“Most of your audience, they’re upper-level grad students,” had said Shirley Bennet, professor and department head on the phone after Jasper agreed to come speak at the school, “they’re researchers, they’re going to be looking to you for information, it’s that time of year, they are all working on substantial papers.” In person she was short, mid fifties, small glasses resting on a pointy nose, a definite know-it-all dressed in an obviously home-knit vest (ruffled ties, loose stitching) and maroon turtleneck. Jasper already hated her.
“I found your novel interesting,” she said when he first got to the school that morning, “my students, oh god they just loved it.”
He wasn’t speaking until 2:00pm but she had insisted, “we’re going to need you here by 9:00am, preferably 8:30, we make these things into pretty big deals.”
It was a bitter cold Saturday, no clouds, open air and partly blue skies. Jasper’s flight had got in late the night before and he hadn’t slept well. He was at the school by 9:12am and was on a gut wrenchingly boring tour of the campus by 9:30. He passed students with white ear buds shuffling through their Ipods on their way to the rec center or dinning halls. Most of the guys had on baggy basketball shorts and Northface jackets or hoodies, the girls wore comfy clothes as well, sweatpants, yoga pants, gym shorts. Jasper couldn’t help eye flirting with some of them, for a liberal art school they were kind of sexy. The campus was at the top of a hill; the dorms and downtown were closer to the bottom as the campus spread downwards, which explained all of the girl’s with the really nice back sides.
Jasper was wearing his black Sideview Super sunglasses inside and outside of the buildings and he continued to wear them when he was welcomed onto the podium by a loud applause.
“There isn’t anything concrete,” he repeated, “It’s all emotions. We used to be a planet of cultures that explored places. Climbed mountains and sailed across whole oceans. We built things, mechanics, sculptors, airplanes…”
The audience had already been listening for close to two hours, he was rambling and more than one person in the room questioned how much he had had to drink.
“We explored actual places. Now it’s all just emotions. We dive deeper and deeper into the fabric of our physiology. Our minds are the final frontier. We used to talk about things you could touch or stand on and now all anyone talks about is what they think or feel. Whole books written about a character’s feelings. We’re tweeting and updating our status. That’s our whole culture. Opinions. I wanted to write a novel deconstructing that. I can’t imagine how much further it can go. Comprehension of emotion. It used to be that parents encouraged fortune and class, now it’s all happiness. Happiness is the new currency. As long as we’re happy. But it’s just as competitive. Who’s more happy? The pursuit of happiness is just as much about winning as anything else. So I don’t know where we have left to go.”
Jasper looked at his agent who was noticeably rolling her hands around one another and mouthing wrap it up.
“So to answer your question, it was an attempt to evaluate our culture.”
The audience member who asked the question, a bearded twenty-something in flannel nodded, seemingly content with the answer and seemingly more contently smug with his initial question.
“That’s not to say,” Jasper slurred, “I am criticizing. Nowhere in the novel do I criticize. Because it’s not about that. At the bottom of it, it’s just some words I typed up when I wasn’t doing a lot of other things and I got to an agent and that agent got it to a publisher and now I am here telling you that if you’re looking to write something, anything, essay, thesis, whatever don’t mention my book.”
He tried to keep his eyes away from his agent’s. He knew she was pissed; he didn’t need that slowing him down.
“Enjoy my novel but don’t kill it. I’m telling you, a lot of you need to realize your assholes. Stop buying thrift shop clothes. You look stupid. Wear things that fit. Stop making intellectuals look bad. I see these- these t-shirts that say ‘throw away your television’ Really? Don’t do that. Give them to me; I’ll watch Sports Center or Seinfeld re-runs on them. I am just saying, get off your thrones made out of- I don’t know- used copies of Ulysses and Fleet Fox vinyls and some documentary your friend made about goat cheese or something and actually influence something.”
“I promise you,” Jasper said, while groups of students stood and left their seats, “our generation, we’re not as important as we think we are.”
“I couldn’t help but notice you seemed distracted in there.”
It was something about the way she said the word ‘distracted’. The way she paused. Hinting that he was in fact, much more than distracted. Hinting that he was more along the lines of a monster. Hinting that he was much, much worse then normal.
But she was a professional and professionals use words like ‘distracted’ and ‘misbehavior’ and ‘off-putting’ rather then words like ‘train-wreck’ and ‘disaster’ and ‘total fucking embarrassment’.
They stepped through the double doors of the campus auditorium, crossed through an alley and continued walking quickly through the movements of students on the street.
“You need to talk to me.” She said, “Don’t think you can just let me say what I need to say and that will be that. No. This is different. That wasn’t fun for me back there.”
She sidestepped in front of him, stopping to look up at his face, causing the other pedestrians to merge around as they walked the crowded sidewalk. Cars buzzed in the late afternoon traffic.
“We have a problem.” She snapped, “I wish I could say that you make enough money and have enough talent to act the way you do. I really wish that were the case. But frankly it’s not. You don’t have the fame or the love of any audience and that’s the problem. They’ll entertain you. For a little while. But that’s it.”
She turned and continued to walk along the sky scrappers and he followed. Jasper was beginning to wonder if she even liked him at all. He didn’t think so. But she must, he told himself; she must enough to stay. To be invested. He wasn’t perfect. He knew that. But neither was she.
She didn’t understand his audience, she didn’t understand the post-college crowd; the struggling modern class, the kids who needed him to act and say the things he did. She didn’t understand that world.
