I'm so busy; Zadie Smith at The New Yorker Festival

Some girl at my job quit and I'm the only one in the office who knows how to run her account. I'm not annoyed because I'm missing out on my particularly thrilling social life; I'm annoyed that I'm doing twice the work at the same pay.

All week I've been dying to write about how I went to see Zadie Smith read at The New Yorker Festival.

Obviously Dave fell asleep. Meanwhile, I was the sap tearing up in the third row. I would have probably been better off amongst 12-year olds at a Justin Timberlake concert. When Dave woke up, he looked over me and said, "Are you crying? Are you serious?" Then he started laughing at me. Zadie's my favorite author, so it was bound to happen.

She read from a novel she's working on. To be honest, I couldn't understand her British accent for a good three minutes. Then I adapted to it. She warned us that she wouldn't be reading anything funny and she didn't. Her work has matured and it's good, but how could it ever get any better than:

While he slipped in and out of consciousness, the position of the planets, the music of the spheres, the flap of a tiger moth's diaphanous wings in Central Africa, and a whole bunch of other stuff that Makes Shit Happen had decided it was second-chance time for Archie. -WHITE TEETH

I've always loved that sentence.

I hauled in all three of her novels--hardbacks--and had her sign them. Zadie was a bit pissed off at me when she saw the condition of her books (torn, chewed, a cover put on upside down...in other words, well read). I told her that my cousin's cats gnawed on them. She pressed me for answers, "I have a dog that doesn't even do that." I explained that these weren't normal cats. All of this was only seconds after she said that her Tampax was sticking to her ass. She was a classy broad. Plus, she dug my name. I was a bit confused by the fact that she said "ass" instead of "arse," though. Hearing an English person say arse is about as humorous as it gets.

In other news, I met with the author of Stopless yesterday and she was great. I'm also going to New Orleans next weekend (as in, not this weekend but the next) and I'm meeting with two authors there as well. I fell into these ones through work. I'll name names later and write more about Wanda Lee Robinson asap. If you haven't already read Stopless, you're missing out.

I'm finally turning in my proposal and six chapters after this weekend. Thank God. I'm so sick of looking at this crap.

Back soon with updates. Hopefully good ones.