Friday October 16, the New Yorker opened its annual weekend festival of readings, conversations, art tours and musical performances. This is my account of the events I attended, which included among others a talk with Malcolm Gladwell, readings by George Saunders, Gary Shteyngart and Jonathan Franzen, a musical performance by Neko Case and a conversation with James Franco. FRIDAY, OCTOBER 16, 2009 7:00pm – Mary Gaitskill and T. Coraghessan Boyle (Angel Orensanz Foundation) The church floor creaked. “Shut the fuck up,” said Mary Gaitskill. The walking man stopped and looked up. Mary Gaitskill was reading from “Don’t Cry,” a short story about a widow who travels to Ethiopia to adopt a baby. It felt like a seance–the candle-lit chandeliers, the vaulted ceilings. I got up. I’d be missing T.C. Boyle, I knew. But I couldn’t concentrate. Jonathan Franzen was at Cedar Lake Theater and probably at that moment crowning the new reigning stupidest person in New York City. 7:40pm – Taxicab “Izzit like film festival?” said the taxicab driver. His eyes looked at me in the rearview. “Sort of.” I said. My hair was blowing around and drops of rain got through the cracked window. “But you watch people read into a microphone.” I realized we were on the West Side Highway instead of tenth avenue. “Too much traffic on tenth?” I said. “Enough is enough, yeah?” he said. 7:50pm – David Bezmozgis and Jonathan Franzen (Cedar Lake Theatre) “Joyce never denied the rape but called it a ‘misfortune.’” – Jonathan Franzen “The world would see a boy who had gone to Exeter, Princeton,” said Jonathan Franzen, “and was smart enough to use a condom.” He was reading an excerpt from a new novel when I walked in. David Bezmozgis had already read. I leaned against the wall. The loft was large and modern: steel, dark wood and light. There were black chairs on the floor and  a wedge of steel bleachers behind them. Jonathan Franzen looked so bright and alone on the black stage under the large open ceiling, which with its wood cross beams and triangle-arch looked like an upturned ship’s hull. Jonathan Franzen was in black jeans and a dark shirt. One hand was in his pocket. He rocked gently on his feet. I could not see him saying about a book reviewer that she is “the stupidest person in New York City.” He seemed calm and fatherly. “Justice had a shape and a weight and a texture,” he said. “Top-tiered student athlete,” he said. “Did you tell Mr. Post I’m a virgin,” he said. Both hands were in his pockets and his elbows were pointed out and he rocked up onto his toes and balanced there for a moment before releasing himself back solidly on his feet. “Joyce never denied the rape but called it a ‘misfortune.’” Q&A Jonathan Franzen shielded his eyes from the light with his hand like he was at the New England coast looking for a far-off boat. He looked to the left. He looked to the right. Left. Right. The first question was for Jonathan Franzen. The questioner had read Jonathan Franzen’s introduction to Paula Fox’s Desperate Characters and asked, “Are there any other works that you would…ah…just as passionately want the public to know about?” The second question was also for Jonathan Franzen. It was something to the effect of “Why is verbal communication between characters in your novels not very effective?” After it was clarified what the man meant by “effective,” Jonathan Franzen said, “I’m afraid it might be nothing more than a tick on my part.” The audience was silent. Jonathan Franzen was silent. The moderator and David Bezmozgis both were silent. Carefully, Jonathan Franzen started to speak. He said something about “people cutting across purposes.” He said he had been talking to his friend the writer Clancy Martin who had “an interesting argument that all human nature is about self-deception.” I had read this in an interview of Clancy Martin. “I’m so beset with it myself,” he said. “How to get self-deception across…is an interesting formal problem…. There are words in the air that are not being heard.” A woman with a German accent asked the third question. She said the Corrections was the American Buddenbrooks. She pronounced the first syllable “boo.” She asked if there was a connection between him [Jonathan Franzen] and some German writers. Jonathan Franzen said he was a German major in college and this taught him how to be “a writer and a human being.” He said he couldn’t stand the Magic Mountain because “[Thomas] Mann had my number.” He hadn’t read Buddenbrooks (he also pronounced the first syllable “boo”) until after the Corrections. The next person said, “This is also for