Maynard and Jennica | Rudolph Delson | Talks at Google

Hi, everyone.

So I'm happy to announce Rudolph Delson Mater and Jennica is his first book. I think it's kind of interesting that maybe like many Googlers, he grew up in San Jose and now lives in New York. And probably maybe like some of us, at the age of 30, he decided to complete career transition and now wrote this book, Maitre and Jenica, which a lot of us maybe have already read. I thought it was fabulous. And he's here to talk about it today. So Google and everyone, please give a warm welcome to Rudolph Delston.

Hi. Thank you all for coming. So here's the itinerary. So I'm going to read from the book for a little bit, but usually you sort of go to these readings and like you're at like some synagogue in Atlanta or something and like you don't have any connection to the place. And it is so exciting to be at Google and you all work here. So maybe you're sort of over the thrill of like, you know, being in the place that has as its logo the thing that's at the top of your computer screen every day. It's like you've arrived at the center of the universe. And I'm also.

I'm a shareholder. I own three shares. I would like to encourage you all to go back to work.

I actually have Google anecdotes. I don't know if these are interesting or not, but the thing that. So thank you for the introduction, by the way.

So I quit.

I, for a long time worked as a lawyer, which was sort of my way of paying rent while trying to do this. And, you know, there was sort of the definitive day where I quit and realized the only way the book was going to get written was if I was not trying to work at the same time. And briefly after I made.

I quit Gmail, figured out that I.

Wasn'T a lawyer anymore.

I don't know how it did this, but it started. The sort of contextual ads suddenly started changing and now I can't send an.

Email without, I mean, two, three times a day. I see the ad for Walter the farting dog. Are you familiar with this book, this children's book?

It is. If you start sending emails to, like.

An editor or to your friends about writing a book, Walter the farting dog will start haunting you.

This guy who wrote this book and.

Is buying these ads. Brilliant. Not quite having that budget to promote my own books.

We're gonna.

I think we have. Ready to go? Yes. No.

So here's my.

I made my sort of own advertisement for the book which has been up on YouTube for a while, which, well, I guess it's self explanatory. So it's all this beautiful shop in.

Brownstone, Brooklyn is home to the world class literature of the community bookstore. Today we're secretly replacing the text of all the novels sold here with Maynard and Jenica by Rudolph Delsey. Will the fiction be literary enough?

I read the whole book.

I read it in one sitting.

It took me the whole day.

It was classic.

I loved it.

No, I didn't like it. I thought it was moving, beautiful.

I really like the color of the pages.

No, I can't believe it's not real literature.

Maynard and Jennica by Rudolph Fiction fine enough for America's best bookstores.

So this is what you do when you have no advertising budget. More Google anecdotes? Well, maybe at the end we can do questions, but it is really like I suspect I'm not the only person in the world who sort of feels like y' all are my team because whenever I need something like Google is what sort of you go to to get it. So it's very, very flattering to be here.

I'm going to read three sections.

The novel, for those of you who haven't looked at it yet, is. Well, it's a comedy, but it's told in a series of sort of rotating voices. There are 30 odd characters and they each sort of get their chance to lend their two cents and give their perspective on the action that's happening in front of them. And Maynard and Jenica, of course, are the sort of the two main voices, but there are dozens of others.

So I'm just going to read the.

First words that Jenica says to the reader and then the first words that Maynard says to the reader, and then we'll do one other little thing.

So I don't think these need much.

Introduction since they're the first things that the characters say to you. I will say though, as a disclaimer that Jennika, for those who haven't read the book yet, that Jennika is in a particularly frantic moment when she begins speaking to the reader. So you'll forgive her for her for her being manic.

So.

Jenica Green, who never has any luck on Valentine's Day, describes the evening of her boyfriend's arrest, mid February 2001.

This is so going to make me.

Sound like one of those women, and.

I so am not one of those women.

But okay, all afternoon it was as.

If the city was as oblivious as.

I was to what was happening right.

Up until two minutes before Arnie called from the police station. The city was like, intent on being gorgeous with the snow and with the serenity and with my first afternoon off in months. And it was deceiving me, you know, like all afternoon I'd been communing peacefully with the awnings and the fire escapes and the lampposts, the elegant side of Soho, the wet black iron and this fresh white snow in the middle of a snowstorm, all in relief against each other that the sapphire light, the deep.

Sea light of a snowy day.

But sure enough, at five o', clock, just as I need to get in a cab and get home and get packed, the snow like, devolves into sleet. The pretty drifts on the fire escapes and on the lampposts, they're melting, they're drooling down onto me. All the snowbanks on the sidewalk melting. Simultaneously, the gutters are inundated, frothing up this filth, ice and cigarettes and cellophane flooding the street.

The.

The sewer grates are just overcome. They're spewing up water, spewing this dirty water into the street. Of course, my umbrella is just funneling the sleet straight into my shopping bags. And it's dark and my cell phone starts ringing, but I can't get it.

