New York

Last night’s reading at the Lincoln Center Barnes & Noble was mind boggling. There was a line snaking out the door — at least 250 people, maybe more. It was like a miniature rock concert, only more intense (once you get a bunch of book lovers in one small space, there’s no predicting what they’ll do). Once they got in the door, people were jostling each other for a better view of the author, and a half dozen panicked staff members at Barnes & Noble, fearing they would run out of books, were sending vans at the last minute out to other B&N branches to fetch more books. After I finished reading a few passages, the crowd stomped their feet and began the rhythmic clapping reminiscent of what happens in St. Petersburg when the audience is demanding an encore from the Kirov Ballet. They wanted more!

Wouldn’t that have been nice? Here’s what really happened: A small, familiar and familial group, composed mostly of my favorite colleagues — Denise Grady, Erica Goode, Kevin McKenna, Neil MacFarquhar, Steven Levy — scattered themselves around the room. I’d say there were about 30 people, if you count the very nice woman, Jennifer Stark, from Barnes & Noble, who was my host for the evening — and if you count the three eccentric and tattered elderly women carrying tattered shopping bags who planted themselves in the front row and insisted we turn up the microphones. “We’re almost deaf!” said one. The echo in the room, enhanced, unfortunately, by the microphones, was absorbed in part by the warmth coming from my friends in the audience, who seemed to be genuinely enjoying what I had to say.

At one point, two guys in nice suits showed up and sat in the back row. After about ten minutes, however, they left. Clearly, they had shown up by mistake. Or they might have been from Steinway. Or Yamaha. Who knows? The three women in the front interrupted occasionally with questions as they popped into their heads (why bother waiting!), and I stopped what I was saying to answer them.

The most lively part was the question and answer period. The three women in the front asked more questions, of course, all of them good. We covered a lot of ground, and everyone seemed very happy to have come. Afterwards, I signed a few books for my friends. Keith Pinter, a fellow camper from the Sonatas in Bennington, and a true inspiration for me, bought four. That was extremely nice.

The nicest capper to the evening was hearing that a review was coming out in this week’s Newsweek from Malcolm Jones, the magazine’s long-time critic. And The New York Observer has weighed in as well.

They are both raves, and I couldn’t be happier.

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