Confessions of a Brooklyn Book Festival Bookend Event Participant
In the end, I win by a nose, able to recall all the parts of Literary Brooklyn I’ve already read, plus other stuff I’ve picked up by virtue of my job, like which ice-cream parlor takes its name from “Crossing Brooklyn Ferry” (even though I’m a diabetic vegan!). For winning, I get a Coffin Factory T-shirt that says, “It’s Hip to Read.” The other contestants get them, too: participation trophies for the chest. I get the large, which makes me feel fat.
I tell Laura and Randy about one of the last times I came to BookCourt, when Sunset Park came out—”the book, not the Rhea Perlman movie”—and the manager chased me out onto the street and accused me of shoplifting. “And look at me now!” The story isn’t as funny as it was in front of the mirror; it’s a good thing I didn’t try to tell it when I was in front of everyone.
I hang out and peruse the fiction shelves; I buy my girlfriend a copy of Let the Great World Spin and some Thomas Pynchon for myself (the shortest one they have), because I will feel like a jerk if I don’t buy a book. (I am, according to my notes, an “inverse party guest: saves face by leaving with gift for self.” What the fuck was I talking about?) Also, I’m a little drunk, walking around with a glass of whiskey, which I keep putting down on the shelves (which now strikes me as risky at best) whenever I want to look at a book. I try to convince the cashier to sell me a copy of The Bleeding Edge a day early, but he won’t even confirm if they have them in back. I worked in retail so many years. I’m being a jerk. I should go home.
I might have been the only Bookend participant who ended the night in Bay Ridge, drinking Prosecco and watching Tales from the Crypt DVDs—because if we’re talking about Brooklyn’s great literary tradition, we ought to be speaking broadly enough to include Bill Gaines.
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