And bear in mind I'd been at.

Work that morning in my decent clothes. So my black zipper boots sopping, my black coat sopping, the sleeve of my sweater is like a wick, just sucking all this icy, clammy whatever straight from the stem of my umbrella right to my armpit. If you come from San Jose, California, it doesn't matter how long you've lived in New York, you feel so vulnerable to shabbiness.

But I get to 6th Avenue looking for a cab.

And of course on 6th Avenue, the wind tries to mug me. It has its fists wheeling around. Wham. Across my face, Wham. My shopping bags are flailing everywhere and I'm trying to fend it off with my umbrella. But my umbrella, it's doing that gagging thing. You know, the thing that umbrellas do when the wind gets to them where they look like a cat that's coughing up a hairball. The only way I can keep my umbrella alive is by pointing it straight into the wind, which of course blocks my view down 6th Avenue practically. And my cell phone is still going off. But suddenly I see this cab. I don't have a free hand because I'm holding umbrella. I've got my shopping bag so, so I hail it with my umbrella, getting myself even more drenched. But the cab starts flashing. It's turn signals, right? So it's my cab, right? I got soaked trying to hail it. So it's my cab, right?

Which is when the crazy German woman appears.

Materializes out of nowhere. The Cab had stopped 10ft from me, 15ft. But from nowhere this crazy German woman has appeared.

And she's opening the door to my.

Cab and she's dry, which is like a personal affront practically. She has a cigarette in her hand, which she's putting out. She has a muffin in her other hand, a muffin which she's putting into her pocket. Getting in my cab. Huge, curly, weak blonde hair, lots of ringlets, all pinned up. Getting into my cab.

And let me describe this coat that she's wearing.

It's rubber first of all, and white. And it goes down to her knees with a belt and with buttons, but with this huge fur collar, like fake white rabbit fur. And she's wearing it with this mustard yellow scarf and these turquoise pants. Dry. And getting into my cab, it's as if she's been waiting in a doorway for me to hail the cab for her. So I lose it. I'm like, hey, hey, that's my cab. And she just gets in, just opens the door, gets in, reaches over to close the door. Ice is splashing me everywhere. My umbrella finally gags on its hairball and dies. And my bags are beginning to tear. So I absolutely lose it. I scream, and I do mean scream, you fucking cunt. That's my cab. And alright, I don't want this story to make me sound like one of those women. So let me tell you why I was in a hurry. Which only matters now to prove that I'm not, whatever, a horrible person. So look, here was my plan. My plan in five steps or six steps or seven. Okay? So step one was eight o' clock on Thursday night.

I would meet Arnie with my bag packed.

And then step two is at 8:30. We had reservations at 4 Noodles. Because we'd been warned to have one good meal before we left town. Including by rows by Arnie's globetrotting grandmother Rose, who told us the first thing you do when you get to that island is you go to a grocery store. They have avocados the size of my handbag. There you can eat them for breakfast, you can eat them for lunch with cottage cheese and paprika. Because let me tell you, there is not one restaurant on that island that.

You are going to enjoy so that's step two.

Step three is at 10:30 after the meal, we get home, we go bed, go to bed at Arnie's. Step four is that at 7:00 the next morning, Friday morning, the cab comes.

To take us to Kennedy.

And then step five is that Friday at noon, we are with my parents.

In San Jose so that they can meet the man who is the father of my cat.

And then step six is that early Saturday morning we leave San Jose for Hawaii, where neither of us has ever been. And then step seven is that Saturday at 2:00 clock in the afternoon, Hawaii.

Time, we're on the Big island for Valentine's Week, right?

But notice, notice that there is no step that involves me like making bail for Arnie. The point is though, that that's step one through seven. Then step negative one has to be to go to Soho and get the linen top that I need and the sunglasses and I need sandals. And we need soap too, because we don't know what's going to be in the condo on the island. And then if that's step minus one, then at five o' clock, step zero has to be to get in a cabin, get home and get packed. But instead, the this German woman is stealing my cab and closing the door on me. So I'm screaming at her, you fucking cunt. Which is when I realize what the.

German woman is doing.

She isn't closing the taxi's door on me, she's pulling it in so I.

Can squeeze past the puddles and climb into the cab also.

And what she says to me from.

Inside the cab in her Marlene Dietrich accent is, I thought that if we share the taxi, if you go uptown, human kindness.

She wants to split the cabin. I am mortified because I just called her a fucking cunt. But what am I going to do? I get in the cabin and it's.

An Israeli cabbie, or maybe he's Russian.

Anyway, he's sort of eyeing us like, who are these two nutcases? But okay. Normally when you sit down in a.

Cab in winter, you get out of.

