October 14, 2014
Day nine of my one-month reading tour.
I get on an early-morning flight for St. Louis. It’s rainy and gloomy here. I head straight from the airport to Pappy’s for Memphis-style ribs. The last time I read in St. Louis a tornado forced me into the basement of Left Bank Books. Six people had braved that tornado to see me, which impressed upon me the toughness of Missourians.
At a reading I did over the weekend, in New York, a young woman told me that fifty per cent of the authors she's met have committed suicide. She mentioned two of my favorite writers. I feel nervous tonight. There’s a sign near the green room of the venue: “Every defeat, every heartbreak, every loss, contains its own seed, its own lesson on how to improve your performance the next time —Malcolm X.” I read from “Little Failure” as best as I can, slowly, and with occasional heartbreak. The audience responds with kindness and warmth and the occasional selfie on the signing line. Thank you, Malcolm.
October 15, 2014
It’s bright and early in the morning. The old white cabbie taking me from my hotel to the St. Louis airport can’t stop talking. “North St. Louis is basically just crack dealers and hookers,” he says. “I only drive well-to-do people.”
We start passing the exits for a town that’s been in the news lately. “Ferguson is basically a nice, old white neighborhood that's basically seventy per cent black,” the cabbie says. He’s fond of basically. “All the black people they don't know nothing about the case,” he says. “All my lawyer and cop friends say it was a good shoot. It’s like when O. J. happened, all the blacks in my cab basically thought O. J. was innocent.”
“Look at that trolley,” I say, to change the subject. “I like light rail.”
“That's basically black people on there unless there's a Rams game,” the cabbie says. “I've been on it once. It's pretty neat, though."
I land in Kansas City. I do some local morning TV, check into a hotel, and take a cab straight to Arthur Bryant’s for some barbecued burnt ends. The porter tells me I’m making the right decision. “President Obama ate there,” he says. “And Danny Glover.”
The burnt ends are nice and moist, a good contrast with the dry rub across the state in St. Louis. I spend an hour walking around the working-class neighborhood. There’s a storefront that has only two words on the awning: “Obama Care.” I turn on Grand Boulevard and climb up to the enormous nineteen-twenties Liberty Memorial, which commemorates the end of the First World War. There’s a chapter in my memoir that deals with my obsession with “The Day After_,”_ a 1983 ABC-TV movie in which Kansas City and Lawrence, Kansas, get pulverized by Soviet nukes. In one of the opening scenes, Jason Robards takes his daughter to the Liberty Memorial and they talk about life and stuff as if nothing’s about to happen that day. Jason Robards’s daughter’s boyfriend is named Gary, who’s about to do a residency at Tufts, and she wants to move to Boston to be with him—something Jason Robards isn’t thrilled about. (“It’s not so easy you know. Saying goodbye.”) In one of the final scenes of the movie, Jason Robards, dying of radiation poisoning, his daughter long turned into ash, finds his way back to the smoldering wreck of the Liberty Memorial. I’ve been drawn to the idea of the Liberty Memorial, both standing and pulverized, my whole life. Now I’m here and my mind is blank. I look out over the modest Kansas City skyline, so far untouched by Russian atomic bombs. I wonder what happened to fictional Gary, back in Boston. No Tufts for him.
The Royals were supposed to play yesterday for the league championship, but because of a rain delay they’re playing on the actual day of my reading. I’m moved from a venue that can accommodate 1,250 people to Rainy Day Books, where about thirty people show up. I don’t mind. I like small groups. I can give my Ativan a rest. Cars stream by with people pumping brooms out of their windows and cheering the victorious Royals. The members of Kansas’s P.B.R. (Pabst Blue Ribbon) book club show up. These are serious readers who guzzle beer while discussing books. They take me out for some quasi-artisanal brews and some more baby-back ribs, dripping with sauce. We talk about books and jobs and the strangeness of life in twenty-first-century America. I feel very close to all of them and happy for the company. I wake up the next day with my arms spread out across the bed like a hovering bird.
October 16, 2014
Houston. A good reading at Brazos Bookstore. There’s a sweet Russian mother and daughter who both like me despite everything I’ve written. I’m always thrilled to see two generations come out to hear me read. At the first reading I ever did for “Little Failure,” back in January, a middle-aged woman got up and said in a thick Russian accent: “I am Republican and I am proud. It is people like you and Woody Allen and Philip Roth who are killing Judaism.” At the signing afterward she came up with her young daughters. “They’re you’re biggest fans,” she said, posing them for a photo with me. “Maybe you’ll win the Nobel some day.” "Maybe,” I think, “unless I manage to kill Judaism first."
I go out with my Jewish-Iranian friend and his Palestinian fiancée to eat a Vietnamese catfish near Chinatown. Whatever you say about Houston, it's got the multicultural thing in the bag.
October 17, 2014
My flight to Denver is delayed because a large, presumably Texan bird has struck the incoming plane. I spend an hour listening to men bigger than myself talk the local talk.
“No, Bubba doesn't wanna retain us.”
“You all going bird hunting?”
“I hope my kids aren’t too smart the way college costs.”
“You can't cut the mustard but you can still lick the jar.”
Once the bird-stricken plane lands, I find myself in the back of a very long Boeing. The people behind me are wearing face masks to protect themselves from Ebola. I feel my forehead. A little warm. The Mexican family next to me cross themselves in unison before takeoff. The boy sleeps on his father’s lap. I miss my own little son.
I do a reading at the University of Denver, hosted by the famous Tattered Cover Book Store. A Russian woman gives me an elaborately wrapped package. "Just for Colorado,” she says, “not for the plane." I can smell the sweet mustiness within. Am I smelling a cross between Northern Lights and Haze? My pot knowledge isn't what it used to be since I left Oberlin. Also, I don’t know in which language to thank her.
For dinner, I crave a spot of solitude. My hotel is the historic Brown Palace, and I’ve always enjoyed their Ship Tavern for a good, solid ribeye. I’ve got Renata Adler’s “Speedboat” on tap, just perfect for a lonely read on a Friday night in a faraway town with a martini or three.
October 18, 2014
“We have to be careful,” the Ethiopian cab driver says, apropos of nothing, as we pull onto the highway to the airport. “We only have one chance in this life.”
I’m coming home.
You can read Part One of Gary Shteyngart’s book tour diary here.