Mr. Franzen. How does one survive his or her family?” Jonathan Franzen responded. The moderator asked David Bezmozgis: How did you feel about leaving the Bermans behind?” [referring to the Jewish Latvian family in Bezmozgis's story collection Natasha]. David Bezmozgis said, “I was very happy to leave the Bermans behind.” Jonathan Franzen and David Bezmozgis talked to each other. It was exciting, like everyone in the room had been relieved of some unarticulated dilemma. They talked about the difference between novels and stories. Jonathan Franzen said, “There is a great moment of Absalom Absalom…” The next questioner said, “So this is framed for Jonathan Franzen.” The question had to do with a rumor that he gathered his mental powers through “sensory deprivation.” Jonathan Franzen said the only deprivation he could use was “wireless-age deprivation.” The next statement was about how he enforced that deprivation. It went something like this, “I had to tug the plug off of one, sawed it off and glued it into the ethernet.” The next question was posed by a young woman who said, “This is a slightly more personal question for Mr. Franzen.” Her voice sounded personal. She was currently a student at Swarthmore College and knowing he went there too, she wanted to know what was his favorite place at Swarthmore. “The pool room in Tarble,” he said, meaning the Tarble Pavillion, a student center. His voice did not sound personal. “I felt so innocent and MidWestern,” he said. The moderator asked David Bezmozgis if he had a favorite “Californian spot.” “The parking lot,” said David Bezmozgis, “where I met my wife.” Jonathan Franzen walked off stage right and was met with people he didn’t know who asked him questions. David Bezmozgis walked off stage left and hugged a woman in a red coat. Women in red dresses holding baskets passed out individually wrapped Lu Little Schoolboy cookies. Jonathan Franzen stood alone and put on his leather jacket. He walked through the empty loft and by the bleachers. He pushed the door to the men’s room and when it opened he shook his head and exhaled. He walked briskly out the front door. 9:30pm – George Saunders and Gary Shteyngart (Cedar Lake Theatre) “But it was a crack den; a tough scary place. I had a real 50-year-old reaction: There’s no fucking way.” – George Saunders “Blah blah blah. [Pause] Blah blah blah.” – Gary Shteyngart reading from his new novel Super Sad True Love Story. This was the reading with the highest hyperactivity level. George Saunders and Gary Shteyngart had read together on three prior occasions. Gary Shteyngart read from his new novel, Super Sad True Love Story. It was the first time he had read from it in public. His new novel is set slightly in the future. When he started writing it a few years ago, he envisioned a world where the world’s economy had collapsed and the central banks had to bail out the Big Three automakers. As that came to pass, he had to keep changing his novel, which got bleaker and bleaker. And now it’s set in “a completely illiterate New York,” he said. “In other words, next Tuesday.” In the novel, people get their news from one of two sources, “The Fox” or “Ultra-Fox.”  The leading party is the “Bipartisanship Party” and there are devices called “Apparat Streams” which automatically rate a person’s attributes such as “attractiveness, intelligence, etc.” Gary Shteyngart read a scene in which the protagonist Lenny Abramov, a high school student going to one of New York’s premier public science schools, in Tribeca (Gary Shteyngart attended Stuyvesant), is taking his new Korean girlfriend Eunice home to meet his parents, to whom he is a disappointment. He has an 86.894 average, a number, he says, with which he “won’t even get into Oberlin.” Gary Shteyngart reads very fast, and thankfully took sips of his conspicuously unlabeled bottle of water. Gary Shteyngart read in the voice of two Russian parents with heavy accents. Lenny’s mother who “appeared in her usual household outfit, a white bra and panties,” says she had checked Lenny’s Apparat Stream and his “sustainability and fuckability rankings are very low.” At one point, Eunice speaks in Italian, and the father says, “Eunice, you speak such good Italian” and recounts a time they went to visit Lenny who was studying abroad. Gary Shteyngart, imitating the father imitating Lenny, stuck his arms out to his sides and quickly moved them up and down as if walking down a street. “My son in Italy,” he said, “Blah blah blah. [Pause] Blah blah blah.” George Saunders came out in a chestnut brown corduroy jacket that looked like