The snow and into the heat. It's like. It's like taking your own little trip to Hawaii. A hot, mobile little island just for you. But this cab, you sit down and what you experience before you even feel the heat is the driver's cologne so heavy it will feel like it's going to give you a rash, which is in addition to the rash I'm already getting just from the tension with a crazy German woman.

Anyway, I tell the driver, Lexington and 83rd, right?

And the crazy German woman tells them.

She'S going to 65th and 3rd Avenue.

Like, directly on the way if we.

Go through the park, right?

Like, how convenient, right? Like, what a coincidence. And the cab driver says, I take 8th Avenue.

It's faster on west side. All right, so 8th Avenue in a sleet storm.

The cabbie is muttering to himself. But fine. The crazy German woman is eating her.

Muffin and sitting there all prettily. Like I didn't just call her a fucking cunt.

And just as I'm getting ready to apologize to her. My cell phone starts ringing again. And the call is from some unknown.

Number, but it's from Arnie.

So I'm like, oh, hey, baby, where.

Are you calling from? And he says, a precinct house.

Oh, no. What happened? Did you get mugged? And he's, like, offended me Mugged? No, Jenica, listen. I've been.

Because 8th Avenue gets the worst reception for my phone.

So I tell him what I'm not getting reception. That the German woman cringing. The smelly cabbie cringing. Because, of course, I'm on a cell phone. And I'm being shrill from. Of course they're thinking that I'm one of those women. But Arnie's, like, arrested. And I need you to call David Fowler. Arrested? Arnie? For what?

What?

For murder? And the smelly cab driver and the crazy German woman. Now they both cringe, but in a different way. Because now they aren't sure if I'm one of those women. Or if I'm some spoiled mafia mall. But, Arnie, who are they saying that you. And he's like, allegedly, Jennica.

Like, what? Arnie?

I can't hear a word. Which is terrible, right? It's like, is he all right? Is he going to get out? Am I supposed to call Grand Rose and make bail? Am I supposed to call the airline and cancel everything? A minute before, I'd been worrying about, like, how do I apologize to the crazy German woman? Should I really have spent $97 on that white linen top? Did I remember to give Julie the key so that she could feed my cat? These worries. Some worries are such a privilege. And all Arnie is saying is, call David Fowler. Call David Fowler. And David Fowler. David Fowler is a terrible lawyer.

Look what happened the last time Arnie went to him.

And that was just like, money, not murder. So I tell him, arnie, I don't want to call David Fowler. Let me call Grand Rose. She probably knows someone. And he says now, totally clear, jenica.

Do not you dare call Grand Rose. Call David Fowler.

And now, at this point, the taxi's.

Pretty much at Times Square.

I realize I have to get out of the cab.

I have to get to a ground line. I have to figure out David Fowler's telephone number.

So mostly, I have to get out of the cab. So I tell the cab driver, driver, I need to get out here. There's been a change of plans. I tell Arnie. Arnie, if I'm gonna deal with this, I have to get to a better phone. Tell me exactly where you are. And he says, they say they're taking.

Me to the Tombs. Totally creepy, right?

The Tombs.

Oh.

Anyway, while he's saying this, I'm splashing.

Back out into the sidewalk where the.

Cab has dropped me outside. Everywhere it's like sleet and just cataracts of ice. But already I've spotted the hotel that I'm making a dash for. And already I'm strategizing how I'm going to deal with the concierge, what to tell him. So let me use the ground line. The cabbie's saying is okay is okay. You two figure out money is okay.

I've got bags everywhere.

I'm dripping all over the seat, but the meter is at eight dollars.

So I give the crazy German woman a five, right? Five dollar bill, because it's either that or a twenty.

And totally blase. She's like, yeah, fine.

Oh. And as I close the door to the cab, I tell her I am totally sorry that I called you a fucking cunt, right? I meant to apologize to her and that's what came out. So embarrassing.

But anyway, I get the cell phone.

Back out of my pocket and I realize I've hung up on Arnie, right? So I'm clopping across the sidewalk, sleet.

Running down my neck, trying to make.

It to hotel lobby where I can borrow a ground line to call David.

Fowler, when I hear the cabbie from up 8th Avenue shouting, you are a fucking cunt. I turn around and there's the crazy German woman half a block up on the sidewalk, like she decided to get out of the cab, too, except she's making a dash for the subway station and the cabbie is standing there in the sleet with his flashers on, watching her and calling her a cunt, right? She jumped the fare. The crazy German woman jumped the fare. So I run half a block up through the sleet to pay the driver.

Because whatever, it's what you do.

And the crazy German woman, she hadn't Even given him my five dollar bill. And so while he's making change for my 20, he tells me this is why she wanted to get off at 65th. She's going to let you pay for her? She's very smart. But you coming back and paying me when you're already out of the car.

Not so very smart like thanks.

Did I mention, by the way, that you smell?

But.

But anyway, what I really want to know is who was that woman?

So that's jenic, And here's Maynard. Maynard Gogarty tells us what happened on the subway and dissects a dilemma. Early August 2000.

