July 8, 2006

• fantastic party

  The party last night was amazing in many ways.  Ben and I traveled
  up by car with two good friends of his, a married couple, who happen to
  be the designer of Joe’s book jacket and his lawyer.  Ben
  introduced me to them as “Joe’s publicist,” to which I said, “I
  am?  when did that happen?”  Well, since he’s already Joe’s
  editor, he was going to introduce me that way, to pump up my status a
  bit, as he was fine just being Joe’s editor.  It’s true that I’ve
  done a lot of work on the book, maybe a bit less than half of it, but
  Ben’s kept a pretty firm grip on it.  But since Joe is comfortable
  with me and Ben of course has a gazillion things to do, I think he’s
  kind of handing off Joe to me, which is just fine.

  To back up a bit — yesterday afternoon, we got an advance copy of the Times
  Book review to be published on the 16th, with an excellent full-page
  review of Joe’s book.  His sales have been really sluggish so far,
  and I think Ben’s intention is to give me that review and turn me loose
  to make use of it.  He said in his evaluation of me that I was
  “gifted” as a publicist and I think that’s true; I have always had an
  affinity for public relations, and my instincts and intuition are
  really good.

  So we brought Joe’s wonderful review to the party.  Ben read it
  out loud in the car.  I liked his friends a lot.  They were
  smart and played cool music in the car.  Ben and I are getting
  very bonded as a working team; it’s rather telling that he was saying
  to his friends, “we really need a hit, we need a home run, my ass is on
  the line, I’m gonna lose my job –” and then turned to me and said,
  “don’t tell the kids.”  Which was funny and kind of nailed
  it.  He was very bonded with Lee when she was his assistant, but
  that was different.

  Anyway, the party was in upper Harlem/Washington Heights, near the
  Morris Jumel mansion (if I remember correctly, Mrs. Jumel was Aaron
  Burr’s mistress), so it’s kind of this funky latino neighborhood with a
  national treasure in the middle, plus a little street called Jumel
  Terrace with a row of pristine historic row houses on both sides. 
  The party was right around the corner from this.  The guy who
  threw the party has a little bookstore, African and African-American
  interest, on the ground floor, and a garden out back.  Fascinating
  dude, a former hippie who worked in book shops and then rare books and
  then as a private librarian, stocking libraries for rich folk. 

  I don’t think I’ve ever been at a more interesting party.  Most
  everyone was literary in some way, the crowd was nicely mixed among
  white, Asian, and black, and I talked to bookstore people, a editor of
  an arts & culture magazine, the head of some African-American
  literary group (good-looking older black man who seemed to be hitting
  on me a bit).  There was a collection upstairs of an extraordinary
  artist, Michael Ray Charles, plus bits of African art and a santeria
  altar in the bookstore.  Just way too cool.

  Joe just kind of sat there and let things swirl around him.  He’s
  single and dating, I learned (not from him), and it seems his head is
  easily turned by pretty girls too young for him.  Some guys are
  like that.  He hugged me warmly several times and is eager to work
  with me more.  I was working the room more than I was working him,
  which was kind of why I was there.  I handed out a lot of business
  cards and Ben was very approving.

  I hope to get to more parties like that.  What a blast!

  • 9:54 am
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