it was chosen with the help of a woman. He wore a black tie with an abstract white, orange and red pattern. “He always wears the worst ties,” my friend said. “It’s modern,” I said. It looked like it was made of very fine silk. With his hair and the jacket, his over-all appearance was that of soft caramel. He read “Victory Lap” a story that appeared in the New Yorker about a nuclear family gone weird where everyone has their own kind of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder thing going on. George Saunders read very fast. He moved between voices with ease, from Welcome-to-the-Dollhouse ballerina girl and high-strung jock boy to plastic, placid, interchangeable mom/dad. The parents’ “perfectly reasonable system of directives designed to benefit you,” seem naturally have caused delightfully idiosyncratic OCD manifestations in their offspring, such as that of the young ballerina whose every thought and communication is interjected with ticks of a balletic variety: “Pas de chat. Pas de Chat. Changement. Changement.” And the son whose thoughts and communications, which deal mostly with cross-country running, are interjected with slurs of another kind: “I’m not quitting! Anal-cock shitbird rectum-fritz! Please, I’m begging you, it’s the only thing I’m decent at! Mom…” Q&A The questions were evenly divided between George Saunders and Gary Shteyngart or asked to both of them simultaneously. Someone asked both readers what their favorite story, of the stories they had written, was. George Saunders said his favorite of his stories was “Sea Oak.” Gary Shteyngart said he didn’t write short stories. “Well then, your favorite novel,” said the questioner. “Of the two that I’ve written?” said Gary Shteyngart. He said it was “really impossible” to write short stories despite having been raised on Chekhov as “baby food.” He tossed his head back, lowered his eye-lids and laughed. George Saunders was asked if he was ever going to write a novel. He said if he did it would probably be a short story in 45-font. Gary Shteyngart said he was taking an acting class. “That’s true,” my friend said to me. “He wants to act if this writing thing falls through.” Gary said acting has made him a worse writer. But it also made him listen to other people, which he never does. He laughed warmly. Someone asked George Saunders a question about the “moral element” of writing, and how conscious he was of that element while writing, was it something he set out specifically to do or was it simply his “own worldview.” George Saunders said his own personal questions were much like those expressed by one of the characters in “Victory Lap”: Is life fun or scary? Are people good or bad? He said, “I’ve always known the answer is, ‘Yeah.’” Gary Shteyngart said that with his first book, written in his twenties, he was mostly shouting. But with his second novel, Ablurbistan [The book is Absurdistan, but Gary Shteyngart purposely, it seemed, inserted malapropisms into his speech] he was in his thirties. “It’s a melancholy time when you sit back and cry.” Gary Shteyngart said when he was little, “My grandmother paid me for my writing in little pieces of cheese, which was some affirmation that as a writer you can get protein.”

Someone asked George Saunders about the time he spent in tent city (a community of homeless people) in downtown Fresno, California for his essay “Tent City USA” for GQ Magazine. “I thought it would be hip,” George Saunders said. “But it was a crack den; a tough scary place. I had a real 50-year-old reaction. There’s no fucking way. I’ve got to find a better tent city.” He drove around Fresno for several hours looking for a better tent city. In his article he wrote, Although promising pockets of poverty were observed, no Steinbeckian tent city was found. He stayed under the underpass for a week. He said in the end, it was a “beautiful experience.”

The moderator asked Gary Shteyngart what kind of non-fiction he wrote. “I write about luxury hotels. But it was the same question: ‘Is there a better luxury hotel?’” Gary Shteyngart said this statement at one point, “Today, the number of writers and the number of readers is exactly the same…. People once had hope for the future. But now that that’s gone, we can write. And that’s what I look forward to in the next fiscal year.” Both writers were asked what they thought of the future of print. They drank from unlabeled bottles of water that were precariously close on the table. George Saunders said, “I think it will be fine. I think people will just read something.” This was a sensible answer, it seemed. Gary