Archive for May 7th, 2010
literary celebrity
How do you know when you are one? You start rolling a cigarette while sitting in the pub with the academics who have paid you (£250!) to come talk to their students. When your handler asks you if you want to go outside to have a cigarette, you are able to reply for all to hear “No actually I just want to go, period.” And then you do. No excuses offered, even though there are likely good ones available.
But there’s a sadder truth to this sort of gig, and it is related to the cash figure I named in the previous paragraph. Twenty minutes later, you return, because you’d forgotten your package of rolling tobacco (£2.75) on the pub table. You retrieve it, make a politically incorrect joke about it, and then leave again.
UPDATE: My wife just accused me of being mean in this post. Really wasn’t my intent. It is a bit funny I think, but mostly this is an anecdotal exercise in the sociology of literature at present day. In what other field, nowadays, would you find such a conjunction of events?