There was a woman with beauty spots.

And a misunderstanding with the authorities.

All on the Lexington Avenue local uptown. She was one of these women who strike your heart and leave it resounding like a bell. It's a simple story, but may I give a preface, a brief preface, and.

Then we can discuss what I did wrong. All right, a preface.

You step onto the subway. The subway is constituting a borough unto themselves with different hostilities and different hopes. A whole mobile county of curiosities. And there she is, this creature with angelic blood and with a cup of iced coffee and with the scent of some recherche shampoo in her hair and her smile just so, her halo quivering every time the subway rattles and you must decide what to do, do you say something to her or do you say nothing? Because dignity, dignity would seem dilemmatically to require both, yet to permit neither. The subway is, after all, one of.

The most dignified places to open an affair.

Love should contain a constituent element of irreducible destiny. And destiny is exactly, exactly what is lacking when Battery park businessmen ransom dates with chesty socialites from those commercial matchmakers in Midtown. Or when idle and gelatinous west side freelancers suctioned their coffee shop tables like sea anemones filter through the classified ads in the Village Voice for something reading Woman seeks manly polyp. And destiny is what is lacking when after months of inhaling one another's dander, the mustard breathed attorney commences his case, his lascivious case against his homely hot doggy paralegal. Or when the bag boy at Gristides propositions the grastide's cashier. Love should not be the spoils of a deliberate campaign or the convenient alliance of a war of attrition. Love should should be an instant and supernatural uproar in the soul.

It should be the resounding of a bell. So on the subway with the beautiful.

Girl, dignity demands action, condemns silence because when the girl with the halo sits down across the subway aisle from you, it is your one chance for truest love. However, and contrariwise, subways or no, dignity demands that we as rational apes reject delusions, including comforting delusions, in favor of the truth. And it is a comforting delusion to think that every time a beautiful woman sits down across the aisle from you on the subway, destiny is trying to bring you happiness. Destiny does not manifest itself in the form of chance encounters with beautiful women. Destiny manifests itself always in the form of hobby horses, pet phrases, pet cats, nose picking and credit card debt, and Sunday crossword puzzles and the pursuit, as they call it, of fun. In other words, your destiny has been riding across the subway aisle from you.

For much, much longer than you can ever imagine.

Beautiful strangers do not each represent a new form of happiness. Beautiful strangers are like everybody else. They're dull and they're demanding and. And they're violent and they're malodorous. So when a beautiful woman sits down across the subway aisle from you, dignity condemns action. It demands that you be silent. Because when you fail to say hello to a beautiful stranger on the subway, you have triumphantly avoided yet another form of human misery. So to say something or to say nothing. This is the anatomy of the dilemma presented by love and dignity on the subway. And this concludes the preface. Now, I was on, as I was.

Saying, uptown local on Lexington Avenue line.

A subway that was doomed to stall at 33rd Street. I'd boarded at the City hall stop, still woozy from a breakfast meeting with.

The woman who wants to buy the.

Rights to my movie, and I was.

Taking the contract uptown to my attorney.

It was my quadrennial half pint of success. I was in media race in the worst way, running an errand for my meager movie on a wet furnace of a morning. My armpits were have you ever used.

A droplet of water to test the heat of a walk?

Because while I was waiting.

On the.

Platform for the train at City hall, my armpits were informing me that the walk was ready. Woman next to me on the platform at City hall was wearing a yellow muumu and carrying a bible and a blue ice freezer pack, Bible shut freezer pack against her chest. Fundamentalist heat we're talking about. Subway was empty, naturally, when it arrived, finally rolled in, because City hall is the first stop in line. But I didn't take a seat on the subway. I took off my jacket, draped it over my moist shirt sleeve, and stood like a jack under the air conditioner to expose myself to as much as possible of that good dry blast of air. So subway leaves City Hall. As it makes each stop, the doors open. The beastly day seethes into the train. The doors close.

Cool order returns.

By Spring street, the woman in the mumu has cooled off enough to start reading her Bible. And I extract my handkerchief from my pocket and begin to mop myself up when I notice a crucial detail at.

The far end of the subway car.

The alarm for the emergency brake is.

Sounding, but I do nothing about it yet. Spring Street, Bleecker Street, Astor Place.

Our train arrives at Union Square simultaneously.

With an express train.

Fatefully, I decide against doing that. Bounce across the platform to catch the faster train. I'm too hot. I'm in no hurry. My lawyer can wait. The fundamentalist in the moomoo leaves, however, thumps away to go catch her express train and into our car.

Fly.

From the express train slips the woman.

With the beauty spots.

A shapely twist of a woman dressed in black with two beauty spots on her right cheek. Doors shut. She sits down at the other end.

Of the car, directly underneath that colicky emergency brake. 23rd Street.

