Pearl diamond earrings with my $4 latte. I apologize in advance: it doesn’t matter what I’m writing about; I’ll always talk about money. It’s not because I’m a Jew, though the more money-obsessed I am, the more I feel I’m completing the frugal Jew (or Frewgal) stereotype. But I’m not even really Jewish, not if you think Judaism is an actual religion, instead of a particular sense of humor. It’s just that I’ve chosen a writing life, which means, for now, that I never know where my next paycheck is coming from, and therefore spending $50 to take a car to the Newark airport ($50! Jeez!) causes me some worry. That’s money that could have gone toward rent, or a pair of diamond earrings, something I began to want right about the time all the other Adult Children of Hippies, the educated poor, started inheriting money from their own Frewgal grandparents (mine died penniless) or leaving Legal Aid to become corporate lawyers. I watched so many members of my social class make the leap to the next level, and it looked so good over there. I would make a terrific rich person, I really would. Diamond earrings for all!

--LISA SELIN DAVIS