So I says to Joyce, I says...

On Wednesday night I went to see Jeffrey Eugenides read from his new book THE MARRIAGE PLOT at Greenlight Bookstore in Brooklyn. It was the most crowded reading I had been to in months, probably since Jonathan Franzen last year, but that was at a ginormous Barnes & Noble, not a storefront. There was an expectant crackle in the air already when I arrived, with 20 minutes to go, and the store looked full though it wasn't yet. 

The staff had turned off the air conditioning so that we could hear over the noise. I was crammed next to a display featuring a book on crafts you can make out of cat hair (true story), by the register; I couldn't even see the top of Eugenides' head. A store employee would periodically sweep the people in front of me toward the back of the store, where they would have been facing bookshelves instead of the windows; then more people would filter in, and would be swept back as well.

Jeffrey Eugenides is balding in a circular, cartoon way, like my father. When we went up for the signing afterward he was wearing a white shirt printed with tiny purple and coral flowers and off his right elbow there was one half-empty Brooklyn Brewery beer, and another resting in what used to be ice in a plastic pitcher. He said he likes going on tour, joking about how his slow publishing schedule (3 novels in 3 decades) makes this easy on his readers; but he had been talking to Joyce Carol Oates who attempted to dissuade him from going at all. He didn't do a Q&A, although I think many of us in the audience would gladly have stood around to hear more. Then again, we might have been subjected to questions like "What's your secret to channeling the female perspective?"

After meeting him I believe he would be the kind of man to laugh about getting punched in the face by a disgruntled train passenger, but I could be wrong. 

The title of THE MARRIAGE PLOT is a palimpsest; the student Madeleine, an English major becoming infatuated with (and to the lines of) Roland Barthes in the newly created semiotics department, has written her senior thesis on the 19th- and early 20th-century novels (I think she locates the end of the genre around the time of SISTER CARRIE but I could be wrong) and refers to it as being about "the marriage plot," but its significance doesn't stop with her coursework. When I was reading it on the subway (its title bearing an elegant wedding ring that, on closer examination, is a Mobius strip) I wondered if people thought it was a self-help book, or a scholarly text along the lines of SEX AT DAWN or MARRIAGE: A HISTORY.

After looking for it at 3 bookstores on Monday, the day before it was published (begrudging kudos for not breaking the embargo), I purchased the book on Tuesday morning at a Hudson News in O'Hare Airport in Chicago -- it was the first time I had ever bought a hardcover at the airport, a gesture I associate with men in business class zipping down to Dallas for the day. I was flying JetBlue, an airline that doesn't have a business class. It was a little indulgent but I had my head down reading all the way back to New York, and then through Queens back to Brooklyn.

Free Advice Friday: Help! My spouse is writing novels!

Interesting Dear Prudence question this week:

Q. How Much Hobby Sharing Can Spouses Expect From One Another?: As strictly a hobby, I write fictional novels in the evenings after my daughter goes to bed. I am a stay-at-home mom more by circumstance than by desire, though I have loved being there for my daughter. This activity has given me a chance to step into a fictional world for a few hours a night and something to do as my husband is fooling with his computer modeling, music, various artistic pursuits, or video games for the evenings after a day of work for him. I try to be supportive of his hobbies. Is it too much for me to ask for him to read what I write? The only friend I have I feel comfortable enough to read what I write is visually impaired and does most of her reading through audio books. He just never gets around to it when I do ask. I gave him an early draft of a novel I was messing around with and have since finished two sequels to it. I know they will never go farther than taking up memory space on my laptop hard drive, but I still want it to be the best I can make it, and to me that includes having someone I love and trust read it.

A: In her recent memoir, Joyce Carol Oates reveals her late husband didn't read her novels. Of course, she wrote a novel a day, so maybe it was too much to ask. If you even harbor secret dreams of someone besides your spouse reading your work, I think you need to get braver and join a writing circle, or take a class in which others are forced to read your work. Your husband may be the most sensitive, brilliant reader you'd ever encounter and he's unkindly refusing to be your Lionel Trilling. Or he may be thinking, "I love her, but if I have to read one more word about a sexy werewolf, I'm going to kill myself." Don't make reading your trilogy a test of your marriage.

Dang, First Mr. Joyce Carol Oates, that is harsh. (RIP.)

Extra E for excellence?

Rock Star Games assembled a free e-book of short stories called L.A. NOIRE to go with the recently released video game of the same name. Lawrence Block, Joyce Carol Oates and Francine Prose came out to play, says Galleycat. This will be the first video-game adaptation I've ever read (if it is that, or just along similar themes).

(But still... noire?)

Idle chatter

• I was all set to cheer for this poll in which Americans ranked books as their top indulgence (ahead of dining out, shopping, vacation and movies)... until I noticed it was conducted by Harlequin. Sneaks.

• Arrr! The Millions interviews a book pirate.

• If you get an e-mail from Don DeLillo, it's probably spam. Also, this is the second high-profile author interview from the Wall Street Journal I've linked to recently (McCarthy was the last -- also an unwilling interviewee). What does Rupert have on these dudes? It must be good!

• "Nothing is more frightening than 9th graders jeering '4 legs good, 2 legs bad' over and over again." Teachers on their favorite and least favorite books to teach.

• The National Book Critics Circle (of which I am a member) recently announced its 2009 award nominees, but one winner to note: Joyce Carol Oates is picking up a lifetime achievement award, which is not a set-up because I recently read that JCO has been unable to write since her husband died in 2008. That is just damn sad. (Also, am jerk.) So, congrats on the award, and sorry for your loss.