28Th street shadows stiff air. The beautiful woman's halo is vibrating in time to.

To the trill from the emergency brake.

33Rd Street. And just note the pointlessness of the.

Place and the time.

33Rd street at 10:25am in the midst of a primordial heat wave, at 10:25am 33rd street is harrowingly bland. It is nowhere but 33rd Street. Train pulls up to the platform, but.

The doors don't open. And then, as was foreordained, the subway stalls.

The electricity weakens and dies. The lights dwindle and then quit. The air conditioning expires. We, the passengers, are now experiencing the.

Subway as it was in the age of the reptiles.

The only thing still functioning are the.

Alarm for the emergency brakes hiring and.

The public address system, the latter of which the conductor is using to scold us. She's accusing someone of having pulled the emergency brake. This train is going to be held in the station. Apparently, she's planning to go car to.

Car looking for the culprit, looking for the person who pulled the emergency brake. Now you can tell a lot from this conductor's voice. She's black, for one thing. She's young.

She's calm, but not necessarily always calm. You can hear the potential for impressive intemperance. People, listen up. We have a break situation, so you're going to have to be patient. Be patient Please.

So we sit there and without the air conditioning, commence to sweat, and we.

Listen in the darkness to the whine.

Of the emergency break.

Outside, growing restless, are all the damned.

Souls on the platform at 33rd street waiting to get into the train.

Waiting to be pardoned and released into the cool interior of the 6 train. Or rather the ever less cool interior.

Of the 6 train.

Woman with the beauty spots is sipping.

An iced coffee at peace in her seat.

She's wearing leather sandals, but her feet are enchantedly clean for someone who's been walking around Manhattan in weather that's hot enough to sublimate the concrete. Her hair is thick and wavy and blackish, pulled back under a knotted white handkerchief. A pristine handkerchief, eyes closed, soft features. And two beauty marks on her right cheek. Maybe she's Spanish, maybe Jewish. Sleeveless black shirt made out of something elasticy stained in the faintest half moons of perspiration right along the bottom of the armholes, which is very sexy. And billowy. Black linen pants. Sipping her iced coffee through a straw. No milk. She's drinking it black and the condensation.

Is dripping onto her hands.

She's got a napkin, a. A bundle of paper napkins that she's using to mop the condensation from the side of her plastic iced coffee cup that she's then holding against her forehead.

So she can feel the coolness freckles on her shoulders.

Her seat is at the other end.

Of the car, directly underneath the noisy emergency brake. And I see my opportunity. All I need is one teaspoon of courage.

One teaspoon teaspoon of romantic courage, and I can do her the dignified courtesy.

Of shutting off that alarm. That's maynard. I'm just going to read one more short little section here. This one requires a little bit of setup. The reason Maynard is going uptown in that scene I just read is that he's selling certain rights to this music that he's written for a movie. He doesn't know who wants to acquire the rights exactly, but it turns out that they're being acquired for sampling into this song. And a few months go by and then Maynard is going through the radio one day and in fact hears the song, hears his own music playing on the radio being sampled into this pop song. So I'm going to read the lyrics to the pop song for which his music has been appropriated. I'll skip the verse, the choruses. I'll just read the verses. It's by an artist named Puppy Jones.

Airfare. Blame Game, Brain Drain, Care Bear. Fake bake, hair bear, late date, hair care, waylay, mayday, name game, naysay, pale male, pale ale, plain Jane, payday, fat cat gal, pal back backpack, track fag hag, handstand, grandstand, pass gas, ragtag, bed head, peg leg, birth, dearth, deadhead, hell's.

Bells, jet set, medhead, bedspread, cheat sheet, deep sleep, dream team, fleet street, geek cheek, green bean, Greek week, heat treat.

Kiwi real deal, sneak peek, near beer.

Speed read, sweetmeat, TV steer clear, big dig, big rig, bigwig chick flick, chill pill, ill will, picnic, pickwick, spit fit, shit fit, slim Jims, ring ding, Swiss miss, white knight, white flight, spring fling, Harry Carey, later skater wobby, sabi, wavy gravy, handy dandy, hanky panky, laffy taffy lardy darty namby pampy razzle dazzle, fender bender, gender bender, helter skelter, herky jerky, jelly belly, heebie jeebies, jeepers creepers, legal eel, teeny weeny, wheeling deal and chilly willy, silly billy, willy nilly, hippy dippy.

Artsy fartsy, party hearty, pocket rocket, Wally, walkie talkie, hocus pocus, hokey pokey, holy moly, local yokel, hoochie coochie, loosey, goosey pooper scooper, rootin tootin, super duper, flower.

Power, wowie zowie, chubby hubby, chunky monkey culture, vulture, double trouble, funny money, hurdy gurdy, fuzzy wuzzy, hubba bubba, humpty dumpty, Oshkosh Bagosh. That's pupp.

That was all I was planning on reading. So I guess we now come to.