Shteyngart said, “You’re such an optometrist [I'm 98% sure he said optometrist]. I’m more pessimistic. The Intertubes is flashing at me…my mind is forgetting the pleasures of long-form reading.” George talked about a documentary he is involved with called “Bad Writing,” in which, he explained, the director takes poems that the director is deeply ashamed of and shows them to people and asks, “Why is that so bad?” George Saunders said he had a “Hemingway-boner” for a long time. George Saunders and Gary Shteyngart hugged. SATURDAY, OCTOBER 17, 2009 1:00pm – Malcolm Gladwell: The Curious Case of Michael Vick (Florence Gould Hall) “Beer compared to this rum is what a pea shooter is to a bazooka.” – Malcolm Gladwell “I don’t know if this has a point,” said Malcolm Gladwell. “And feel free during the Q&A to tell me if it doesn’t.” He said he wasn’t going to talk about Michael Vick, the NFL quarterback who pleaded guilty to running a dogfighting ring, as he was supposed to. Instead he talked about Dwight and Ann Heath, two WASP anthropologists who went to Bolivia in 1956 and came back “deeply tanned.” They had gone to Bolivia so Dwight could work on his dissertation on Land Reform. But the “WASPs in the jungle” ended up getting drunk with the Camba, an indigenous tribe, and learning some important things that would later contribute to studies in alcoholism. Most important of these things was that the Camba had a ritualistic way of getting drunk. The dearth of negative consequences that flowed from their heavy drinking had something to do with the civilized way in which they got smashed. Malcolm Gladwell (who was interviewed by this site) was standing behind a podium of some clear modern material so you could see how he was standing at all times. He was in jeans, black Nike sneakers with a white swoosh and a charcoal jacket over a button-down shirt. He often kept one foot crossed over the other like a boy would. He moved his hands often and with purpose. Sometimes he gripped the podium at either side other times his hands went up like a preacher’s and sometimes he ducked down or jumped. Malcolm Gladwell compared the carefully orchestrated drinking ritual of the Camba, which involved 180-proof rum, to Brown’s campus where kids were getting drunk on beer. “Beer,” said Malcolm Gladwell lifting his hands in the air, “compared to this rum is what a pea shooter is to a bazooka.” I thought back to college and the time I saw my first, and last, keg stand. Malcolm Gladwell compared the Camba to second-generation Italians in New Haven, Connecticut in the fifites (1/3 of the 3000 calories that they consumed was wine) and their Irish counterparts (who were three times as likely to get arrested for public drunkenness). Whether it was a glass of wine, or a “nip of whiskey,” the point it seemed was to have a rule w/r/t drinking. Malcolm Gladwell gave facts and figures. He said some things very loud, like “boom,” and stilled the audience with other words quietly delivered, like “serendipity.” He marshaled enormous amounts of information about such things as the Yale Center of Alcohol Studies, the studies of Giorgio Lolli, Claude Steele (“Provost of Columbia or NYU, sort of the same thing”), E.M. Jellinek and Mark Keller, told a story about the time a social scientist walked into a bar, did dramatizations of beer commercials and pretended to be a sexy woman. He explained things like “self-inflation,” “imposing constraint,” and “disinhibition,” and talked about Robert B. Edgerton’s theories on why alcohol is “not reliable in its effects.” Malcolm Gladwell said, “I told you I said I was going to do a bad job of giving you a point.” Q&A Someone said “Malcolm,” with a kind of determined ownership as if in reading Malcolm Gladwell’s books she had acquired a vested interest that she was now redeeming. She asked something about how altitude affected the Camba. Malcolm made a downward motion with his hand to suggest low altitude and talked about chainsaws. “Chainsaws are largely used for good,” he said. “But use of chainsaws can have negative consequences.” Malcolm Gladwell talked about another beer commercial where kids acted tipsy, which he said was unusual since beer commercials rarely ever show half-empty glasses, tipsy people or any evidence of drinking at all. “If you can find me another ad that shows people tipsy,” said Malcolm Gladwell, “I’ll give you ten dollars.” The mention of ten dollars deflated any sense of excitement instilled by the wager. It could have been made more exciting–$1000–if it didn’t seem like people in this audience would use the