Tag Archives: self-promotion

Commerce in the morning

The Portable Son, ,

I love the feeling of commerce in the morning. Grabbing a bagel at the coffee shop, stopping off at the drive-thru bank teller, booking a car while briskly walking to an elevator in a distant city. I don’t know. It gets my small-town, merchant-blood flowing. It’s my middle-aged belief that all real business transpires before lunch.

All that’s throat clearing to say that there is a new online spot where you can buy my book, specifically my Bandcamp page. I do realize that books are not usually sold on Bandcamp, but I’ve already got the page up, and the pipes connected, and that “merch” tab was sitting there unused. This effort is partially inspired by the “you can just do things” discourse, which I’m a sucker for, and partially inspired by a couple of friends out there doing cool stuff. 

The paperback is the “limited baby blue” edition. I’ve got about 19 left.

My Life as a Mannequin

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Dear friendly people of the Internet,

Are we still capitalizing “Internet”? I refuse to hyphenate “email” and feel increasingly gooby capitalizing “Web.” Surely all linguistic acceptance leads toward lowercase.

Anyway, I have a new essay out in the world. It’s called “My Life as a Mannequin” and it’s about Philip Roth, getting lost, Washington, D.C., good bookstores, and more Philip Roth. It’s in the latest issue of Open Letters Monthly.

I originally read part of this essay at the Roth@80 Conference in Newark, NJ, this past spring, an event that was put on by the Philip Roth Society in honor of Roth’s 80th birthday. You can read more about the extravaganza in this New York Times’ article.

Do I feel smug linking to a New York Times’ article? Yes, I do.

Anyway, this essay wouldn’t have made it out of the gate if it weren’t for Roth scholar extraordinare and friend and all around badass David Gooblar. If you want to know more about Roth, you should read his book, The Major Phases of Philip Roth.

p.s. For the extra diligent, here is David Remnick’s recap in the New Yorker of the same Roth event.

p.p.s. The essay in Open Letters features perhaps my second favorite Roth photo of all time. My first favorite is the Hot Dog Photo, which I can’t find in my preliminary internet searching (little “i”), but which was definitely included in the recent photo exhibit in the Newark Public Library.