The questions part of things. I don't know what time it is and if we're under time constraints for people. Okay, yeah. So let's do some. If people have any questions, I'm happy to answer questions. Or talk. Or I can. I'm happy to repeat the question, too, if people. Okay, yeah, sure. There isn't an audiobook. I would very much like to make one. The best I can say is that it's in the works.

It's harder than you would think to.

Actually, you know, because it's 300 pages long. It would be if I can read.

Two hours a day of, like, weeks of work.

Right. Anyway, yeah. It's something I think about. I just don't want to do it where it's like me sitting in front of the little mic on my Mac, like, doing, like, a sort of podcast version of the book or something. So I'm just like, you know, there's all these questions of arranging it, but yeah, I know it's something I think about, but no, there is not one yet.

Since you just ended with Puppy's rap song. I don't know, I might have missed something. But why did he get blamed? Like why did his career get ruined after 911 because of that song.

Okay, so this is a, this is.

A plot, A plot giveaway question. No, it's fine, it's fine. Plot Spoiler warning. So the way the book unfolds, Puppy Jones, who writes this sort of song, it becomes one of those ridiculous hits and becomes a little bit of a celebrity, much to Maynard's chagrin. And for, you know, I mean, you just heard it, you can determine the intellectual and cultural merits of what's just been of his song.

And he.

Right around September 11th. September 11th occurs late in the book and sort of affects the characters lives or more importantly does not affect the characters lives in a number of ways. But probably more than anyone, Puppy Jones takes a hit at September 11th because he becomes this sort of target for people who want to denounce the frivolity of American culture. And we should have been more serious. If we'd been more serious, we could have avoided the attacks.

And I think, I mean, if you remember, the question is, why is this Puppy's fate? And.

I think in this sense I'm just trying to record what in fact happened, right? I mean, do you remember, I mean the headlines in the newspaper on September 10, 2001 were like there was some sort of thing about killer mold in the New York Post, right? Like the threat of killer mold. You know, spores were going to get into your kids lungs or something. There was something about Gary Condit, remember him? Yeah. The possibly murderous congressman from the Central Valley of California. And you know, like Britney Spears, there's some sort of scandal, she'd shown up like dancing with a boa constrictor or you know, the MTV Music Awards and.

Like this, you know, and then there was this kind of.

On September 13, all of the.

Americans.

Specialize in sanctimony, right? Like this sort of sense of oh.

You know, I knew what was right.

And you all did the wrong thing and I'm gonna denounce you for it. There was a lot of that just pure sanctimony.

Like real.

People seized that moment culturally as an opportunity to like sort of lash out against everything they hated, right? Like Britney Spears and Gary Condon. And so I don't know, I think Puppy Jones is just sort of a way of kind of getting at that moment of American Culture. So why? I don't know. That's something deep in the American cultural consciousness, right? Yeah. I don't know. Does that answer the question? I'm not sure if that.

I wasn't sure if maybe I just missed something.

Hi.

Hi.

I want to know what your inspiration for Manny was. Because he's such a really peculiar character out of, like, a different century. I mean, Maynard. Yeah.

So, I mean.

No one in the book calls Maynard by his real name. He gets called Arnie, he gets called Manny, he gets called a number of things, but no one calls him Maynard. The inspiration. There's something very appealing about misanthropy. And in particular, misanthropes, and this sort of idea of someone who reject, like, both is drawn to people, but rejects them and feels like they're doing things wrong. And, you know, a big appeal of. So, you know, Maynard began with the idea of the misanthrope, of how do we. You know, how can I write about someone who really just sort of rejects the world and what are his principles on which he lives?

And, like, I don't know.

I think by the end of the book, it's not clear that Maynard really does have principles of his own. He just sort of reacts and justifies himself. But, You know, the way that someone dresses is a very clear indication of how they want to set themselves apart. So Maynard dresses in this very peculiar way. And the thing is, people react to how he dresses. If he were to dress, if he were a character dressed more normally, people would probably have a less harsh reaction to him. They just, you know, people are very superficial.

If he spoke like other people speak, they would judge him.

You know, it's not like anything he's saying is so outrageous. He's just a little more bombastic.

So, you know, I think that, you.

Know, there's this element of sort of the. I guess I would say I'm not sure he really is out of another century so much as other people think, like the characters in the book want to feel that he is because they don't want to have to deal with him for who he is. They would rather just judge him based on his clothes and sort of how he speaks. But that, you know, when I was creating that character, I was. The great thing about writing a book, a comedy about a misanthrope is you can just make the misanthrope suffer. I mean, the whole point is to get him mad so that he denounces people. So you can just cook up every way you can to make him sort of experience, the indignities of life. You know, he just have a character. Everything bad and preposterous can happen to. That's their fate because they're the misanthrope. So that was the real pleasure of him. So I think also things happen to him that wouldn't happen to other characters. Because of the role he plays in the book. Yes.

