Maybe some Xanax, but mostly just the Lego.

Posted on May 20, 2011 | 4 comments

Here is the panel I was on a few weeks ago at the LA Times Book Festival.  Can you spot me?  It was a great session, moderated by Thomas Curwen of the LA Times, with authors Lisa See and Karl Marlantes, both of whom were lovely to talk to and sell a buttload more books than I do.  Can I be them when I grow up?

It’s been a while since I’ve written an entry that justifies the title of this blog.  Never fear, there is plenty of sophomore novel angst happening here!  Ever since I finished my Romanian collective unconscious document I have been genuinely scared to address the actual narrative of In the Red.  Is it because it collapsed so spectacularly last time?  Partly.  But I think it’s mostly because once I get started it’s going to tell me a bunch of shit I don’t want to hear.  The consciousness of this book is so heavy.  It has an existential obsession with human morality in the face of the void.  So I’ll just be going around my business when the book will spontaneously say something like: “We all collaborate with our miseries.  The only true gesture of negation is to cease existing.”  And then I respond, “What?  Are you telling me to eat a gun?  Can you shut up while I play Angry Birds here for a minute?  Jesus.”

I swear, it’s like I have Albert Camus living inside my braincase.

Also it really, really wants to talk to me about Capitalism and while it’s fun to channel that problem into goofy rants about toothpaste, this book does not want to be a goofy rant about toothpaste.  It intends to be Serious.  It also wants to talk about exile, history, repression, abuse of power, and all sorts of fluffy shit like that.  Please send help.  I want to write a book about puppies and rainbows.

(Don’t worry, potential readers, there will still be hot sex.  I mean, this is me we’re talking about here.)

Okay, let’s talk about Lego instead.

Before I went away for the book festival, I admired this Lego set at Target:

I totally wanted it, but could not quite justify plunking down forty five bucks to buy this for myself since I am, allegedly, an adult.  I mean, that’s what my driver’s license says.  (It lies.)  Fortunately, I have the world’s awesomest husband ever, so this set was waiting for me on my desk when I got home from the festival.  I love him so much.  There was a feature to this set that he, like me, simply could not resist.  Take a closer look at the cargo the truck is hauling:

Yes, it is hauling tiny Lego sets for Lego people, among them sets of itself.  Could you die?  Okay, probably if you are not a huge dork, this does not make butterflies flutter in your stomach.  But, I am not not a huge dork, so this makes me unreasonably happy.

Anyway I just put the set together last night, after a particularly grinding bout of unproductive sophomore novel angst.  It was such a fucking fabulous experience.  Everything clicks into place so satisfyingly, and it all looks exactly how you expect it to, and it gives you a sense of achievement.  Why can’t life be more like that?  I need more Lego.  And maybe some Xanax, but mostly just the Lego.

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New! Colgate Whitening Existential Angst! With Liberal White Guilt Beads!

Posted on May 8, 2011 | 8 comments

Dear Capitalism,

I don’t mean to complain.  I mean, you are much nicer than Feudalism.  But seriously, Capitalism, we do not need this many kinds of toothpaste.

Last night, I emptied out a tube of toothpaste.  I went to get another tube, and when I opened that one, the contents had separated into a gritty paste and a viscous blue liquid that smelled and tasted funny.  I understand that toothpaste expires eventually, and this mishap was probably due to this tube being the last one in a Costco 144-pack of Colgate that I’d been working my way through since I was eleven years old.  So, I went to Target this morning to get a single new tube of toothpaste, to discover with great awe that there was an entire aisle devoted completely to different kinds of toothpaste.  I thought: verily, this is a great country.