bet as an opportunity to call Malcolm Gladwell and say, “Malcolm,” in a familiar way, “I found another commercial where people look more tipsy.” Someone said, “Malcolm,” and asked a question about legal drinking ages. Malcolm Gladwell said having notions of drinking age at 21 is “ridiculous.” He said, “College presidents agree.” Schools should “teach students how to drink.” Someone said, “Malcolm,” and asked what this topic had to do with Michael Vick. Malcolm Gladwell said, in a very polite way, that it had nothing to do with Michael Vick. Malcolm Gladwell smiled at one point and said, “Canada is better.” Malcolm Gladwell is Canadian. Though when talking about the problems of Americans, he always said “We.” Someone in the audience said, “Malcolm,” and asked something about guns and gun violence. “That’s the best question,” said Malcolm Gladwell. He went on to give a long and detailed answer about the particular difficulty that American culture has because we disagree about a lot of things, though it makes us interesting. “In America you see people who are happy, sad, murderous, sentimental.” A man said he had a 3-part question. One was about drunk driving, one seemed unrelated to the first and contained the phrase “Ivy League schools,” and the third I forget. Malcolm Gladwell did not say, “That was the longest question.” Someone said, “Malcolm. How often do you find yourself writing without a point?” Malcolm Gladwell said, “More times than you would think.” A young man got up and said there was a ritual to “getting wasted” and it involved bragging about how much you drank the night before. Malcolm Gladwell said that that wasn’t the kind of ritual he was talking about. Someone asked if it was the family’s responsibility to instill alcohol-related rituals. Malcolm Gladwell talked about how on the television show “The O.C.,” people drank enormous amounts and with no rhyme or reason. “The drinking is so haphazard,” he said and waved his hand with the casual authority of the czar of ritualistic drinking that he had become in the course of the hour in Florence Gould Hall. Someone said, “Malcolm. Is it possible to change drinking patterns?” Someone said, “Malcolm. I’m curious about 12-18 year-olds.” Someone said, “Malcolm. Why no hangovers? (the question was about the Camba). Someone said, “Malcolm. I have a question unrelated to alcohol: What are you currently reading?” Malcolm Gladwell said, “Heavy Drinking.” Someone from the audience with a British accent said “Malcolm.” It was a man in an argyle sweater with neatly combed gray hair and a gray beard. Malcolm Gladwell said, “This is my father by the way.” I don’t remember what he asked because I was imagining Little Malcolm having long Socratic discussions with his father along the banks of some Canadian river. I imagined Little Malcolm asking his father questions and getting rigorous truthful answers in response rather than underestimatory lies in a dumb voice. I imagined Little Malcolm telling his father he wanted to write and his father saying something other than, “Who in their right–don’t you want to be somebody?” I was sorry I hadn’t heard the question because Malcolm Gladwell said, “No. That is the best question.” 2:44pm – Walking by Apple Store “Malcolm Gladwell’s an impressive person,” said Madison. We walked down Fifth Avenue. “Do you think he’s had 10,000 hours of practice speaking in public?” We looked into the glass structure of the Apple Store and watched people ride the glass elevator down to where many people moved around each other and grabbed and pulled things. Madison said, “You’d think they were giving things away.” “Maybe I’ll see you at James Franco?” I said. “He’s everywhere and nowhere,” said Madison. 7:30pm – Neko Case Talks with Sasha Frere-Jones: A Conversation with Music (Acura at Stage37) “I want to be man and ladies all the time.” – Neko Case Conversation with Sasha Frere-Jones The space had community. It was the only space that seemed to have been arranged with the idea that people would move and mingle in it and might even want to stay. People walked silently in sneakers from the cafe carrying cups of tea and coffee. A silver car sparkled in the corner. The stage was dark but you could see the silhouettes of guitars standing upright. The light went on and Sasha Frere-Jones and Neko Case were in directors’ chairs surrounded by instruments. The words used most frequently by Neko Case were “organic,” “Civil War,” “ghost balls,” and “cobra.” They talked about doing Spectacle [the new television series produced by Elton John and Elvis Costello] where she