The Book Sense 76
-- The Children's 76
-- Category Top 10s

We've been curious about what goes on on when authors are out on the road, reading and signing their books. We keep a listing of some of the events at BookSense.com, but we generally only get to readings in the New York area.

So, in the name of living vicariously, we asked a few authors if they would send us tour diaries! This latest installment is by Steve Almond, author of May/June 2002 Book Sense 76 pick My Life in Heavy Metal.

While on tour, Steve visited many cities, including Memphis, TN, Austin, TX, Phoenix, AZ, and Newton, MA. He read a lot...and also ate a ton of Skittles candies, chatted with strippers, and was patted down by cops in Miami.

Want more? We've got it! Read on...

Roadog: My Journey Through A Semi-Literate Nation
(in 1,000 words or less)
by Steve Almond

What I'm going to explain here, as quickly as I can, are the effects of a monstrous book tour on your average hermetic, socially challenged, first-time author (me).

Among the topics I will not be covering:
1) Other writers I met and the crazy times we spent together
2) The terrible hardships of the understocked mini-bar
3) Jetlag

Topics I will be covering:
1) The strange and beautiful aphorisms one acquires on the road
2) How the world might be saved by a more vigorous promotion of art
3) Whether I got laid

Before all that, some relevant stats:
1) Duration of tour: 53 days
2) Readings: 36
3) Total Mileage: 13,466 miles
4) Number of hotels stayed in: 1
5) Number of couches/futons/floors where I laid my sorry carcass down: 51

I hope this will begin to dispel the glamorous notions you might have held about most book tours. The truth is, my tour was largely DIY (do it yourself), meaning, basically, I paid for most everything after transportation.

But what the hell. This is what Homer did. This is what Twain did. This is what Motley Crue did. You tour. You build the fan base.

Which brings us back to the stats.

1) Highest turnout: 137 people, Oxford Conference for the Book, Oxford, MS
2) Lowest turnout: 1 person (Eric). Memphis, TN
3) Average number of books sold per night: 7.57
4) Least inspiring question: "Did you set up that lovely book display?"
5) A close second: "Which one of the Allman brothers are you?"

Still, for every chowderhead query, I stumbled across at least one epiphany. Yessiree, I was like old Siddhartha out there, stripped to the essentials, at the mercy of the wondrous world. (Only, perhaps, a bit more tense and narcissistic than Siddhartha.)

Examples of received wisdom:
1) "You can't do a keg stand in a prom dress, 'cause your dress will fall up over the keg and no one will know how much you drank."
-- Angel Lynette Johnson (age 20), resident of Harlin County, Kentucky, during the Greyhound bus ride from Virginia to Washington, DC

2) "Naw, it don't hurt at all. It's beautiful, man. Just silence. Silence all over the place."
-- Tony "The KO King" Gardner, former USBA Welterweight Champ, describing what it's like to get knocked out, over B-52 shooters, on Beale Street in Memphis

3) "Robert Blake is an object lesson in what happens to guys who fetishize their cockatoos."
-- Miami multi-media night crawler/socialite Pingey Tetavicho

Did I mention sex?

Yes, well, I didn't have any…to the great disappointment of my friends, who felt that a young, single, not-abjectly-ugly author such as myself should be having two to three mattress-dances per reading.

Then again, the fact that my stories are often about men acting out sexually -- cheating, lying, indulging in the province of creep -- may be a factor here. As my friend Floodie observed: "Hitting on a woman after she hears one of your stories is like a Honda salesmen handing out rebates at a car wreck."

Also: there's something terribly sad about using a book to try to get laid. Which is not to say there wasn't a salacious vibe in the air.

Please note:
1) Number of porn factories toured by the author: 1
2) Number of strippers who attended a reading and whom I later saw, writhing to heavy metal music, buck-naked: 1
3) Number of times the author was asked if he -- like the narrator of the title story -- had ever had sex with a woman who ejaculates: 5
4) Number of times the author's body was searched for explosives: 7
5) Number of times the author's body was searched by a comely young lass who lingered seductively on his most sensitive parts before winking and ushering the author into a little hidden room used exclusively for the full-body-hot-oil cavity probe: 0

Now that the tour is over and I have been safely returned to my cage, most of my friends assume I'm glad to be done with the rental cars and fast food. The truth is I would do the whole shebang all over again -- tomorrow, if I could. Because the chance to read your stories to a bunch of fellow human beings is a blessing. (So all you authors out there whining about life on the road, just can it. If you don't want to tour, don't.)

Yes, of course it's sad that most folks don't read more, that authors have to coax them to books, that we often have to throw our personalities before our prose.

Then again, all writers are, in the end, storytellers. We write to connect. We write so that we, and our readers, will feel less alone. And yet somehow, we've allowed ourselves, as a population, to become marginalized, squeezed off the culture's radar. We've allowed our fellow citizens to dull themselves out on formulaic, creatively impoverished TV shows and movies.

To hell with that, I say.

Get out there. Be a Roadog.

Howl on behalf of your art.

Just plain howl.

Steve Almond was raised in Palo Alto, California, a.k.a. The Town Where God Will Retire. He spent seven years as a newspaper reporter, mostly in El Paso and Miami. He has been writing fiction for the last eight years. His work can be found in a whole bunch of literary magazines, along with the occasional porn outlet. He lives in Somerville, MA, and teaches creative writing at Boston College.

Here's the May/June Book Sense 76 review of his book, My Life in Heavy Metal:

"These stories are filled with some of the most vigorous and energetic writing that I have read in a long while! Some of them will make you feel young, some will make you feel old, and some of them might make you blush just a little. . .but that's a good thing. A must read for any fan of the short story."
-- Jen Reynolds, Joseph-Beth Booksellers, Cincinnati, OH

  Further Reading:

• Kelly Link's tour diary
• Patrick O'Leary interview
• Renee Grant-Williams interview
• Jim Kokoris
• Events Calendar

Browse Archived Interviews
Browse Archived Excerpts

Top

Contact Us | Security & Privacy | Copyright