The aisle was half Crest, half Colgate.  I entirely bypassed the Crest half, since I’ve been brushing with Colgate as long as I can remember.  (I’m sure lots of marketers would like to figure out where that brand loyalty gland lies in my consumer brain, and how to access it.  It appears that only Colgate has found its way to it, for I do not have particular allegiances to any other kind of hygiene product.  I am, for example, a total shampoo slut, switching brands with every new bottle.)  I was confronted with a stunning panoply of Colgate products, all in graphically similar but subtly variegated packages.  Clearly, toothpaste technology had evolved since I last picked a tube (it’s been a long time; I usually just get whatever kind of Colgate Costco has, and it is always the same).  There was Colgate Whitening, and there was Colgate Clinical Whitening.  There was also Colgate Sparkling White.  Then there was Colgate with Baking Soda Whitening Bubbles.  Then there was Colgate Tartar Protection with Whitening.  Colgate with tiny strips of breath freshener leavened right into the paste.  Colgate with little globules of mouthwash hovering in gel.  Colgate Max Clean with Smart Foam (look the fuck out for that shit, it threatens “an intense sensation,” the package copy guaranteeing that the paste will absolutely explode in your mouth into rabid quantities of froth sure to clean the fuck out of your teeth so thoroughly that your teeth will be too scared to ever be dirty again–won’t you, punks?!  The experience of this product must indeed be X-treme.) and even Colgate Luminous, if you’re more into getting ineffable religious ecstasies out of your toothpaste.  Also, Colgate that comes in a little bottle instead of a tube.  Every single choice iterated in both paste and gel forms.

Capitalism, I appreciate the effort, I really do.  I really try to believe in what our patriarchs call the wisdom of the free market.  I looked at numerous Colgates, trying to gauge which one would be the best for me, since you were considerate enough to provide me with so many choices.  After a while, this started to hurt.  After a while, I considered the idea that maybe one kind of Socialist Standard Issue Government Toothpaste in a blank gray box would not be oppressive but rather restful.  After a while, I flipped the boxes over to look at the “active ingredient” in each.  Strap in, Capitalism: the “active ingredient” was the same in all the tubes.  It was also present in the same dosage in all the tubes.  All that patter and flash and all those copywriters coming up with slightly differently-worded promises of gleaming whiteness and cleanliness–indeed I could choose to have my toothpaste talk to me in the reassuring tones of a clinician or with the effervescent pep of a caffeinated cheerleader–all that choice to discover that the actual products contained in all those seductively colorful tubes at all those slightly different price points were all one and the same.

I grabbed a tube of exactly the same stuff Costco carries, the same stuff I’ve been using for years, and made a quick exit because I was thisclose to having a full-blown existential meltdown right there in the aisle.  Capitalism, I suspect that maybe you have something to do with why our nation suffers from the most mental illnesses despite the fact that it is possibly the most comfortable place to live in the world.  Capitalism, I suspect that maybe you have something to do with our fragmentation, with the slow erosion of collective experience, with our chronic loneliness, with our nameless fears, with our emptiness.  You are giving us too much; instead of making us expand in welcoming openness you are making us contract in overwhelmed terror.  Our hearts and minds may be shrinking in the face of that much choice, tightening ourselves around a few familiar things that are disappearing in our death grip because they are being translated into ever new and improved and varied versions by the wisdom, by the infinitely outward spiraling wisdom of our beloved free market.

Capitalism, please, we do not need this many kinds of toothpaste.

Sincerely,

America

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Loins of Judas

Posted on April 28, 2011 | 4 comments

Here I am announcing to the world that I ate an entire loaf of banana bread for lunch for I have no shame.  It was delicious, and I regret nothing.

There is a great interview of me up at Fiction Writer’s Review; they asked the best questions!  If you’re into books and authors, definitely look around that website, it is full of interesting, well-written stuff.

I just heard a cat throw up in the next room, but for now I am going to pretend I didn’t and continue typing…  A couple of weeks ago, I was one of five featured authors at a scholarship benefit for the Christamore House in Indianapolis.  It was an amazing trip: we raised over a hundred grand and I sold (and signed!) nearly three hundred books.  I completely winged a 10 minute speech in front of a crowd of 1000 people–and I happened to be AWESOME.  I only found out after that my image was projected to the audience from a GINORMOUS SCREEN above the stage, and I am exceedingly glad I did not know that while doing my thing up there as the self-consciousness of that knowledge would have definitely dampened my gregarious awesomeness.  (Seriously, imagine the zits and lines on your face blown up like a bajillion times for an audience big enough that you can’t hold it all at once in your visual field and you will see what I mean.)  Anyway, I had a grand time hanging out with the other fabulous authors (Meg Waite Clayton, Michael Koryta, Louis Bayard and Victoria Brown), being shuttled around in a gigantic limousine, cramming hors d’oeuvres in my face at a shameful rate in a room filled with women each wearing jewelry whose cost exceeds my annual income, and generally living someone else’s glamorous life for a couple of days.

