Salon | Excerpt: Starting Out in the Evening


Fiction Birds of America By Lorrie Moore Excerpt_\|_Review The Voyage of the Narwhal By Andrea Barrett Excerpt_\|_Review Blindness By José Saramago Excerpt_\|_Review Starting Out in the Evening By Brian Morton Excerpt_\|_Review Thirst By Ken Kalfus Excerpt_\|_Review Nonfiction The Professor and the Madman By Simon Winchester Excerpt_\|_Review A Beautiful Mind By Sylvia Nasar Excerpt_\|_Review At Home With the Marquis de Sade By Francine du Plessix Gray Excerpt_\|_Review A Slant of Sun By Beth Kephart Excerpt_\|_Review We Wish to Inform You That Tomorrow We Will Be Killed With Our Families By Philip Gourevitch Excerpt_\|_Review - - - - - - - - - - - Table Talk Join the Books discussion in Table Talk. - - - - - - - - - - -				__________________e__x__c__e__r__p__t ________________________- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Starting Out in the Evening BY BRIAN MORTON FICTION CROWN 329 PAGES It wasn't as if she did nothing in life but think about Schiller. She worked hard during the day, and in the evening she usually explored New York. She'd been going to fiction or poetry readings almost every week. It seemed like a good way to meet people, to find her place in the city. That was how she'd met the woman from Bomb. A few days after her night at Schiller's, she went to a reading in the East Village sponsored by The Village Voice. Ever since her junior year of high school, Heather had bought the Voice every week and studied it with a devotion that was part scholarly, part religious. She'd thought of it as a lifeline to sophistication, to freedom, to New York. After the reading was over, she went up to the woman who'd introduced the readers. "My name is Heather Wolfe," she said. "You rejected two of my book reviews." The woman, Sandra Bennett, was in her mid-forties; she was slender, tall, with long black hair and enviable cheekbones. From the podium she'd radiated a sense of calm authority. She had, Heather thought, a certain stateliness -- a word she never would have applied to anyone before. "Heather Wolfe. I can't say I remember them. I guess they weren't very good." Heather was unfazed by this. "I just wanted to tell you I loved the article you wrote last spring about Max's Kansas City. I loved the autobiographical parts the most. I think you should be writing your memoirs." Each word of this was true, and yet it was pure flattery. Heather had only seconds to impress herself on Sandra's brain, and a few words of well-chosen flattery seemed like the best way to achieve that end. Heather was a student of flattery -- which is a subtle art. There's a fine line between effective flattery, which makes some important person feel that you've perceptively appreciated his work, and cringing flattery, which makes the person think you're a groupie -- someone to be ignored, or used, but certainly not taken seriously. "Thanks, I guess," Sandra said. "I hope I'm a little young for my memoirs." "But I also thought you weren't saying everything you knew about Lou Reed. That part could have been better. You kept hinting at something and then not saying it." The criticism was just as calculated as the praise. She wanted to seem independent-minded and shrewd. But again, she was also speaking the truth: there was something off about the way Sandra had written about Lou Reed. It made Heather wonder if Sandra had had an affair with him. Sandra looked at her with a skeptical, amused expression, and Heather had the impression that Sandra was bringing her into focus, putting her on file her memory. She also had the impression that Sandra knew exactly what she was doing with this two-step of praise and critique. "Maybe I do remember those reviews," Sandra said. "You're a graduate student somewhere, aren't you?" "I was at Brown. I finished my course work. Now I'm writing my thesis and living here." "The young woman from the provinces, ready to make a name for herself in the city. I love it." Sandra seemed to be teasing her, but maybe not. It was hard to tell. SALON \| Dec. 21, 1998 Brian Morton is the author of the novel "The Dylanist." He is the executive editor of Dissent magazine. He lives in New York City. "Starting Out in the Evening": ORDER A COPY__\|__SALON REVIEW - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - G O+T O+\| Fiction Awards \| Nonfiction Awards - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Become a Salon member. Click here.