performed live with Sheryl Crow. They talked about her farm in Vermont. Sasha Frere-Jones said, “How intense is your farming?” Neko Case said, “I’m going to have an indoor goat.” I don’t know if this was in reference to Spectacle or farming, but Neko Case said, “It was like can you bring the tractor with you because I want to operate the bucket on that.” She has four dogs and eight pianos. About playing solo, Neko Case said “I find it very lonely.” But with her band members she said, “We work as an organic pack.” Neko Case said she had a show coming up at the Beacon. “Hopefully I’ll whip it out in a way that it was not properly whipped out before.” Her hair was red, loose and stood out behind her. She was sitting with her shoulders back and her elbows resting on the arms of her chair and her head cocked up. She snapped her fingers. I read that Neko Case left home when she was fifteen. Sasha Frere-Jones said, “Is there ever a time you feel like afraid?” Neko Case said, “I feel like afraid all the time.” When she’s tuning her guitar. Afraid that she can’t do it. “Music is so disposable,” she said. “Now it’s like bzzzt–we’re going to make it virtual.” Puts hands in the air like she’s pushing against an imaginary ceiling. They talked about Grace Jones. Assuming the voice of Grace Jones, Neko Case said, “I can’t destroy myself because I’m too vain.” She said, “She makes fun of her own diva-ness…. Who can pull that off?…. She wore a giant strawberry.” Sasha Frere-Jones said, “You’ve got to figure out what you’re giant strawberry is.” Neko Case said, “I don’t want giant boobs” Neko Case talked about getting old. Sasha Frere-Jones said, “Look you have all your hair. Come on.” Neko Case said “People don’t call you cougar.” She looked at Sasha Frere-Jones and then out at the audience. One of them said, “attack from the back,” then they both said “weird,” at exactly the same time. Sasha Frere-Jones said, “Jinx.” “What would Little Neko do now?” he said. Neko Case said, “I was such an aggressive kid.” “How aggressive did you get? Were you like breaking stuff?” Neko Case said, “Sure. People can hate my record. I don’t care. Rrrrrrr…. I know I’ve had Frances Farmer moments.” [Referring to the Hollywood actress who was diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.] “Is this the early early Neko…before the cobra came out of the basket?” Neko Case said, “Can’t wait until my sex drive is totally gone.” Sasha Frere-Jones said, “Does the cobra still come out?” Neko Case, “Oh yeah…. “When I was a nine-year-old all I wanted was a cobra.” Performance They tuned their instruments. Neko Case said “Ricky dicky,” and apologized for sounding “complainy” but she hates it in interviews when musicians say “I just feel so blessed.” “This is a song about Paul Rigby… and revenge feelings” and mouthed something to the audience. She made a lot of sounds with her mouth. Neko Case looked out at the audience then turned her head stage left where Jon Rauhouse was leaned over his guitar. “Jon Rauhouse on the banjo,” she said, “matched his jacket to his beard.” His hair was grayish-brownish like a nest in his jacket, so you couldn’t see his face. Neko Case said something like, “Soon your beard will grow into your jacket and your jacket will be your coffin…. He went so peacefully, so organically.” He did not look up. I wondered if she picked on him every time they performed. They played “Margaret vs. Pauline.” They played “Middle Cyclone.” Neko Case sang, “…to ride the bus to the outskirts of the fact that I need love.” Kelly Hogan played a music box that plinked as she spun a red knob slowly around. She wore a black dress from the forties. Paul was tuning his guitar. Neko Case flipped her hair to the side and looked back at Paul. She said, “Tuning cuts into your drinking time.” She wore a large black vest, like a vest for a man’s suit, with big buttons. She said the next song was about a “homicidal killing picnic.” But today “there’s no bass drums or tambourines so it’s going to sound like ‘Scarborough Fair.’” Neko Case sang, “I’m a man man man man man man eater…” Paul drank from his bottle. Neko Case said he had “camel toe.” I wonder if she insults all the men she performs with. “Like a pants tourniquet in the Civil War. Kelly my ghost balls hurt.” Kelly Hogan said, “That’s how the high notes happen.” Q&A A young boy asked when she first started making music. She said 16 or 17. “Drumming was a gateway to other instruments.” And added that it was a “good” gateway. Someone said it was ironic that she had a “Star Trek” following without having signed to a label. Neko