Wouldn't you say that both characters are also sort of dueling forces?

So the question is, wouldn't you say that both the characters are the dueling forces in both of us?

Yeah. I mean, the book, they're every.

Maynard is a deeply misanthropic character, and Jenika is a very deeply romantic one. I mean, Maynard really. Lashes out at the world for everything it does wrong.

And Jennika really believes if she could.

Just find the right boyfriend, the right apartment and the right job, and sort of go through the algorithm, she could get to happiness. Right. Just check off the boxes in the order and you get there. Which is the most romantic worldview you could have. This idea of moving from California to New York because that's where you're going to be happy. It's the most romantic thing you could do. And, yeah, I do think that those instincts, that sort of the real desire to be happy and the real desire to hate are sort of things that.

Come out of us in New York. Everyone laughs when I say that.

Hate.

As if you don't stand there on.

The subway right, when it's totally crowded at rush hour and like, just sort of, you know, there's some misshapen, horrible person who's like, you know, shoulder is jamming you in the side of the cheek and, like, feel the bedbugs crawling off of them and into your.

Hate them.

What are you doing here, this awful city? I think it's natural. So, yeah, I think that's, in a way that the dynamic Maynard lives in a misanthropic comedy. Everyone in his half of the book is out to get each other, and they are sort of undercutting each other and backstabbing each other. And Jenika lives in a very romantic world. I mean, everyone in her side of the book loves each other and really wants to support each other, but, you.

Know, they also, as a result, Jennika.

Sees things that aren't there. I mean, she really, you know, as. I mean, not to give another plot spoiler, but, you know, she.

If anyone doesn't want the plot completely.

Ruined, I would suggest leaving the room now or turning off the. You just click stop. You know, at the very end of the book, Jennika sort of cheats on Maynard, winds up hooking up with this other guy.

And like the reason she does that.

Is because she sets a romantic.

She just, she. In her worldview, there has to be.

Another guy who's like the perfect guy who just happens to stumble across. There has to be this kind of competition.

Like she just can't live her own.

Emotional life without playing out that romantic.

Plot in the same way that Maynard.

Can'T live his emotional life without living out the plot. Like, damn you.

All right, so.

You can just ask.

I just wanted to ask about Anna Kaganova and Puppy Jones and sort of whether you were trying to create stock characters in a comedy or where you got an inspiration for a character who is German, Israeli and Russian and just crazy.

Right? What to say about Puppy Jones? Well, so stock characters, I mean, I don't think there's a. No self respecting authority can admit to working with stock characters. Right.

But also I don't think any honest.

Author can say that. You don't. There's, there's so many stock characters out there that you have to. You, you can't write a book without being conscious of those types that you either wanted, you know, sort of mimic or avoid. But you know, cliches exist for a reason. I mean, there are these sort of people who are impresarios and that's all that Puppy Jones is just an impresario. As for Anna. So Anna, for those of you who haven't read, is this sort of. I mean, she's just my embodiment of a fraud. I mean, she's just, she's just looking for schemes. I mean, she hunts, her mind hunts for ways to scheme through things. You know, cheating cabbies, cheating immigration officials, all sort of the same thing. And what can I say about the inspiration for her? I mean, I, you know, it takes a number of years to write a book and the characters sort of start in one way and then you need them to do things since they develop personalities around the kind of person that would do those things you need them to do. I needed her to be German because I wanted to have a character with a German accent and I needed her to be Jewish because I wanted everyone in the car, in the taxi, in the opening scene to be Jewish. I wanted three Jews from the different. Like I wanted an American Jew, an Israeli Jew and a Roman Russian Jew. So now I've got to have a Russian Jew who speaks German. Right. Just to get Anna to work. I was like how the hell do you do that? So it's like, well, she speaks German. She has the accent. She had to have had her childhood there. And the only Russian nationals who speak German were the Communist Party officials and their children who lived in Berlin, of which they were a subset. And I knew one or two of those when I was living in Berlin. And then there's this great archive at the New York City Public Library that someone gathered in, like, the 70s and 80s when the first wave of Russian immigrants started coming to America, like the Russian Jewish immigrants, 78 to sort of 83. And they would take these. You know, there was some set of oral historians who were going out to Brighton beach and Queens and just sort of sitting down these people and asking them to tell these stories. And. And I think it was. There was some kind of propaganda effort going on too, because they would always ask them these totally leading questions like, oh, well, there was terrible anti Semitism at the university where you grew up, wasn't there? And the person like. But so I read a few of those, and then it became a sort of interesting physics problem of like, how do you just navigate this woman through that childhood that I wanted her to have in that young adulthood and then get her through. Through all of that to come out as this kind of scheming, maniacal artist type. So, you know, it's. Astronomical metaphors are often very helpful for writing, you know, when there's these people, like, they want to send a satellite through the rings of Saturn, right? And they don't have enough fuel, so you have to, like, kick it on its trajectory where it goes towards, like, Venus and gets a little gravitational kickoff. Venus goes around the back of the.

