LAX > SFO

tour diary 2

Hello friends—

Minor Black Figures is published today. We did it! Let’s goooo!!!

There is rain in Los Angeles, which I am told is like snow in Montgomery. I haven’t been to Los Angeles since I was here to tour The Late Americans. In a few hours, I will go to the airport and take a flight to San Francisco. From there, I will go to DC, Gainesville, Boston/Cambridge, and Providence. I think that’s the order. Then I go home for some New York events. Then Canada.

Last night was a lot of fun. There were so many people there in Skylight Books. It struck me that the last time I was there, I was talking about Real Life with my friend Miles Klee. This time around, I was talking to my co-pilot and co-editor and good buddy Allison Woodnutt of Unnamed Press and Smith and Taylor, the classics imprint we co-edit together. I also go to see my co-workers from Unnamed. We are a tiny but mighty team, and it is always good to be able to see their faces in person rather than just on zoom. There were also people at the event who had come to my previous LA events, and I am not joking when I say that the whole vibe was rather like a homecoming. I think I imagine myself to be very alienated and out of place on the West Coast, particularly in LA, but I felt very welcome here, and it is always such a happy surprise to be reminded how many people I know in this city and how many people I care about in this city.

I wrote a couple of days ago about how my hope for tour was just that I’d get to be in a room with people and that it would feel good and meaningful to be present with one another. I said that because I meant it sincerely, but I didn’t expect it would actually happen or so easily, and yet, I must say, sitting there with Allison, looking out over all of those warm, kind faces, it really did feel very, very good. Like, we were all there together, thinking about the same thing and talking as part of one large conversation. It felt good, communal, really. At least for me. I don’t know, it was such a relief from the usual feelings of alienation I carry around with me day to day. The vibes were very good. LA always treats me well. I don’t know why I always have such a surly attitude when I arrive here, only to be confronted by, well, people who seem to care a great deal about me. But maybe that’s my role in life, the surly one.

Typically, when I travel, I am traveling to France. Almost all of my travel in the last three or so years has been to France. When I see plane, I think, ah, yes, time to switch to French. It’s always a little disorienting to get off a plane from JFK and to find myself somewhere that is not Paris. So too, here in LA, I got off the plane, and for the first fifteen minutes, I spoke French to everyone I encountered. It was like a reflex, a muscle memory. I’d start in French and then have to verbally backspace and begin again in English. When I did manage to start in English, I’d hang there, suspended in language, buffering, trying to think of words. I did eventually get over the language barrier. The physicality of Los Angeles brutally imposed itself on me. After getting my bags, I had to lumber onto that bus that takes you all the way out to the open-air camp that is their ride-share waiting area. I am not going to lie. It felt a little like being in a prison. Concrete and asphalt everywhere. Barbed wire fencing running the perimeter. To get there involved going through a series of convoluted turns and passing various panoptic towers also ringed with barbed wire. I had the sense that I was being shipped somewhere for further detainment. I always forget this about LAX, and then I board the shuttle, and the doors shut, and then I feel like I am about to be taken to a holding cell for a crime I was not aware of committing. And then, the skyline. The buildings. The low structures and the concrete. For a Manhattan-dwelling creature, Los Angeles is bewildering. I felt like the protagonist of Malcolm Lowry’s Under the Volcano, except I wasn’t drunk.

Anyway, that cleared up any confusion about where I was real quick. You cannot look at Los Angeles and think of any other place. You simply cannot. I do not know how to think about this city. I don’t have a feel for its geometry. A friend asked where I was staying, if it was downtown, and I told him that I didn’t know anything about that. All I had was a hotel name. I don’t know where I am in relation to anything else in this place. He asked me about landmarks, and I just stared blankly into the Facetime. “There’s a Dave’s Hot Chicken,” I said. “And a Catholic church.”

It struck me—not for the first time, to be clear—that I do not know anything about American cities. I don’t know anything about America. This is strange because I spend a lot of time, hundreds of hours, thousands perhaps (likely, let’s be real) playing map games and reading about European history. I could, in my sleep, label a map of Europe from 1066. I could label all of the dukes and prince electors of the Holy Roman Empire. I could tell you the lines of descent of the Kings of Spain and Portugal, and where they intersect and diverge. I know the entire history of the Kingdom of Naples. I do not know what constitutes downtown LA. I don’t know what LA’s landmarks are. I don’t know the difference between Hollywood and LA. I don’t know shit about it. I couldn’t find it on a map.

I bring this up because even after crawling around this city in a car, I still couldn’t tell you anything about how it’s shaped. This is not a walking city. At least not where I am. My publicist gave all of the travel times in minutes by car. I live in Manhattan. I take trains or I walk. Sometimes, in a pinch, or late at night, on the rare occasions I find myself in Brooklyn, I take a car home. Being in a place with so much distance between everything I am supposed to do is…disorienting. I am not accustomed to the scale of life in LA. It reminds me of Alabama that way. The need to drive everywhere. Or the need for a motor vehicle, at least. I have spent so much money on Uber, and I have been here less than forty-eight hours. Like, I could buy a tennis racquet with the amount of money I have spent on Uber here. And I’m talking brand new. WILD.

Also. A sausage egg and cheese biscuit from McDonald’s is almost $8 here. Like. That’s crazy.

I realize that I sound like a shell-shocked European, encountering the breadth and terror of the American west. That is because I am a shell-shocked European, encountering the breadth and terror of the American west. But I must say, the weather was cool and damp. The sky turned grey and silver, even before the rain came, and I did think, Now this is some weather. I was quite taken with the city this time around. Even if there was a frightfully modernist Catholic church down the street from my hotel.

I must say, LA kind of made me a believer. Though I know it’s all a beautiful trap! You can’t trick me! I know it’s not always giving Jane Eyre on the Moors here! But wow, when it is. What a place.

If you came to last night’s event, thank you so much. I hope you enjoyed it as much as I did. If you preordered Minor Black Figures, thank you too! I hope your preorders are finding you on time and in good condition. I hope you enjoy the book. Come back and tell me what you think.

Otherwise, see you in Berkeley tonight!

In the meantime, some Minor Black Figures pub-day press:

A rave in the NYT.
A rave in the Chicago Tribune
I appeared on the NYTBR Podcast.
I was profiled in Bloomberg

First chapter excerpted at Lit Hub
Second chapter excerpted at The Audacity (!!!)