I came down rather hard on my return home, as I caught quite an extravagant cold on the plane back, which is only now abating.  I’ve extruded a truly stunning amount of coagulated-pea-soup-looking mucus during the interim; I should have saved it all in a massive glass jar and submitted it to the Museum of Modern Art as an “installation.”  But, I bet Marina Abramovic already thought of this.  (Probably she mixed the mucus with accelerant, drenched her body in it, set herself on fire while chanting L’Internationale, and called the piece “Loins of Judas.”)

Tomorrow I am flying down to Los Angeles for the LA Times Festival of Books, where I will be performing “Loins of Judas.”  For now I am off to play a really exciting game called Find The Cat Puke, Hopefully Not By Stepping On It With My Bare Feet.

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Second Annual Sophomore Novel Angst Google Search Jubilee Extravaganza Celebration

Posted on April 12, 2011 | 7 comments

A while back I wrote a post about the various google search terms that people used to reach my blog.  Looking at the date–yipes, that was over a year ago!  Let us waste no further time, and begin the Second Annual Sophomore Novel Angst Google Search Jubilee Extravaganza Celebration:

• Favorite misspelling of my name and book title: 13 routerays by helena shipiro.  I think this one came in shortly after my radio broadcast so it was probably someone trying to guess the spelling phonetically.  I heartily commend google for actually finding me with this!

• Inadvertent Poetry Award: golden apple music box memories.  Honorable mention for: tulle as snow.

• Many people have reached me googling something about cheez doodles, which I consider a great honor.  A couple of searches found me attempting to find a French translation for “cheez doodle.”  I will be reporting you to the French Consulate and/or Académie Française for Culinary Sacrilege immediately.  However, the most alarming cheez doodle-related search has to be: when can baby have cheese doodles.  Please, please do not feed this to your infant.

• Early on in the life of this blog, I wrote a post about the Crazy Horse Cabaret in Paris.  This has caused a truly horrifying number of people to reach me searching for footage of people doing unmentionable things to horses.  People.  Horses are our friends, not our lovers.

• “This Sounds Kind Of Sexy” Award: i will write a story in french then translate it slowly.  Rowr.  Call me.

• “Why, Thank You” Award: elena mauli shapiro is a sex goddess.

• Salient Questions:

  • how does my immigrant experience relate to the person i am? In many untold ways, my friend.
  • so are you saying that we’re all just, like, really excellent sheep? Yes.
  • four phases of vagina? They are: prophase, metaphase, anaphase and telophase.
  • simile for indeed? I think you may mean “synonym,” and the answer is “forsooth.”  You’re welcome.
  • why do sophomore novels suck? Generally because the author is scared shitless of failure in a way that they weren’t with the first novel, which causes them to freeze up and fail.  Life is awesome like that.

• “Who you gonna call?  Ghostbusters!” Award: vaporous specter fuck off (Seriously though, I’m sorry about your specter problem.)

• Hilarious academia-related searches: the word other as a verb, difference between sign and signifier.  It should be no surprise that these things lead to: post “qualifying exam” syndrome.  Do get that looked at, or it might very well lead to “Fuck This, I Am Going To Clown College Instead” Syndrome.

• And finally, would the following searchers please, please contact me and explain what exactly you were looking for?

  • arachnid tradeshow dallas
  • women shitting pants waiting for elevator
  • حصان مع حصان سكس

+

=

NO

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the most fantabulous review in the history of ever

Posted on March 25, 2011 | 2 comments

I haven’t been posting lately because I am eyeball-deep in my Romanian collective unconscious document (I should have a complete draft in a few days which will be something like 18,000 words, or about 65 pages).  It’s a whole lot of dreamlike WTF, and after I am done I will have an underlying structure on top of which I will start overlaying the main plot of In the Red.  But–I had to briefly emerge from my blogging moratorium to share with you guys the most fantabulous review in the history of ever, courtesy of Simon Schama at The Financial Times.  I so, so hope that this review is blurbed on the softcover edition of my book.  Actually, here–please vote on which blurb should be prominently featured on the next edition of 13 rue Thérèse:

 

Dear Mr. Schama, I shake your hand.

