Celebrity Madness

I went on a tear this winter, having little else to do, when whenever I read a particularly good book I wrote to the author and told them what I loved about it. Nick Harkaway wrote me back today.

I am starstruck.

Here is our correspondence:

From sarahlizp to Nick Harkaway:

I was in Panama when I finished The Gone Away World. I devoured it in two lazy days in an apartment with broken air conditioning, slouched on a leather couch, (why would you put a leather couch in the tropics, for effs sake?) with rum on ice while the fella I was then staying with, an Irishman who was wilting and in other ways NOT COPING WELL with the heat and humidity, was crankily snapping away at his computer. I would occasionally read parts of it out loud to him, when a particularly clever part of word play came along at a moment when he seemed to be not too annoyed by work or heat. He was particularly tickled by your descriptions of the English and the German school founders. I was too. I read it four times. Throughout the whole book I marveled at the sheer lunacy of the prose, and the absolute lunacy of the plot. I am a reader who reads for a number of reasons, probably the foremost of which is that I am an only child who grew up miles away from the school she attended, and thus books were her main friends. I also, depending on mood, read for company, read to learn, read to learn new ways to phrase things and think about things, read to pretend I\’m not on the bus going to a crappy job, read to forget heartache, read to poke a sore spot in my brain. Every book has a function for me. Your books I read for fun. Your books are like a party where you get just drunk enough and tell jokes all night and laugh a bunch and maybe do whip-its. When I finished TGAW, I sat contemplatively on the couch, to which I was stuck with a noisy layer of sweat, and thought and thought and pressed my rum on rocks against my forehead, while Eoin hollered at some underperforming content writer on the other side of the world via skype. When I was sufficiently recovered to be able to move, I went online to find your other books, and I discovered that I had read all of your books. A strangled animal howl escaped from me and Eoin jumped and stared at me (still on skype) like, “WTF?!?!?!” I shrugged at him. Moving my shoulders at that moment of despair was an effort. And made a gross sound against the sweaty leather couch. (Seriously- who puts a leather couch in an apartment in the tropics?) I have spent the intervening months reconciling myself to the fact that I’ve now read all of your novels. I am not happy about it, but as I constantly tell my students, “life is long, hard, boring and unfair.” Thank you for brightening it. Now please write another. You’re good at it. -slp

To sarahlizp from NH
Hi, Sarah –

I’m relieved to be able to tell you there’s another one coming out in May – that’s some impressive fury you have going on there 🙂 And I am working on another one now – 100k words in, in fact – with an eye to making the gaps smaller between stories, because that’s basically what we all want.

Also, and in seriousness: this is a hugely enjoyable email to read. If you’ve an eye on writing something yourself, get after it. (I just had to Google you to make sure you hadn’t already.)

Cheers,

NH

To NH from sarahlizp

I am going to buy and read the shit out of that book. Thank you for the update. It’s especially welcome after such a long winter.
What a kind thing to say! I’m going to tell you a story that makes every single aspiring writer acquaintance of mine positively apoplectic.
One day shortly before Christmas four or five years ago, I got a call completely out of the blue from a literary agent, who was friends of a friend. She’d bumped into the friend randomly on the street, and since they hadn’t seen each other in ten years or so, they had coffee and she mentioned that she was looking for fresh talent and Lou got on his smart phone and forwarded her some e-mails I’d sent him and she called the next day. I’d signed a contract within a week.
And then I discovered I hate writing. Oh, not writing blogs or writing e-mails- that’s all very enjoyable. But to sit there and have to doubt every word that comes out of you, to scrutinize and pick apart and start again, to feel so lonely at the kitchen table while everyone else is at work or interacting with the world…
Also there was the business of it. I never worked up to it, you see. I dropped out of college to become a beautician, unlike every aspiring writer I know who shmoozed for contacts and learned the ropes in internships. My very ambitious agent phoned regularly to tell me that I should just get a piece published in the New York Times and get myself a segment on This American Life to raise my profile. ???!!!!!?!?!?!?!
I got a good 80 pages banged out, got stuck on the proposal, and fled to Turkey.
That’s why I so admire people like you who stick through the slog of it. And it means a particular lot coming from a man who wrote two of my top ten books of 2013. (I don’t know if this raises or lowers your self esteem but Helen DeWitt and DFW were also in the mix.) (I know The Goldfinch was everyone’s darling, but the third act dragged so… solid 11, though.)
I would also say that, as a reader who likes to read, your diversions between stories are a great part of your charm. Not everyone can conjure up so much… what would I even call it? syntactical acrobatics? linguistic lace?… in the spaces between action.
It was very kind of you to write to me, and I appreciate it very much.
Very good luck on your future endeavors.
-slp

NH to sarahlizp

That is SUPERB.

However, I do not believe you will be able to evade the book forever. If the day comes, I want to know about it…

Cheers,

NH

I feel like a thirteen year old devouring Teen Beat.