Case said, “There’s a blue-collar level then a 65-mile chasm.” She stretched her arm up over her head. “I feel very blessed that I was rejected at a young age.” Earlier she had said, “If Elektra signed me when I was 23, I would have fucking signed it. Valuable lesson: maybe you should read what you’re signing.” Someone asked her what the difference was between playing solo and playing with the New Pornographers. She said because she doesn’t have to write for the New Pornographers it’s “a rock ‘n’ roll luge…without having to sign the release form.” Someone asked asked something and Neko Case said, “The Carter sisters didn’t worry about being called lesbos…. I want to be man and ladies all the time…. I’m everywhere at once.” “I mean it more in a Nikola Tesla kind of way.” Someone said, “If I had a taser to your ghost balls–” Neko Case said, “How did you find my ghost balls?” The same person asked her what two covers she would play.  Neko Case said “Free bird,” and songs from the Everly Brothers: “I don’t want to love you but I do,” and “If I could be with You,” by Louis Armstrong. Neko Case said, “It’s the saddest song I’ve ever heard.” 9:15pm – Walking Down Tenth Avenue I walked down tenth avenue. It was wide and empty. I saw the Empire State building–only the top half. It was yellow. The writer Clancy Martin said once that yellow is the color of despair. But he said Dostoevsky had said that. I wondered if the people who made decisions about the lighting scheme knew that, or if they thought it meant “friendship,” or if they thought it was the most neutral or the most meaningless of colors. A stretch limousine slowed down by me. It was old, like from the eighties. For ten blocks it was empty except for a man. And he was alone too. When the street was full of people I had a Caesar salad. 10:00pm – James Franco Talks with Lauren Collins: Starry Dynamo (Cedar Lake Theatre) “Uh…prosthetic penis [pause] yes. Uh…it wasn’t my idea and it was never meant to be shown on screen. I still have it…I actually made a mask out of it.” – James Franco I looked down. I saw mainly freshly shampooed heads of young women and their bare backs. Their shoulders had thin straps or glittered shirts or shirts that looked sliced. Many of these young women carried large leather bags to balance themselves as they walked. They looked unbalanced. Their shoes clanked. The men wore expensive jeans. The lights went on on stage and I saw James Franco’s face. James Franco looked tired. James Franco’s body was low in the chair. He wore a black sweater and gray jeans. Earlier I watched a video of James Franco drinking a glass of water. He drank it many ways. He turned his hand upside down and drank it that way and spilled water on himself. Then he poured a glass and drank again, this time normally. Then he drank another glass  very slowly. He looked like he was thinking. He put the glass down and exhaled. Lauren Collins, an assistant in the fiction department at the New Yorker asked James Franco about being on the soap opera “General Hospital.” James Franco said he was going to play a “mysterious person.” “I think it’s going to be really fun. I started watching it about a week ago.” He said his role was part of a collaboration with an artist called Carter. He made the soap opera seem glamorous, like it was terrain that was underexplored as an art form, as a means for collective reflection as a society. Lauren Collins said “Did anyone [here] watch “Freaks and Geeks”?” People in the audience screamed and whistled. A clip of the show was shown. James Franco talked about fighting with Judd Apatow because he [James Franco] wanted to wear Air Force shirts and Judd Apatow didn’t want him to. There was a pause. Lauren Collins said, “Who won that fight?” James Franco talked about a cologne-stealing ring he had in high school. “Maybe you’ve heard?” He said his major targets were “Drakkar, Cool Water, Eternity. We’d sell ‘em out of our gym lockers.” He rubbed his lip slowly with his forefinger. Lauren Collins said, “What’s it like being a stoner icon?” James Franco said, “People think [pause] I’m stoned anyway [exhale]. People who think stoners are cool [pause] are really nice people, and…uh…[inhale] I don’t mind. A Clip of the film Milk was shown where James Franco kisses Sean Penn. James Franco looked at the floor. James Franco talked about wearing a prosthetic penis. “Uh…prosthetic penis [pause] yes. Uh…it wasn’t my idea and it was never meant to be shown on screen.” He said, “I still have it…. I actually made a mask out of it.” He said some people thought that was weird.” “I