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International Hug Your Agent Day

Posted on March 8, 2011 | Leave a comment

Happy International Women’s Day!  Although, you’d think that given that we rend our bodies to propagate the human race, we’d get more than a day.  But hey, let’s take what we can get?  Find a woman in your life who kicks ass, and tell her she is awesome.  I just did this with my agent.  Quote my latest e-mail to her:

Of course publishing a book changed my life!  I might not be on Oprah and/or snorting caviar off a geisha’s boobs anytime soon but I don’t think I would have been invited to this monster fund raising thingy for Sacramento libraries last weekend in my capacity as a grad student…  If it weren’t for publishing this thing, I would be waking up every morning to torture myself writing a book I don’t really give a shit about (a dissertation), which is already an amazing privilege.  As things stand I get to wake up every morning to torture myself writing a book I’m investing my soul into (this weird Romanian thing), which is an UNFATHOMABLE privilege.  Bonnie, seriously, you beat the crap out of Santa Claus: all he ever got me were some random toys I don’t even remember but you gave physical form to this thing that ate my dreams.  You are awesome, and thank you.

The fund raising thingy last weekend was Sacramento Authors on the Move, and we raised around 70K for Sacramento Libraries.  Very impressive.  It is a pretty surreal and fabulous experience to move from table to table to be witty at different sets of people.  I think I acquitted myself of my charge reasonably well.  This Thursday evening, I have a reading at Stanford, so do come say hello if you’re around!

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Allegory Explosion

Posted on March 2, 2011 | 1 comment

You guys!  There is.  A lot of stuff.  Going on.

I was on live radio Monday of last week.  It was a bit intimidating but pretty fun.  The best part was when I flustered the hell out of my husband, who came with me because it was President’s Day so he had off work.  The host, Denny Smithson, asked me something about who I was writing the book to and I said my husband.  Denny observed that he was in the studio with me, and I pointed the mike at him and said, “wanna say hi?”  My poor baby just about died. Turned a high shade of crimson and shook his head no.  Who knew he was this shy?

Then I had a couple of readings, one on home turf at Davis and a luncheon thingy in Pleasanton.  Both were thoroughly awesome and made me miss teaching terribly.  (When I mentioned how much I missed teaching, a friend who is currently eyeball-deep in a pile of grading asked me what the hell is wrong with you? It’s true, I don’t miss the grading part.  I just miss goofing around with a bunch of curious young sparks chatting about books and how irredeemably fucked up human nature is.)  I have another reading tomorrow night!  It’s at 7 at Diesel Bookstore in Oakland.  Come say hi if you’re around.

I’ve also been busy collating the collective unconscious for In the Red.  It’s just been me blasting my neurons with Romanian history and folk tales.  So, in the past week, I have pumped a few rounds into Nicolae Ceaucescu’s chest as he sang L’Internationale and I whacked a wood nymph who dared give a prince “a flower from her girdle” (wink wink nudge nudge) and I galloped across a snowy wasteland with an exiled Phanariot voivode and I had Dracula drink blood from one of his impaled victims in what was basically the Holy Grail and it’s all been very busy in my braincase lately.  It’s just been Allegory Explosion around here.  Last night I had this incredibly vivid dream about a dark pond filled with alligators over which fluttered a big cluster of panicked parakeets.  I remember so well the flapping sounds of their tiny wings and all the pretty jewel tones of their varied plumage.  The ridges of hard, wet, gleaming scales on the long sinewy backs of the alligators.  How fast they were when they lunged out of the water for the parakeets and snap–one swift bite and a bird was gone.  The birds being swallowed one by one out of the air before even having a chance to squeak–I woke up totally traumatized.  Poor little birdies!

Then I got up and wrote about trees haunted by the restless spirits of murdered babies.  Really.

