elebrity riters

bviously, we writers are celebrities!
 Or are we?
  Granted, most of us don’t earn 20 million just for signing a contract. We also don’t walk on red carpets. We don’t get Academy Awards either. To tell the truth, most people don’t know even know what we look like. In fact, when a man was recently caught in an Australian bookstore scrawling into the books laid out for sale, he turned out to be Stephen King, secretly signing his own books (probably out of habit) as a friendly gesture. Imagine: Stephen King unrecognized by the average Australian bookseller.
  Well, it’s hard to admit, but we might be no celebrities after all. Our books may be, but not our faces. Not who we are, but only what we produce. Yet there are rare occasions where even we can get a glimpse of what it would feel like to be a star. I’m talking about readings.
  Readings are a great way to present not only your book (it’s available over there, I’ll gladly sign it, too!), but also to present yourself as an artist. And to make a complete fool of yourself.
  There is a book, very funny, very tragic and all of is true. It’s called „Mortification: Writers' Stories of Their Public Shame“. It contains about 40 episodes of uttermost embarrassing, terrifying and awful experiences of authors at their readings, book presentations, signings or private accommodation, written down by the authors themselves and compiled by Robin Robertson.
  If you’re a writer, I encourage you to read these stories. They may read knuckle-bitingly funny on the surface, but they contain a deeper, more serious message. And that message is: “Don’t worry about your last faux pas, it may have come worse. Much worse.”
  If you are not a writer yourself, but a reader, please stay away from this monument of our shame, this crystal clear display of our humiliating and unglamorous normality.
  You want to know my own episode of making myself ridiculous? It’s still hard to talk about it, but my therapist suggested I should face up to it. So here it is:
  It was in Hamburg after the presentation of my first novel “Projekt Babylon”. It took place in the Museum für Völkerkunde, Hamburg’s ethnological museum, in a grand, wood-lined lecture hall, with about 200 guests, all of which were booksellers, journalist or friends of the Hamburger Autorenvereinigung, an esteemed Hamburgian authors association. My publisher had gone to quite some expense, sending out invitations, printing posters and setting up a warm buffet with various wines in the foyer of the museum. It was quite a party. After the guests were gone, my wife and I were invited to join my publisher and her colleagues at the Hamburg Park Hyatt Hotel to celebrate the evening in the elegant top-notch restaurant bar.
  Although I was quite hungry (since I didn’t get a chance to grab a bite from the buffet because people wanted their books signed and talked to me for almost two hours, yes – some stardom), I didn’t want to be the only one to have a pepper steak now (sigh). Finger food seemed more appropriate. Cleverly, I stepped back from ordering anything “risky”: No chicken wings (sigh), no corn-on-the-cob. So I settled for an inconspicuous club sandwich.
  Now, the chef de cuisine must have been a real bastard (if he reads this, I’m not referring to him). Anyway, the sandwich’s hashed filling was about 5-6 centimetres deep, held together by only two thin slices of toast. No way to eat this with dignity. On top of that, it was cut into four tiny triangles, each held together with a huge toothpick. I examined the construction for a while figuring out how to eat this without impaling myself on the toothpicks and without all of the filling falling out. So I decided to remove the sticks and to hold the triangle pretty much the way I would hold a burger (press slightly in the back, bite from the front).
  The moment I raised my tiny fat sandwich triangle to my mouth and pressed it ever so slightly from behind, it happened.
  It exploded. Literally. Club sandwich contents flying all around the table, across my plate, onto my editor’s lap, into the wine glass of the Random House Head of PR and splattering against my publisher’s ruby coloured velvet jacket.
  To make the bad situation worse, nobody reacted to it! There was no laughter, not even startled reflexes or awkward silence as you might expect. Instead all conversations moved on as if nothing had happened. I made a clumsy joke about hoping for better luck next time and handled the other three rectangles more elegantly.
  From the e-mails I received a couple of days later I learned that the ladies had a good laugh after I was gone and still talked about it on the plane back to Munich the following day.
  I was thinking of having a t-shirt printed to wear the next time I went to the Frankfurt book fair or to my publishers’ offices. It was supposed to read “Author - Don’t feed with club sandwiches”. Then I thought: Better not or I’ll have to explain it to everyone who doesn’t know about it. Better to keep it a secret. Those who know beware.
  Now you know how glamorous we really are. That’s us. Celebrities. Well, perhaps not.