Funny --> Troubling --> Doesn’t Matter
A conversation with Samantha Harvey. Audience members getting cheeky.
I’d heard that literary events were “back” but didn’t believe it until Wednesday, when I participated in one. “Wow, people like good books” was an intelligent thought I had during the event, a conversation with Samantha Harvey at McNally Jackson.
Based on nothing more than finger-to-the-wind impressions I’d become convinced that people spend their free time reading AI-generated dragon smut. But no, there are readers who enjoy novels of substance and betake themselves to physical spaces to meet others who like same. I should get out more!
Harvey is the author of a great book on insomnia, among others. On Wednesday we gathered to discuss her Booker Prize-winning novel Orbital, which takes place in a spacecraft circling (no, ovalling) the earth. The run of show had been sent weeks in advance, and was admirably strict:
5.40: Samantha arrives at McNally Jackson Seaport to presign stock
6.15: Molly arrives at McNally Jackson Seaport
6.30: Intro from McNally Jackson
6.35-7.15: Reading/conversation
7.15-7.30: Audience Q&A
7.30-8.55: Drinks and signing
9.00: Store closes
Ooh, doesn’t a strict run-of-show give you goosebumps? The precision of that 6:35 timestamp sends a tingle up and down the spine. I made sure my watch was calibrated with Swiss precision the morning of the event, and compulsively wound it all day to ensure ongoing accuracy.
A minor problem was that I had woken up with a cold. The cold was as harrowing as a cold can be…something resembling a wad of human tissue had blown forth from my nose…an ejecta so haunting that I took a photo in case the thing proved diagnostically useful in a future where I developed some neurodegenerative prion disease in which “blowing human tissue” was the telltale symptom…
But okay, I gulped Advil and drank water and reviewed my notes for the event in bed. That same week Tracy Morgan had made headlines for vomiting courtside at a Knicks game and causing a delay while MSG personnel cleaned up the comedian’s mess. I would be lying if I said the idea of generating an icky situation at McNally Jackson was far from my mind.
However: “You made this commitment and you will honor it,” I said, blasting my uvula with Chloraseptic. “Plus, it will be fun.”
It was fun. Samantha Harvey was lovely and thoughtful, a real “speak softly and carry a big stick” type of person. (The stick is her brain. She speaks softly and carries a big brain.) In a cozy backstage warren she signed books and we murmured about jet lag, smartphones (she does not own one), imperialism.
At 6:26 p.m. a cool McNally employee appeared to lead us out. “One last thing,” the cool employee said. "We recently installed theater lighting. Would you like to have a spotlight on you?"
[Confusion]
"Some people find a spotlight distracting,” the employee clarified, “but it is good for filming. So, we leave it entirely up to you."
Samantha: "Would it be on both of us at the same time? Or...swinging back and forth?"
"Both at the same time."
She shrugged. I shrugged. Spotlights, sure! Make it a double.
We chatted and read from 6.35-7.15, in full compliance with the schedule.
I wasn’t in peak form but nor did I pull a Tracy Morgan; the sheer volume of thinking I’d done about Orbital muscled through the brainfog of sickness and exited in the form of workable prompts.
On Harvey’s end the conversation went beautifully. She spoke off-the-cuff, with none of the reversion-to-prefab-answers that would be forgivable and expected from a touring writer.
Along with the audience I learned that she conducted a major chunk of research for the novel by browsing the NASA website. And that the launchpad of her books tends to be a specific emotion (not e.g. a character, setting, idea, argument) that she isolates and attempts to inhabit while writing. And that she doesn’t write longhand because she can barely read her own scrawl. She spoke of art and the scientific method; of commercialized space travel and midcentury exploration; of plots and climate catastrophe.
I am told the conversation was taped and will appear online at some point, so we can all return to it and admire Harvey’s soft speech/big stick. [Update: here it is.]
The “kicker” to this post is that one of the audience members, during the Q&A, prefaced his question for Harvey by quickly mentioning that he liked my Substack. (Thanks, audience member Nate!) This became a sort of “bit” and two other questioners quickly mentioned that they, too, liked my Substack. (Thanks, thanks!)
The thought occurred to me, as it has before, that my Substack subscriber count1 (all unpaid) increased at the moment I stopped posting, which was funny at first—here was concrete evidence that my silence was more valuable than my writing?—and then troubling, and then I forgot about it because it didn’t matter. A common trajectory for many of life’s minor obstacles, this:
Funny —> Troubling —> Doesn’t Matter—>Forgotten.
Anyway, this post is dedicated to the three wiseacres at McNally Jackson on Wednesday night. I’ll see you clowns back here in a decade with a fresh post, if the internet still exists.
which I never look at, only a dork would pay attention to that—hold on I just lost another 10 subscribers— which infidels betrayed me THIS time???—I will hunt them down and slit their throa