Although she was only about five years older then he, she still smelt of some old world. A more fiscally responsible world. Some lost, crumbled republic. Where books sold off the shelves. First in hardback and then in paperback. Book tours had stops in Baltimore, Belize and Berlin. Where novels were marketed on glossy magazine foldouts and cardboard displays.
But this was a world of self-published electronic novels and blogs and cyber space word of mouth. Her world, in Jasper’s mind had dissolved.
He was her first real client and he knew that.
“I can’t keep playing this clean up game.” She said, a few paces ahead of him, “That needs to be your job. Also your job needs to be encouraging audiences to buy your novel but lets start with getting you to act- I don’t know- like an actual human being, instead of whatever pop culture genius you think you are.”
This was the first time he had ever seen her lash out. Towards him at least. He had seen her at her best in his defense. Always getting him more money or better time slots at writer’s conventions. She was good at her job and to be fair, it’s important to say that he did think she was pretty. She was born and raised on the Chicago east side and was one hundred percent Italiana. She had a tall, slender body that she always dressed in black. Always black. Always professional. Black heels. Black jewelry. Blackberry.
“You don’t even listen,” She said, “You think you’re applicable to this generation because you wear Bape? Because you said Kid Cudi was your biggest literary influence in the Times? Because you wrote one edgy novel that was sort-of accepted by sort-of progressive critics? Because what? - You high fived Aziz Ansari in some piano bar?”
“Don’t patronize me.”
“Don’t act like you’re some smug hipster.”
“I am not a hipster.”
“I know- I know you’re not, because hipsters-good or bad- have actually made a dent on culture. You’ve just wined about- I don’t know what? Something you were entitled that you didn’t get?”
They slipped from under the shadow of the buildings, the late day sunlight glaring off of the cars slowing in traffic and rolling off into the haze. Jasper slid shades over his eyes. The two walked in silence for a couple of blocks. They passed through a small park along the boardwalk. The grass hillside was filled with twenty somethings on benches, shody ten speeds, soft shell jackets and do-everything handheld devices.
Jasper thought a group of them might have recognized him. But he wasn’t sure. He couldn’t really tell.
“Have you been working on your next project?” She asked over her shoulder.
This wasn’t even a question so much as it was a jab at Jasper. His general lack of ambition that had been growing like a tumor. Professionals ask these questions. Instead of saying, ‘you’re hopeless’ or ‘inept’ or ‘a douchbag’. She knew as well as he did that he hadn’t even crossed the threshold of short story into novel. He had scribbles and scribbles turn into pages in a book but these scribbles were begging to look like they might always stay the way they were.
She had pretty much forced him to show her some of his ideas on a particularly long flight. She remembered that the trip had been enjoyable, relaxing even. They had gotten along well, or circumstantially well, and had even gone out for dinner one evening at this swanky Japanese restaurant.
“I really think that TV shows aren’t given enough credit,” Jasper had said behind his gin and tonic, “we keep fighting against this thing that is probably one of the crowning achievements of our culture. Why not acknowledge that. I mean it’s not just entertainment; it’s our lives. I understand that a lot of people watch TV; I am just talking about in intellectual circles. In like literary canons. I am just saying, from the perspective of a writer, it’s not all that bad.”
“Like what?”
“Honestly, I watch a lot of TV.”
“Like what’s your favorite,” she interrupted.
“Lost. Can I still say that? Maybe I just watched Lost when it was a pop culture phenomenon and now it’s not as cool. I don’t know probably Lost.”
“You think to much about what’s cool.” She said. She was getting kind of drunk. Her professionalism was slipping.
“That’s my job. That’s how you make money. Me knowing what’s cool signs your paycheck.”
“Okay- okay, well I like Cake Boss. Cake Boss and um- what’s that one show- about the forensic guy who kills people?”
“Dexter?”
“Right Dexter. It’s so messed up. I get hooked.”
“I wouldn’t have pegged you as a person who would watch Dexter. You can tell a lot about a person by what shows they watch I think. It’s good though, I like that you watch Dexter.”
Nothing had happened that night. Each party had gone back to their respectable hotel rooms and in the morning they had boarded a flight to L.A.X. She thumbed the pages of Jasper’s notebook, skimming through the brief dialog and plot development. From what she could tell it was mostly a broken romance. A married couple, both artists, working to survive in modern day LA.
“These things, relationships and art,” Jasper said when she had finished reading, “they’re not recession proof. The housing market crisis is just a reflection of a deeper crisis. These are just red flags because we’re so far off course as a culture.”
The writing had been good. The situations realistic enough. The concept, she thought, was marketable. She could see film options. The problem was the characters. Jasper’s last novel had been a poke at his own generation. The flaky urban hippy spiritualists. The hypocritical green-peace activists. The characters themselves were flat and this, in itself, was what made the critics go crazy over his novel. They assumed he was pointing at the lack of depth in the modern youth. The suburban graduates who bought into a myth that they were more artistic or spiritual because they had broken out of some mold by buying their groceries at stores that marketed themselves as ‘local’ or décor from warehouses that marketed themselves as ‘international markets’.
The problem she saw with his current project was that the characters were also very, very flat and she began to question whether his popularity wasn’t just dumb luck.
As they crossed the street towards the car, Jasper began brushing off her question about his current project with a series of pointless monologues about the direction of the book.
“It’s bullshit,” he said, climbing in the passenger side door, “I am trying to broaden my perspective but there is such a lack of personality to modern life.”
This made her laugh a little but she wasn’t sure why.
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