richard moody reading nyc 9.14.05

swamped at the day job so it's taken time to write this one up. Opted out of the Salman Rushdie reading in favor of Rick Moody @ 6th Ave & 22nd Street. Moody's new one, "The Diviners", is, in his words, "a big wooly comic novel about an indie film production company trying to sell out in November 2000". The time period covered in the novel is from Election Day through the date when the Presidential Election was certified by the court (remember that? the day we finally moved away completely from democracy and became a full-fledged Republic...gak)...Moody says he attempted to make the novel "episodic" in a nod to television. Similar to TV series, there are several minor characters that appear only briefly. A quick aside, don't know if it's the store or Moody vs. Bender's audience but the people at this reading were...much less amenable physically & in presentation than those at the Aimee Bender reading. That is to say, the place was full of overdressed, whispering amongst themselves yuppies with a few obvious lit. students scattered throughout. One of the 3 "older" women who crowded in front of me at the last minute turned around, stared at the audience and said, "mostly teachers...teachers here," then stared at me - apparently, I should have caught on and morphed into a teacher (?). Her friend was incredibly annoying - either over-medicated or just plain hot for Moody - laughing repeatedly and extendedly at everything he said...sort of made it hard to follow the reading. That & the wonderful people who asked me to move right before the reading started but wouldn't let me swap & sit on the aisle thereby leaving me squashed directly in the beam of one of the outdoor spotlights...ouch. Blinded by lit?...Back to Moody - the piece he read from the novel he prefaced & told us as he did that this was his first time "doing the intro" so he hoped it worked. It did, sort of...though he meandered somewhat. BTW, he's surprisingly small. Not sure why surprisingly but...anyway, the scene he read focused on a "Botox party" hosted by one of his characters, Melanie Forvath (?) a successful writer of those sort of books I'm sure my parents & my creditors wish I would write. She's so successful in fact that she has ghostwriters from Smith (?!) and Swellsley...I mean...Wellsley writing her books for her. The reading went over well, though it felt long(ish)? That could just have been a function of the aforementioned cranky-making elements I was suffering under. Or that I was expecting to be as riveted as I was as the Bender reading. Moody then opened up the floor to questions, giving us a quick entertaining intro - apparently while he was waiting in the "green room", the rep from Barnes & Noble mentioned that the Q&A was important as that's when the audience gets their "value". Actually, I usually hate the Q&A portion of a reading since nearly everyone asks highly fanboy/fangirl questions or just plain stupid things...Some of the questions were good this time - I found it interesting to hear that Moody doesn't have cable (just a monitor & DVDs) and yet he was writing about TV (?!)...how people survive w/out cable I don't know. Other things we learned: it took him "two years and 3 months" to write the book. The piece he read from wasn't the final draft. When asked if he considered the book "comedy or tragedy", he said he wanted to write "a happy book" but...he "enjoys the hybridization of the two"...next there was a long discussion of the TV research he did, he mentioned renting "mini-series" and that "ROOTS hasn't aged that well neither has the Thornbirds..." and he's "developed a massive addiction to Buffy...". When asked re: "structrual guides" in writing the novel, his "big one" was "the absurdly ambitious idea of writing something like Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann...now there's a book with not even one joke...". Conversation then moved to the cover image. He explained (for those that didn't know) that the initial image of Atilla the Hun's brother, Zoltan that appears on the advance reading copies was altered to one deemed more acceptable. Moody then held up each book and had us vote & then vote by gender. Apparently, women prefer the "new" cover with the smaller image of Zoltan. I, of course, voted for the closeup of Zoltan - mainly because I think the new cover (black with bad shot of audience peering at screen with image of Zoltan) doesn't work...the initial cover is bright yellow with the Hun in bright red & it's very sexy. Oh well. Onward...when asked if he had any advice for young writers (WHY?! do people ask questions like this?!) he quoted Wm. Burroughs and then came up with "work hard, don't give up & write a thousand words a day"...As to why he set the novel in 2000, he stated, "2000 constituted a cultural interregnum between the 'Go-Go' Clinton years and the sinister present...'. Another genius asked what "order he wrote the book in"...to which he responded from "beginning to end", he mentioned that there are "20 main characters" and that he really wanted to include a series he made up called, "The Werewolves of Fairfield County". Heh. The first chapter is "sunrise around the globe" & this is where my notes sort of fade away into intelligible doodling...including, "Binge Writer" which I assume refers to Moody's comments that he writes 8 hours a day every day for a while, then will take a "break"...he also answered the query as to whether or not the book was influenced at all by Pynchon's "V." Moody stated that V. is the Pynchon book he's read the least, having read "Gravity's Rainbow" and "The Crying of Lot 49" many times, he doesn't see V. as an influence on "The Diviners" beyond the "lack of resolution" at the end. Final question was another one of "those" questions. "Which current writers are you reading?" Lydia Davis, Amy Hempel, D. Wallace, Don Delillo, Lilly Tuck's "News from Paraguay" and "Philip Roth's last book". Moody then asked the woman who'd asked that particular question what she was reading, apparently everything from non-fiction to Ursula K. LeGuin. Hmmm. At that point, Moody judged that we'd "had our value" and the Barnes & Noble rep started the line for the signing. Unlike the Astor Place B&N, there were no books up front to purchase - instead, we had to go buy the book and THEN get in the line...shitty system but oh well. Got my book signed, signed the book Moody asked everyone to sign & then limped back out into the wet, hot NYC night. urg. how I loathe the humidity...