“I think I left that back door unlatched,” she said to Bill. “Will you see about it?”
He nodded and said he would check it, then quickly turned away, wiping his eyes. I was sent from the room and my brother and I waited a few minutes in the hall until my mother came out. Bill had his arm around her; my father, helpless and a little afraid, I think, came to me and muttered as much to himself as to anyone. “Worrying about that back door. Last thing she said. Yesterday was her birthday. Ninety-two and a day.”
I didn’t attend Aunt Minnie’s funeral. We had buried my father’s father only a few months before, and I made up my mind that I had suffered enough funeral trauma for one childhood.
I heard, though, that all of Eldorado and much of Jackson County, Oklahoma, turned out for Aunt Minnie’s send-off. People came from all over, not only Tulsa and Oklahoma City, but from out-of-state as well. Few were actually related to her, but most were still her family. The church was jammed with her children and their children and their children’s children, all of whose lives had been in some measure touched by Aunt Minnie. She didn’t rear all of them by any means, but she saw to it that they all knew where there was love, understanding, compassion to be had in a world that so often seemed harsh, unfair, and unforgiving. As I said, she knew children, and they knew her, or at least they came to know her when they had children of their own. When they thought of her, they remembered what it was like to be a child, to need to be loved and understood, and many of them, I think, found their own wells of love and understanding deepened and sweetened by the force of this old woman.
It’s been nearly fifty years, and I’ve only visited her grave once, right after she died. I’ve tried to do so again, but I’ve never been able to find it, or Josh’s, or my grandfather’s, or his son and namesake’s, a boyish man killed in an auto-train wreck before I was born. When I go back to Eldorado, though, I find that people still remember her. People the age of my children recognize her name. If I see someone on the street, I might introduce myself by name, or even establish my parents’ name, and that won’t do it. But if I say I was nephew to Aunt Minnie, their eyes light up.
“Aunt Minnie,” they’ll say. “She was a saint.”
I guess she was. “Reared nineteen children and never bore one of her own,” is the phrase that always comes to mind when I think of her. It’s the one old-timers in Eldorado will echo if anyone asks about her. I ache with regret when I think of all she could have told me that I was too young to ask. Born during Reconstruction when Ulysses S. Grant was president, when the Kiowa and Comanche still ruled the prairies of Oklahoma, she died a year before John F. Kennedy was killed, before the disillusionment of what it might mean to be a president. She saw the coming of the telephone, the automobile, electricity, the radio, the airplane, the motion picture, air conditioning and color television. She survived three major depressions and epidemics of typhoid, cholera, diphtheria and influenza; and nursed children through countless bouts of measles, mumps, pneumonia, and whooping cough. She lived through two world wars, numerous smaller ones, saw the rise and fall of nations, the coming and going of heroes and villains. She experienced comfortable prosperity and abject poverty, hard work and a good life, unconditional love and agonizing loss. It makes me wonder how strong a heart must be to keep from breaking.
I only saw one picture of her before she became very old. Taken on the veranda when it was newer and freshly painted, surrounded by pansies and other flowers, it shows a middle-aged woman who was never tall except in character: She stands erect in a black dress—the hump came later—with hair cropped short like a flapper, and one of those demur expressions so many women of the twenties wore when the Kodak was brought out for a too-warm, Sunday-after-church portrait. She looked happy there, smiling into the superheated atmosphere. I could almost imagine that beyond the door behind her, coffee was boiling, chicken and dressing was warming on the stove, and a tall chocolate cake awaited the removal of the first slice.
What must she have thought of my pulling away from her embraces, of my scowls in response to her kisses? How could I have hurt her so much? I feel real pain when I think of how much she loved me and how much I resented her touch, her nearness. Sometimes the innocence of childhood can be a curse, no matter what Wordsworth says. An aunt can be mother to us all.
In her obituary in the Eldorado Courier, an anonymous citizen of the town was quoted as saying, “If she doesn’t go to heaven, I don’t want to.” If she was not an angel, she was at least a good person, a woman of incredible strength, of infinite understanding, of endless toleration, of bottomless generosity. So much can be said about so few people. If she made sacrifices, it was out of love, never out of personal gain, and that can be said about almost no one. She never won a Nobel Prize, never went into the ghetto or refugee camps to care for those less fortunate than she. Instead, she made her home a haven for those in need of a different kind of succor, of a more abstract kind of support. She asked for nothing for herself but good health, a clear mind, and another bright morning. For ninety-two years and a day, she received all she asked for, and somehow, I believe, for her, it was enough.
ENVOY: WHY YOU PROBABLY WON’T MEET THE AUTHOR
“Publish and be damned.”
—Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington (attributed)
Soon after my first novel was published, I showed up at a bookstore to do a signing, my first. I was excited! I envisioned lines of people eager to snap up copies of my brand new book. I’d seen this happen in films, after all! I knew how it worked. There would be decent wine, maybe some tasty hors d’oeuvres, perhaps a chord or two of classical music playing low in the background, well-dressed, adoring fans—none of whom had ever heard of me before this event—all brandishing gold cards, eager for an autograph on my newly published novel. I bought a black turtleneck and a tweed jacket just to wear for this marvelous “coming out.”