was in Paris and we made an 8mm movie. It has a character that has a penis nose.” Lauren Collins said, “After Pineapple [Express], are you excited to play someone articulate and verbal?” She was talking about Hell, a film in which James Franco will play the poet Allen Ginsberg. James Franco lifted his arm slowly off the arm rest and slapped it back down again. He said the Beats were important to him in high school. He talked about the Beat movement for a while. He said, “It’s fifty years since…uh…I’m going off on a tangent now.” James Franco talked about being simultaneously enrolled in three schools, NYU Film School, the poetry program at Asheville, Warren Wilson and the fiction program at Columbia University. James Franco said, “I love it. I know everybody…in each program. So it’s not a weird thing….. Only when I go to art talks late at night and people take pictures of me sleeping.” Lauren Collins showed a clip from Pineapple Express. James Franco laughed. James Franco said he did his own stunts. “I knew we were going to get hurt. We had never done action…. Danny cracked his head open…. When I’m running into that tree, I’m really running into that tree.” He put one hand on each of his legs and pushed back his torso and exhaled. James Franco read the poem “Herbert White” by Frank Bidart, which is in the voice of a psychopathic child murderer and necrophiliac [following is an excerpt]: ”                                 I got in the truck, and started to drive,

Lauren Collins swiped her hair behind her ear. Q&A Someone said he was an actor, screenwriter, director and producer and asked if there was one thing he liked to do best. James Franco said, “Good question…. I dunno…so hard…pick one…I dunno. I like to do a lot of things.” James Franco slapped the palm of his hand against his fist. He bought one of Carter’s paintings. They had a mutual friend. They met and created a piece called “Erased James Franco” where Carter had James Franco reenact scenes from his previous work, but without getting into character. “It’s based on the [Robert] Rauschenberg piece ‘Erased De Kooning Drawing of 1953.’” He said the idea was to have an actor give a performance in his or her head but not have it come to the surface, that “10% will come out.” James Franco said, “I said, well Carter, that’s really interesting, but is that really what you want. So we did a test and it looked like this.” James Franco sat up straight and very very still, his hands on his legs, and looked straight ahead without blinking for five seconds. He looked more alert than he did at any point during the entire interview. Then he sat back and looked tired and said Carter agreed to expand it from there. “We’re planning a new film,” he said. “It will be like [John] Cassavetes’s A Woman Under the Influence, but it will be a man.” He laughed quietly. He smacked his lips. He exhaled loudly. Someone said, “I don’t mean any disrespect.” James Franco said, “Disrespect” like it was a fighting word. The same person said, “If you can remember the last time you smoked pot and how it influenced your work.” James Franco said, “Wow,” as if he was a very old man and had difficulty remembering things so far in his past. “The last time…. Yeah, I do remember…. It just stopped being fun. I started when I was thirteen…. After three years it kind of changed… thinking ‘I haven’t accomplished anything’…I dunno…it stopped doing that for me. I was not a fun person to be around. The last time I smoked pot I picked a fight with a guy who did acid with my girlfriend. I dunno…. I guess I don’t do it. When the interview was finished, women got on stage around James Franco to take pictures with him. He was standing with a woman in a black spaghetti-strap top with slick brown hair. He smiled. Someone shouted, “We love you James.” Two women walked by me. One said, “You want to go talk to him?” It was 11:35pm. 12:35 – James Franco’s Face I got home and on television was James Franco, in the same black sweater and gray jeans. It was “Saturday Night Live” and he was in a skit where he played himself as a guest on a talk show. The camera panned. It showed the face of James Franco looking at the camera. It panned to the “talk-show host” who was dancing. It panned to James Franco who was smiling but didn’t look like he felt like smiling. I waited for him to speak, to be asked a question, to say something. He looked at the camera. The “talk-show host” said time was up and thanked the guests and said “James Franco,” and the camera panned to James Franco’s face. *** Original Papercut Illustrations by Sybille Schenker.