I’ve been to my share of author readings at bookstores, but it’s safe to say I’d never previously attended one where an audience member questioned the author’s degree of involvement with John Wilkes Booth’s vertebrae.
It was part of a query posed to author and NPR commentator Sarah Vowell tonight after her reading at the Borders on Columbus Circle. “This is the first time I’ve been allowed to read above 14th Street,” she said by means of introduction.
Vowell, who has a sharply intelligent and desert-dry sense of humor, knew immediately that the questioner, who had asked if the author had touched the assassin’s bones at Walter Reed, was misinformed: the medical center has a piece of President Garfield’s vertebrae, untouched by her, that was pierced by an assassin’s bullet in 1881. Vowell should know; she was promoting the paperback edition of her most recent book, Assassination Vacation, about the first three Presidential assassinations: Lincoln, Garfield and McKinley.
She began by reading some passages from the book, pausing to interject comments. “I’m kind of an all-over-the-place kind of writer,” she admitted later, mentioning that she calls her frequent printed asides “shenanigans.” She had many verbal shenanigans during the reading, pausing to mention, for instance, that the soy milk that she added earlier to her tea (“because that’s how I roll”) had the same expiration date as that of Lincoln, April 15th. She also revealed her nickname for Lincoln’s eldest son, Robert Todd, is “Jinxy McDeath” because of his presence at his father’s deathbed and his physical proximity to the assassinations of McKinley and Garfield. He was also indirectly responsibly for some cannibalism during a doomed Arctic expedition, she added.
After a reference in her reading to her Jimmy Carter keychain, she interjected that she had met him recently at an event because they share the same publisher. Comparing their one-sheet press bios, Vowell pointed out to him that “39th President of the United States” is a pretty kick-ass way to lead-off a resumé and that her own bio was slightly less impressive. “I guess you could still win the Nobel Prize,” Carter offered.
She wrapped up by reading a recent op-ed piece she wrote about giving readings of her books at bookstores and getting asked stupid questions. Then she took some questions and, sure enough, some were stupid. The worst was, “Why are you a writer?”
“To make money,” she shouted. “It’s my job.”
Painfully close to the terrible classic, “Where do you get your ideas?”, was “How do you pitch your ideas to your editor?”, asked by a book editor in the audience. Vowell said it’s simple: she picks her favorite idea and tells her editor. “He says, ’I guess that’s not too terrible an idea.’ And then we get cracking.”
Responding to another question, she said she didn’t include Kennedy’s assassination in the book, not because it’s been overdone, but because she’s not historically interested in that president, nor was she comfortable making snide comments about a man who still has plenty of direct relatives living.
Also, she is allergic to wheat.