Holiday Gift Guide 2009: Books About Reading, Writing And Writers

Let's kick this off with the books you're most likely to want to buy for yourself if you are reading this blog. Don't do it. Think about how surprised your reading-mad relatives and friends will be when you pull out something stellar like these five-plus entries.

Elizabeth Benedict, MENTORS, MUSES AND MONSTERS: 30 WRITERS ON THE PEOPLE WHO CHANGED THEIR LIVES. I love a good thick biography but these anthologies scratch the same itch with their snapshot versions. I'd love to know what Jane Smiley found at the famed Iowa Writers Workshop, or what it was like for Joyce Carol Oates to meet her rival and actually like him. As with all books you want to give around this time of year, this is the kind of volume you'll want to keep around.

Haruki Murakami, WHAT I TALK ABOUT WHEN I TALK ABOUT RUNNING. This is not an accident, this book is as much about the Japanese author's career in letters as it is his penchant for marathons and triathlons. While occasionally self-contradictory, Murakami's startlingly personal memoir explores how his hobby feeds his work because, as he writes, "when we use writing to create a story a kind of toxin that lies deep down in all humanity rises to the surface. All writers have to come face-to-face with this toxin and, aware of the danger involved, discover a way to deal with it."

Shahriar Mandanipour, CENSORING AN IRANIAN LOVE STORY. This book, another James Wood-approved pick, presents itself as a novel written by a Tehran college student which has been pre-censored (but not indecipherably) by the authorities. I'm captivated by the unconventional form and the opportunity to get to know Mandanipour (an exiled Iranian film critic) through his first novel being translated into English.

Heidi Julavits, Ed Park and Vendela Vida (ed.), READ HARD: FIVE YEARS OF GREAT WRITING FROM THE BELIEVER. Collection of essays from everyone's favorite anti-snark McSweeney's project. **Bonus 2008 Re-Run** As long as a few people I know have not read them yet I will keep recommending and giving Nick Hornby's Believer essay collections. I only wish he'd kept up the column so they didn't have to end. (I finished the last one, SHAKESPEARE WROTE FOR MONEY, in January.)

THE PARIS REVIEW INTERVIEWS, VOLS. I-IV. Frankly, I haven't been that good this year; one volume a year for the next four Christmases would probably be fair. And I might need that long to absorb the wealth of interviews in this box set. Maud Newton writes for NPR that the collection "enables us to continue believing that the authors we revere are effortlessly wise and entertaining."

FTC cover-assery: I got the Murakami book from the library and I bought all the Nick Hornby books. Seriously: so good.

Photo: Detail from tofuttibreak

Bloggers ruin everything, again.

This week in the death of publishing: Columbia University has indefinitely suspended its book review seminar. And whose fault is that? Well, newspapers', but also: mine!

"[Prof. James Shapiro] added that because so many reviewers are now blogging, freelancers are having a harder time than ever earning anything substantial from their work."

My bad! Clearly I only did it for revenge because I would have loved to take this kind of class had it been offered at my school while I was there. Also, to take one of the authors he mentioned, I'm fairly sure that if Joyce Carol Oates were coming of age now she would have a massive blog, the kind you have to read on weekends with several rounds of coffee and the font plussed up. (Not this kind.) In fact, has anyone thought of getting JCO another platform for her cacoethes scribendi to assume marvelous shape? I kid, but I would read the hell out of that.

My Dirty Little Reviewer's Secret

I know this is going to be a bit of a shock, so you might want to sit down.

Sometimes, I review books for which I am not, strictly, the person most qualified to do so in the world. Or even in the U.S. (or, heck, New York City).

Paradoxically it's a feeling I've gotten more, not less, as I've been writing more book reviews and occasionally getting paid for them. When a book I've reviewed turns up in the New York Times, I know when I read it (after I've written my own, of course) that the person writing is probably more knowledgeable than I -- more true for nonfiction than fiction, I think, but it's there nonetheless.

But I do my best to write a top-notch book review, which sometimes includes a little homework. If I'm reviewing a second novel I'll try to get my hands on the first (something that works against the author if I like the first one better); I try to keep up with what she or he has written recently and perhaps a few germane biological details. This policy I quasi-set for myself against my inferiority complex is about to bite me, HARD.

I got a book to review this week from a very famous author. Let's call her "Ainslie Copper."* Ms. Copper is a best-selling author who is richer than Croesus and much more beloved.** It's not that I've avoided the works of Copper by design; if I had run into one of them back when I used to read anything in my path, including books hotels place in your room as part of the artwork, I probably would not be in this predicament.

After a trip to the library, I now have four Ainslie Copper books to read before I get to the new one. This isn't an excellent survey, since she's about as prolific as Joyce Carol Oates***, but it's what I have time for. I hope I like Ainslie Copper, or at least can tolerate her, because otherwise this is going to be a long weekend.****

In other news, I would totally use Ainslie Copper as my pen name if I didn't already know an Ainslie. But I'm sure she won't be hurt that I called her super rich and well liked on the Internet.

*Name changed on behalf of the guilty (me).
**No, it's not J.K. Rowling. REALLY, people.
***And thus is not Joyce Carol Oates. See what I did there? I actually went through an Oates phase between 8th and 9th grades, although I have forgotten many of the salient details.
****On the other hand, with two 4-hour bus rides on the horizon I will probably feel grateful to have anything to occupy me. Right? Right?!