More on the Young Lions Fiction Award ceremony at the NYPL.
Event is called for 7o'clock. I'm a good reporter so I arrive at 6:30, and, in an effort not to stuff myself with trayed foods, not to have alcohol enter my system at a too-alarming rate, and not to be hungry anymore, I eat sushi on the steps of the library before the ceremony as evening comes on and the light reflects obliquely off a nondescript mirror building across Fifth Avenue as I sit between the lions.
I enter the building from the less-majestic 42nd Street side and check in. Shake hands with the NYPL's Jennifer Lam. Hi, Jennifer.
The room, whose name I don't bother getting, is vast, and beautiful. Guilded age. One of those old, opaque, gigantic skylights - the old Penn Station. Guessing an early 90s renovation - weird Michael Graves undertones. Crazy amounts of polished marble. Little candles and... tables.
Tables. Usually, it's rows of seats, an hour+ at most, in/out, ok. Tables, though, mean you're going to be sitting, for awhile. No menu on my chair at the press table. Time for glass2.
At about 8pm, the event has still has not begun, I have shot all the little candids that one could want, the Japanese party mix on the table had run out, and I am sure glass3 will make me ill.
Debate precise nature of Ethan Hawke's sex appeal with Town+Country's somebody, and Jessica from InStyle. Make joke, once in each direction, about fiction being a lifestyle accessory. Rhapsodize about the creepiness of the second Linklater movie. Hi, Jessica.
As a tuxeodoed waitstaffer comes by to refill the party mix with pecans, touch her arm, look into her eyes, and confirm that there will not be dinner. Pat corporate card and reach for the pecans.
Crowd in with the pro photographers to try to get a shot of the about-to-ascend readers, who are Hottest State Hawke, Martha Plimpton, Robert Sean Leonard, and John Lloyd Young.
Curse the lack of a telephoto for the zillionth time in 12 years, but realize it's ok - I have my own internal telephoto.
Settle in.
Listen to EH improv with something that's not weariness.
Reach for the nuts.
One of the three-name guys is fine on Kevin Brockmeier's Brief History of the Dead.
Martha Plimpton is hot and pixie-ish reading from Karen Russell's grrl art-like St. Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves. The piece is like those fable-like Little Red pen and ink drawings that were hot in the galleries five years ago, or a Justine Kurland photo.
The readings are about 10 minutes long each, and seem designed, at that length, to be indoctrinatory. We are receiving fiction.
The other three-name guy is good. Set piece about adultery and violence in an African village from Tony D'Souza's purposefully inappropriate aid-work novel, Whiteman.
EH reads fourth, from Chris Adrian's The Children's Hospital, and reads for 20 minutes exactly. At minute 18, a blonde in the front row makes a slashing motion across her own throat. It's good, just interminable.
It's 9:20 and people are fleeing. The award-winner has not been announced. The last reading begins - Martha for the second time, on Olga Grushin's The Dreamlife of Sukhanov. I am Brezhneving off.
At 9:30, Olga Grushin accepts the award, and at 9:40 it's over, and we're invited by EH to stay for wine.
Survey the room, which includes a lot of slicked-back hair and ill-fitting sexy dresses on 20-something bodies, and head for Times Square.
Hello, I'm Robert Young.