Also, somebody reached my blog today by googling “what does a cheez doodle look like.”  Here, let me help you out:

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Bandwidth limit exceeded–noooooooooooo!

Posted on February 26, 2011 | Leave a comment

[Edit Sunday Feb 27 18:17 PST: seems to be back up–phew.]

This is the message currently displayed at 13ruetherese.com!  Yipes!  (Well, minus the “noooooooooooo!”)

In a way I am guessing this is awesome, because it must mean that lots of people have checked out the site, no?  Anyway, I e-mailed a bunch of marketing & internet people in the hopes of hitting the right person to fix the problem.  It will surely be back up Tuesday at the latest, because as I understand it, bandwidth is something that’s re-upped every month?  I think it will probably be back before then, when someone gets wind of the problem.  I wonder how long it’s been like that?  It must be in part due to this absolutely fantastic review of 13 rue Thérèse at the Los Angeles Times.  Huzzah!  As far as I am concerned, the question of New York vs. LA has been permanently settled because

LA

kicks

ass.

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Vita privata di una sconosciuta

Posted on February 19, 2011 | 6 comments

People of northern California!  Listen to me embarrass myself this coming Monday, February 21st at 3 PM!  I will be on KPFA 94.1 ‘s Cover to Cover.  Live radio, dudes.  Yikes!  I got a little bit of practice this week being taped for the Stanford Storytelling Project, but they will be able to edit me to sound articulate!  So, on Monday I will have to watch for my verbal ticks, such as “um,” and “like,” and “fuck.”  (Yes, I have a propensity for saltiness.)

Meanwhile, I am getting published in Italy this week by Garzanti:

They even made a book preview video!  I don’t know what it says, but it looks sexy:

Is that something about “saint or sinner?”  Sweet.  Oh, by the way, the title in Italian means “Private Life of an Unknown Woman.”  I don’t know why they changed it, but I don’t mind it.  I actually find it really interesting how they translate and market stuff in other countries.  I can’t wait to see what the book actually looks like!  Not that I will understand it, but I am still excited.  I just love iterations of stuff.  When the Russians get around to translating it and I see the thing in Cyrillic, I will surely plotz.  So cool.

This week I also bought a lovely black dress that will be perfect for author-type functions (first public reading next Friday EEK!).  I love the way Calvin Klein skates the line between foxy and austere.  (Lest you think I am getting too swank: I bought it at Ross for fifty bucks.  This after cashing a very large publication day check.  I know, I know: I don’t know how to live it up.  But–I did make another one of my giant student loans disappear with that check.  That’s right, I AM COMING FOR YOU, STUDENT LOANS.  SOON YOU WILL ALL DIE.)

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My own little scene of Dadaist theater

Posted on February 12, 2011 | Leave a comment

Developments:

(1) A short & sweet review of 13 rue Thérèse is up at the San Francisco Chronicle. “captivating”  “sizzling sexual tension”  Aw yeah.

(2) Here is the permalink to my entire story “Vicious Good” at Five Chapters.  Hmmm.  I can’t really put it under “Press/Reviews,” so, let me introduce as of today…  Drumroll…  The “Stories” tab!

(3) Hey, guess what you can get at Costco along with a bin of kitty litter, five pounds of ground beef, and 36 rolls of toilet paper?  Meeeeeeeeee:

I’m also going to be at BJ’s, which is like East Coast Costco.  They did a Q&A with me for their featured book of the month thingy which will probably pop up on the web sometime soon.  Also, my publisher just had to do another print run because of a big order from Target.  Capitalism: it thrills me and scares me all at once.

On the drive home from Costco, Pink Floyd’s “Money” came on the radio.  I laughed and turned it up.

(4) This morning I was sitting at an outdoor table with my tea (seriously it’s like 70 degrees during the day–aaaaah February in California), when I watched this guy come around the café with a smoldering cigarette in one hand and a large, germinating potato in the other.  He walked up to a trash can and a potted plant that were next to each other, snuffed out the cigarette and put it in the trash, then lovingly laid the potato into the potted plant. Then left without a look back.  I think what I enjoyed most was how totally natural he was about it.  My own little scene of Dadaist theater.

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