I arrived at the shop a good half-hour before I was scheduled, introduced myself to the clerk at the counter. She looked at me, annoyed, blinked twice, then turned toward the back of the store. “Hey, Maureen!” she yelled. “Some guy’s out here says he supposed to sign some books. You know anything about it?”
Things went downhill from there.
Maureen, a harried assistant manager appeared at last, saying she hadn’t been “warned” of my appearance. She was only marginally embarrassed; actually, she was quite put-out that I was standing there, tweed and turtleneck in evidence, waiting for her attention. She hurriedly set up a card table just behind a huge display for a new best-selling thriller, found a chair for me, then placed a small pile of my freshly unpacked books (still shrink-wrapped) in front of me. “I wondered why these came in,” she said. “I sure didn’t order them.” She dispatched the register clerk to hoof it down the mall to Walgreen’s for some “refreshments.” She returned momentarily with a package of Oreos, which she ripped open and put on the table’s corner. “Looks like you’re all set,” Maureen declared, then she disappeared into the bowels of the store’s back rooms. I didn’t see her again.
For the next four hours I watched people slink by and avoid eye contact with the odd-looking, bearded fellow in the black turtleneck. I sold two books—the clerk bought one, and a distant cousin of mine dropped by for the other. My mother wrote to tell her where I’d be.
This was one of my better outings.
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I have since learned that such experiences are not rare. They are fairly typical of the way most writers are treated when they show up for what publishers’ publicists euphemistically call an “in-store event.” The humiliation can be devastating unless one has thick skin and a great sense of irony.
Such events may be arranged by the publishers themselves in cooperation with the bookstore or bookstore chains, or they may be arranged directly by the author and the “community relations coordinator” (CRC), or in the case of some independent bookstores, directly with the store’s manager. In each case, the arrangement
s are up to the local store’s personnel, and often, so is any advance publicity or advertising to entice people to come by and buy a book.
For some writers, a bit more effort may be made. Publishing houses can work with bookstores or even with whole chains to arrange special—even gala—signing events. Sometimes, managers receive elaborate and handsome publicity packets, poster-sized blowups of dust jackets, even camera-ready advertising copy for use in newspapers and newsletters. Generally, though, if the bookstore itself has to pay for such publicity, and unless an agreement for “cooperative advertising” had been worked out between the store and the publisher, very little in the way of pre-event publicity will be staged. I probably was lucky that the store didn’t charge me for the Oreos.
The primary value of public signings seems to be to build goodwill between the publisher and the bookstores. In the case of the large chain stores, the store managers are usually mandated by their corporate headquarters to hold so many such affairs. Sometimes, several per week. But neither they nor the publisher provides booze, attractive food, nor much advance publicity except, maybe a hastily scrawled or computer-generated sign advertising the event, or some generally ignored in-store handbills stuffed into the sacks with purchases and receipts.
Unless cooperative advertising has been worked out between the publisher and the bookstores, even the megachains rely on direct mail newsletters or they count on free announcements on “Community Bulletin Boards” and “What’s Happening” newspaper columns to stimulate interest. Some stores put up placards on an easel somewhere in the store a few days before the author arrives. Such efforts are unreliable at best, generally useless at worst. I’ve signed books immediately behind such a poster-sized advertisement containing my photo and name, only to have people stop, stare at it, then at me and ask, “Who are you?”
Not surprisingly, bookstore signings often fail to do more than embarrass everyone concerned, including the potential customer.
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Over the years, when I’ve healed from the mortification from my last outing and agreed to do another signing to promote a new title, I’ve often arrived and been carefully positioned somewhere between “Field Guides” and “Coin Collecting.” There I sit, isolated, waiting patiently for some literate soul to come by in search of a novel to read. I usually can observe the fiction section on the other side of the store where people are browsing the shelves, happily unaware of my presence.
Why managers imagine that someone wanting an art book or a guide to better health through yoga might casually pick up a novel just because they spotted a writer squatting in that section to sign books is beyond me. Why they think people would instinctively know that situated next to auto repair manuals and research tools, a novelist might be hawking his own books is also a mystery. But such is the ordinary situation. I’ve sometimes found myself wedged in-between the music or video aisles, near volumes on gardening and airplanes, once even trying to sell my adult novel, replete as it was with sex and violence, in-between a display of Sesame Street and Dr. Seuss books. In one case, I was positioned directly in front of a life-size statue of Barney the Dinosaur.
There are other kinds of competition, as well. At a Barnes and Noble signing, I was feeling enthusiastic when I saw people lining up. Then, I saw a man dressed in a clown costume walk in. He led the crowd, Pied Piper-like, back to the children’s section where he performed juggling tricks and sold copies of a prekindergarten video-book combination while the toddlers’ parents cast suspicious looks in my direction.
The most common experience is boredom. One autumn, I drove nearly a hundred miles for an event at a chain bookstore. I was assured by the CRC that “massive publicity” had generated “tremendous enthusiasm” for my appearance. It was a Monday night, and the Dallas Cowboys were playing on network television. The detonation of a nuclear device in that store would have harmed no customer.