Sun, then gets enough gravitational swoops forward, and then they have to, like, with two little, you know, redirections of the rockets, aim it through the rings of Saturn.

Right. And this is kind of what you do when you're writing a character like.

Okay, I gotta go a flyby of Venus. I gotta go around the back of.

The sun and I'm gonna go through. And he sort of. That's the pleasure of it, is trying to figure out how to get a believable story that fits. Good question. Yes.

I love how the rants that Maynard goes on. I mean, there's the September 11th rant. Is the sissy, anti sissy one the one that you read, too? I think my favorite one is probably the Cat. I just wanted to talk about how you came up with all these different. They seem very strong.

Are they your own or the Question.

There's a scene where Maynard and Jennika fight about how to name a cat, and Jennika wants to give it the name of an artist or a writer or something cultural. And. And Maynard refuses on principle. He says, That's a really good example of this thing I was talking about, of trying to come up with circumstances to torture Maynard, to, like, make him express what he finds so distasteful and so undignified. Right? I mean, indignity is this. Let me back up. Dignity is not something people spend a lot of time thinking about, but you really can show so much about yourself and how, like, silly you are. Unintentionally, right? You go into someone's house and they tell you the name of their cat, right? And, like, fun.

If the cat's name is, like, you.

Know, scratches or whatever, fine.

But, you know, if they've named their.

Cat Moliere, like, it's just.

You know, what you get is a sense of, oh, you poor person. You majored in French literature and college.

And, you know, now you're. Whatever you are. You're. You know, you're a bond salesman. And, like, you're. Your husband is a bond salesman.

And, you know, and, you know, now you're.

You've named your cat after this, you know, after a play that you liked when you were 19 years old. It's just so sad.

You've given so much about yourself away. And I had this friend who had.

Named her cat Emma, which is a.

Questionable name, but she was so proud to tell me that she was naming it Emma after the Jane Austen carol.

I was like, oh. And then, you know, she got another one, and it. And it promptly became, oh.

Oh.

It was one or another of the characters in Pride and Prejudice. It wasn't Darcy, but it was something equally bad. Yeah, there we go. It was Willoughby. Oh, it's just so.

And, like, you know, I just remember.

Thinking, liz is my friend's name. Forgive me, Liz, if you're seeing this on YouTube.

God, this is a dangerous, dangerous game I'm playing. You know, you just. There was this shining moment where I.

Was like, God, I would never name my cat Emma or Willoughby.

And, you know, but I could totally.

Understand the desire to. Right?

So it's. I mean, in a way, you just.

Sort of get these two little data points about what it's like to be human, right? It's like, well, you have these reactions. They become part of this. You look for the things your characters would do in certain circumstances, a way to bring them out and that, you know, when I started sort of going through the litany of things you could name a cat to give it cultural credentials, you know, it started. Sat down one morning, stood up at the end of the day and had written the scene. Yes. From the eager woman with the brown black sweater.

This by the way, just so everyone knows.

So this is my editor Anjali who.

I got to bring guests.

So this is Anjali and her assistant Ben who are very politely came out to support me today. So everyone knows why she's asking all these questions.

This question.

So what would I name my cat?

I will say this.

They eventually settled on the name Grumpus for a variety of reasons. And in fact, I've now found out about cats being named Grumpus. People have written to tell me about cats that they're named in Grumpus. Well, yeah, they. Mumpus the Grumpus. Yeah, they go back and forth. I don't know what I would name my cat.

I mean, the one thing is I don't have a. The reason I. There was a period when I was.

Writing about the cat where actually really it was a sublimation of my own desire to buy a cat. But I couldn't because my apartment was too small and it would mean having like the, like either stepping on kitty litter every time I went to take a shower, which is just disgusting, or like having the kitty litter in my bedroom, which is disgusting. And so I. For lack of a place to put the kitty litter, I never got a cat. I don't know. I really don't know. I mean, that's part of the pleasure of writing it. I mean you sort of think through these problems. I don't know.

By the way, I will say this on my website, I've asked, I've invited.

People to send me pictures of their cats along with the cats names. And people do it. They really want to tell me what their cat's names are and what their cat looks like. It's really strange.

Like, oh, here's my cat.

It's named Smokey. Here's a picture of him on the couch. It's like, okay, great.

I mean, I encourage everyone to send me pictures of their cats. God, this is so. Damn you, YouTube.

All right, I'm conscious of getting you all back to work so you can go increase the values of my enormous shareholdings. Three shares.

But thank you.

Is there any other questions? Otherwise, thank you so much for coming out in the middle of your working day and doing this. If anyone has books they want me to sign, I'M happy to sign the books, but I really. I'm totally flattered to be here, and thank you for listening.