Illustration: Fra Angelico's
The Apostle Saint James the Great Freeing the Magician Hermogenes,
ca. 1429–30
Fra Angelico (Italian, 1390/5–1455). Tempera and gold on panel; 10 x 8 7/8 in. Collection of Kimbell Art Museum, Fort Worth, Texas
The BusUsually I drive or take the train, but this time I tried the bus. Chilly going south; warm going north. The bus is counter-intuitive. On the way down, all the riders seemed to know one another’s troubles and minor events, interacting with the driver, flamboyantly sharing the New York Times. On the way back, there were heaps of college students, particularly Japanese students going to Delhi.
Cell Phones (that nuisance, sometimes curious) on the return journeyA SUNY-Oneonta student was talking about his flight. The plane kept dropping by 700-foot increments until the oxygen masks deployed and everybody panicked. Behind me was a New Yorker heading upstate—a friend? girlfriend? relative?—had arrived home and found three armed men in the house. One held a gun to her head; one shot her father.
January 17Sharyn NovemberSharyn, the editor for my upcoming
Firebird (Penguin) paperbacks, was exactly as I had imagined her, except slightly less Valkyriesque—that is, she proved a mere 5’9”. (Those of us on the hobbity side of height, of course, think it would be perfectly marvelous to be anywhere above 5’3”.) Scads of red hair, voluble, lots of gusto, interesting in appearance and manner: in fact, I think that she should have been a Robertson Davies character. She asked me for a story for the next Firebirds anthology. And she mailed off a batch of Firebirds for me, so I’ll know more about her sensibility soon.
January 18Horrible wind and rain, so I didn’t go to the Fra Angelico show at the Met as planned. Instead I stayed in until the wind died down a bit—at the Incentra Village House on Eighth between 12th & Jane—and then walked to Union Square in the rain. On the way I bought R an elegant black velvet dress for the middle school Cotillion…
Margaret Ferguson & Sabeth AlbertWe had lunch at the
Blue Water Grill, and I was glad to find that FSG seems to be expecting another children’s book from me. It was a pleasant, peaceful spot in the day. I’d never met Margaret before and liked her very much.
Liz Darhansoff 
An altogether satisfactory meeting with my agent, despite the fact that the scene for what is called “literary” fiction seems worse than ever… Evidently I left my umbrella as a memento, but it seems as though there’s plenty of use for it in the city.
Datlow & Schanoes & Vandermeer & the KGB BarEllen Datlow is another interesting figure, easy to meet and very knowledgeable. She steered me around all evening. KGB was jammed to such an extent that I didn’t know Elaine and Stephanie had come from FSG until after the whole thing was over. I met heaps of editors and writers and sundry attached parties and got invitations to submit material and also to be on a radio show that starts at the ungodly hour of 5:00 a.m. Live. In NYC. Maybe someday…
I read my brand new story, “The Smaragdine Knot,” and
Jeff Vandermeer read from
Shriek and from his “Secret Lives”—all funny and well done. Veronica Schanoes introduced me and mentioned the fact that I used to wear lizard earrings. However, she didn’t say that I was a mere child at the time. She has a piece on line at Endicott Studio, “
How to Bring Somebody Back from the Dead.” Jim Freund recorded the reading for WBAI 99.5, and I suppose one may be able to find it via
www.hourwolf.com/.
I have no idea where we went for dinner, but there were hordes of people who came along, and the food was mostly Szechuan. Jeff gave me the nutshell version of his theory of marketing. Ann told me that he’ll often do four or five hours of “business” per day. He is notable for and somewhat unique in being such a good promoter of his books, I think; most writers don’t seem to be able to write and promote well. On the bus ride home, Rick Bowes told me that there used to be a Fenimore Cooper plaque on the St. Mark’s Bathhouse! Now
there's a queer thought…
January 19Elisabeth DyssegaardI had breakfast at
French Roast with my elegant former editor at FSG, and we talked about the possiblility of a nonfiction book for her new house, Smithsonian Books. I do have some Templeton-related ideas. What a strange little village it is, with a good deal of history, more than most dots on a North American map.
Fra AngelicoThe show: so marvelous that I almost missed my bus.
"This first major exhibition of Fra Angelico’s work since the quincentenary exhibition of 1955 in Florence—and the first ever in this country—reunites approximately 75 paintings, drawings, and manuscript illuminations covering all periods of the artist’s career, from ca. 1410 to 1455. Included are several new attributions and paintings never before exhibited publicly, as well as numerous reconstructions of dispersed complexes, some reunited for the first time. An additional 45 works by Angelico's assistants and closest followers illustrate the spread and continuity of his influence into the second half of the 15th century." --thus saith the
MetFlew back to the Incentra in a magic taxi and marched double-time to the subway. Blue line closed. Managed to take another to Times Square and walk the infinite underground corridor to the Port Authority. Miles of tile. It’s rather like walking through the world’s largest bathroom but never getting to the point.
Photography credit: by Ellen Datlow, editor extraordinaire. As I have always been a great maker of weird faces (and even somehow managed to be in a picture at KGB where I appear to have a bust of double-dirigible proportions--how?--bizarre posture? is that my next insult to photographers?), I present a nigh-insuperable challenge to the candid photographer, and I congratulate Ellen for catching me without one of my especially peculiar faces now and then. Most people can't manage it! She has many more on her site, but here are a couple of me (one with Paul Guran of Prime Books) and one of Dan Braum, my co-reader, and his fellow Clarion South grad, Ben Francisco.
My mighty whirl through New York is finished. I took the 8:30 puddle-hopper bus to the city, immediately fell into an on-going interview with Jim Freund of "Hour of the Wolf" at WBAI and John Klima (editor of the anthology Logorrhea and zine Electric Velocipede, recorded "The Girl in the Fabrilon" with Jim, did an interview with Jim, taped a few poems for other shows, did a reading of "Prolegomenon to the Adventures of Childe Phoenix" at KGB Bar (hosted by Gavin Grant and Ellen Datlow and also captured by Jim, though I felt that my reading was a bit ragged-and-rugged by then), went to dinner at a Chinese place with part of the KGB mob, ran around with Dan and Ben, slept for a few hours at the blessedly quiet HoJo Express on E
ast Houston, went to breakfast with writer Maggie Paley at the Noho Star (we met at Yaddo last year--she's the author of Bad Manners and, yes, The Book of the Penis), met up with my friends Jack and Anne for a Turkish elevensies (like hobbits, I was doing an extra meal), bought presents at Pearl River, caught the subway to the Port Authority, hopped on a bus, got delayed by an unfortunate tractor-trailer accident, and finally arrived back in the peaceful little village of Cooperstown (where it is always snowing and so was) around midnight.