After about half an hour of watching the two football-deprived employees chat distractedly at the register, I was approached by the assistant manager, who timidly asked me if I would mind watching the front. There was a television in the back office, and he and his two co-workers wanted to go catch the second half. He apologized, “We don’t ever get much business when ‘The Boys’ are playing. You can just call me if anybody comes in and wants to buy something.” Apart from one extremely inebriated homeless person wanting to know where the toilet was, no one did.
No matter how much enthusiasm may be perceived in advance by any store official, veteran authors soon realize that sitting behind a table at a bookstore, even a major bookstore, even one with a high level of customer traffic, quickly becomes more embarrassing than productive. Casual customers instinctively shy away from anyone trying to put them in the awkward position of having to buy something, so even if the author would welcome the company of a conversation with a total stranger after several hours of lonely isolation behind a stack of books, it’s not likely to materialize.
If it does, it usually comes in the form of someone asking, “You write this book?” or “I have a novel I’ve been meaning to write. Let me tell you about it.” Such questions almost never result in a sale any more than do more common queries such as “Does this store sell CDs?” and “Why can’t they get current issues of Sports Afield?” I think the most memorable query I’ve ever had was when a large, sweaty woman carrying an infant marched up to me and asked if she could use my table to change the kid’s diaper.
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I am certain many writers reading this will object and say that they’ve had marvelous outings, that they have consistently appeared in even the tiniest and most obscure bookstores and have sold hundreds of copies in mere minutes. I have to confess that I’ve also had positive experiences from time to time. But almost every one was the result of extraordinary publicity being done in advance of my appearance or was in connection with a reading, lecture or other presentation. Horror stories abound about single, free-standing events, even from well-known, celebrity-status writers. Best-selling-novelist Robert James Waller’s premiere signing for the first novel he published following the celebrated The Bridges of Madison County was held in a hardware store, as there was no bookshop in his new hometown of Alpine, Texas. The store’s manager kept a small section of books and magazines off to one side, and the hapless author, who had previously been on David Letterman, Good Morning, America, and other national programs, found himself sandwiched in-between garden implements and lawn sprinklers.
There was, at least, advertising in advance. The store bought a large boxed newspaper announcement of the writer’s appearance to autograph copies of his new book. In the same ad, however, was a notice that there was a closeout special on painting supplies and that customers could also appear on that date to register their children for the area’s Little League Baseball teams.
One imagines a snuff-jawed rancher wheeling up in his Dodge Cummins Diesel, coming in and approaching Waller, saying, “Don’t want no damn book. But I’ll take a can of that spacklin’, an’ while you’re at it, can you sign little Bubba-Bob here up for short stop?” Reportedly, Waller’s sales totaled less than a dozen volumes.
In another instance, a first-time writer arrived at a mall store delighted to see long lines forming outside the bookstore where she was to sign. Excited, she scrambled into place, only to find that a major NFL star was also appearing at the same time to autograph copies of his “photographic biography.” She sold no books at all that day but was asked to watch small children while their parents stood in line for the football star’s signature.
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Obviously, publicity is expensive and sometimes hard to manage, even when writers are willing to pay for it themselves. Some writers arrive at signings armed with a fist full of graphic publicity materials to distribute. Post cards, bookmarks, even canvas tote bags and souvenir umbrellas are parts of such an arsenal of marketing devices.
Unfortunately, none of these have much demonstrable impact on a book’s sal
es. Readers seldom select a title because they’ve been given a bumbershoot with the writer’s name and book jacket emblazoned in every panel. They’re sometimes embarrassed to open it, even in a downpour.
Writers who do go out of their way to advance their own personal celebrity, often attract the ire of their fellow authors. Western writers sometimes dress outlandishly in boots, gunbelts and bandoleers; romance writers may step out in hoop skirts and toting parasols; and detective writers often don fedoras and wingtips, black suits and narrow neckties. One writer I know travels around with her pet rabbit and another has a jug band that plays music to attract customers. Such carnival-style displays are sometimes the target of sneers and derision from other writers who find such behavior undignified, even when it’s effective.
There is another downside to such signings that isn’t immediately apparent. Irrespective of whatever success or lack thereof a manager—or a writer—has had with signings in the past, or what might be anticipated at any particular event, there is a tendency on the part of bookshops to overorder. Sometimes, hundreds of copies of a book are ordered for a scheduled autograph session. If they don’t sell at the signing—and they almost never do—all but a dozen or so are returned. Those returns skew sales statistics, thereby harming the writer not only on his royalty statements, but also when he tries to obtain another book contract.
Moreover, most people don’t generally want to buy books at store signings unless what they’re seeking is a celebrity’s autograph or a well-advertised best seller. They like to browse books, read a page or two, check out the jacket blurbs before they make a decision. With the author sitting there, pen poised, ready to slap a name across the title page, the pressure is on. It’s the worst kind of hard sell, and it doesn’t take a degree in marketing to know that it doesn’t work with books.
Of Snakes Sex Playing in the Rain, Random Thou Page 21
