His book, About Writing, was a major impetus in getting me off my procrastinating rear-end and onto my rear-end at the same time, same place, so that my muse could find me. I’ve recommended his book to several aspiring authors – most notably and recently, my daughter, Jessica.
In fact, I (sorry Mr. King) found Everything’s Eventual and Hearts In Atlantis in hard-cover on the Bargain Book table. I bought them both for $11 and change. That’s good hard-cover pricing. Not as good as the Library’s used book store – with suggested donations and no witnesses – but I have yet to find a King hardcover there.
So there I was, sipping my 1-sweet-and-low latte, reading the introduction to EE. In it, he is talking about his e-book experience and the fact that he gained notoriety for that, not because he had written a good story, but because he had utilized the dotcom medium. It bothered him some that many seemed to know a lot about the story but fewer knew the story itself.
He explained how businessmen in airports would approach him to sign a copy of their napkins for their wives. “My wife has read everything you’ve written.” Apparently, the men had read far less of his work. They had, he implies, had enough time for Covey’s Seven Habits and other business/motivation titles. Fiction, far less so.
But then this line, “Gotta hurry, gotta rush-rush, I got a heart attack due in about four years, and I want to be sure that I’m there to meet it with my 401(k) all in order when it shows up.”
I started laughing – the image of my days of wild-eyed business building, now replaced with my wild-eyed writing, firmly ensconced in my mind. I tried to suppress it. Mistake!
What I got instead was a half-snort, which resulted in a glob of saliva latte (a drink Starbucks has yet to capitalize on) making its way into my windpipe. This resulted in a sort of “ha-wheez-cough ha-wheez-hack” complete with body wracking contortions.
I was not the only person in this Barnes & Noble Café and as you can well imagine, my loud and ostentatious display of public suffocation was hard to miss. Most looked up and quickly looked away, leaving me to wonder later (not at the time, I was in distress but still laughing) what would have happened if I had hit the floor. Would they have simply acted as though my body wasn’t there?
One gentleman glared at me from his table. Apparently, I was rudely disrupting his frontal assault on his laptop. His rather disapproving eye held my public outburst in utter contempt. I don't know if it was my dying throes because I rather imagine he gained a level of pleasure from that. No, I believe it was the idea that I would laugh out loud while reading a book. That I would be so lost in what I read that my sense of surroundings diminished to almost nothing. Laughing out loud, and yes, even crying, are not that uncommon for me when I read.
I consider it a parenting success that my daughter, upon reading sections of Hearts In Atlantis, would come down for company. She would be beside herself and needed to express her anguish. My son Christopher read "Of Mice & Men" the other day. He's eleven. At the end, he came to me and simply asked, "Why?" and then cried. Not only was it precious, it was appropriate. I don't understand how you read something like that and not react in that way.
Graciously, at Barnes & Noble, one woman seemed to get it. She smiled knowingly.
“You go ahead,” her smile said, “laugh between the lines. That is how reading should be. Cry if you need to, too. The real world will be here when you get back anyway.”
And that is what reading does for me. Takes me away and makes me vested in the story, the character, or the author’s mood. That is what I strive for.
To that woman, thank you. To the man with his laptop… Go to the library if you want to concentrate. They don’t serve coffee so I won’t be choking in front of you.
But I will laugh when I need to.
