Na, Na, Na, Na, Na, Na, Na, Na

Hey, Hey, Goodbye

The tour is over, long live the tour. I actually have two more events, one public and one essentially private. I really want people to show up July 8 at the Enoch Pratt Central Library for my conversation with Megan Abbott. Even if you’ve seen me already, you’ll want to get a copy of Megan’s book, El Dorado Drive, which is fantastic — sort of like the LuLaRich documentary, but with murder! And I even have one more outfit to bust out, maybe two.

Four of my eight looks during tour.

On the last “official” day of the tour, I did two events with Park Books, which runs two outstanding stores, one in Severna Park and now one in Sykesville, the former A Likely Story. At both events, I was interviewed by Sean McDonald, who asked me about my most memorable moment from tour. I mentioned the Lyft driver in Rhode Island who told me quite a bit about his . . . butt. Like, a lot. It started when we were bonding over shoulder injuries; it was the three-year “anniversary” of the time I fell down a flight of stairs in the NYC subway. He told me he had a shoulder injury, too, and said the doctors were urging him to get surgery, but, given that it was his right shoulder, he was reluctant: “How would I wipe my butt?” He had more to say about his butt, involving the side effects of certain medications. To be be clear, he was a very nice man. Lovely, personable. Talked some serious shit about Judge Judy, who apparently spends her summers in Newport, and I am always down for gossip. Just maybe a little less butt.

But (!) my single favorite moment on the tour was at BWI airport, where my carry-on was flagged. I was heading to a (FANTASTIC) event at the Toledo Lucas County Public Library and I had decided to repeat my launch look, but with different jewelry. The TSA agent asked me if there was anything dangerous in my bag and I said definitely not. After a quick frisk, he uncovered a large Chanel cuff (purchased used). He zipped up my suitcase and sent me on my way, saying only: “You are too fancy for the airport.”

The cuff in question and JESUS my elbow is pointy

And now — the summer of our content made hideous by the sun. I will be staying home, writing, chauffeuring a teenager, tying up some loose ends from my mother’s estate. These days, when asked how I am, I tend to reply: “Micro good, macro —” [makes helpless gesture]. I don’t think it’s a partisan statement to admit that I’m terrified right now. I was the last reporter on the poverty beat at the Baltimore Sun. Oh, the beat remained after I decamped to features, but it shifted its focus to the nonprofits that helped the poor. More stories about nice white people, fewer stories about the people who were actually suffering. My memory is that our top editor wanted to de-emphasize poverty because it was such a — and I am quoting — bummer. To read about.

All I know is that I did some of my best work on that beat, 1989-1994. I was particularly proud of a story I wrote after a social worker was fatally stabbed, a day-in-the-life about a work in that same office, which detailed how frustrating it was for everyone, worker and client. The paperwork, the bureaucracy. The average middle-class person could not endure what we put our poorest citizens through.

I still don’t understand the desire to target some of our most vulnerable citizens. I am baffled by the cruelty, the lack of empathy, the “we’re all going to die"-ness of it all. Look, sometimes, inside my head, I am the meanest person who has ever lived. During our interviews on June 28, Sean asked me: “Are you the hero or the villain?” and I replied without hesitation: “The villain.” Heck, I even wrote a book about it.

But villains are inherently boring. Dangerous, but boring. I was about seven books into my novel-writing career when I realized that very few people wake up in the morning, look in the mirror and laugh an evil laugh while twirling a mustache. Hannah Arendt had it right, man. What can I do, but keep writing increasingly escapist fare and show you one more pretty dress?

See you next (first) Tuesday!

Who wore it best? In a fit of boredom, I dressed my daughter's stuffed bear in American Girl Doll finery

Read/reading: Selected Poems, Robert Creeley; The Classroom & the Crowd: Poetry and the Promise of Digital Citizenship, Al Filreis; Seven Deaths and Disasters, Kenneth Goldman; Without Consent, Sarah Weinman. How to Lose Your Mother, Molly Jong-Fast (audio); The Best of Us, Joyce Maynard (audio); I Want to Burn this Place Down, Maris Kreizman (audio).

Rereading: Possession, A.S. Byatt; Where Love Goes, Joyce Maynard; Zuckerman Unbound, Philip Roth.

Me, me, me: When I didn’t see a Kirkus review before publication, I assumed it was crummy. Not so! It was even starred. “Lippman is unrivaled in her ability to lay out clues in a way that makes them seem not only mysterious, but downright surreal . . . Another gem from Lippman, with a heroine who elevates being ordinary to an art form.”