totallyauthorcrushedout
I would like to post for you an intelligent, thoughtful post about the absolute delight that was the David Mitchell reading tonight. I would like to be literate, and clever, and repeat word for word all the wonderful things he said - not least that he likes to think of Powell's as a Borgesian city that contains little outposts of Portland, not the other way around - or that one should be encouraged by feeling discouraged as a writer - or that he was all giddy and delighted to have been late because he was meeting Ursula Le Guin - but I am all over squee and I have work to do, and the notes will have to wait. The giddy high, the shivery knees; I get around writers I adore and I turn into a 15-year-old with an overwhelming crush, nervous, unable to speak, feeling as if I might burst into tears at any moment. He was funny and self-effacing and so incredibly smart, so swift and so able to follow strange thoughtlines down wandering rabbit holes ... I wanted to listen to him talk for hours.
My book is signed to Molly the Unique, as apparently there had been one other Molly in the line, and we were totally unique from each other. To each other. Whichever. I was talking to David Mitchell. I'm amazed I could remember to tell him how glad I was he'd read the Le Guin quote he did, that I needed to hear it today. I feel a bit odd at having thanked probably my favorite living novelist for reading something by a different author, but I figured, as fanboyishly pleased as he was when he said he'd just met her, he'd understand.
I've met authors who were nothing like I'd hoped they would be, how they seemed in their books. This one was better.
My book is signed to Molly the Unique, as apparently there had been one other Molly in the line, and we were totally unique from each other. To each other. Whichever. I was talking to David Mitchell. I'm amazed I could remember to tell him how glad I was he'd read the Le Guin quote he did, that I needed to hear it today. I feel a bit odd at having thanked probably my favorite living novelist for reading something by a different author, but I figured, as fanboyishly pleased as he was when he said he'd just met her, he'd understand.
I've met authors who were nothing like I'd hoped they would be, how they seemed in their books. This one was better.