I was in a Midtown Manhattan Barnes & Noble yesterday afternoon when I saw some guy start to read my Clemens book. I watched him flip through the pages, sneeze on the cover, glance through the pictures, show it to his wife …
… then leave without making the purchase.
I suppose I could have awkwarded him to death—”I wrote that, you know” or “I just read that book and it’s truly amazing!”—but that would have been historically pathetic. In fact, over the course of four books, only once before had I ever seen someone actually reading one. It was on a train from the city to New Rochelle; a young dude paging through “The Bad Guys Won!” I said, “Hey, how is that book?” He started telling me about it, the characters and theme and all. He seemed to really like it.
I said nothing about having written it. Seemed cooler that way.
