11/16/2005: "Attendance Records Shattered in Milwalkee!"

Last night's reading at Schwartz's bookstore in Milwalkee, WI, drew a record attendance.

Zero.

That's right, it's not a misprint: zero attendance. I mean, yes, there were a few people in the store, but they were, like, y'know, everyday customers. Browsers. None of them actually came to see yours truly read. Just my Milwalkee liason Mary, and booksellers Dan and Taylor sitting amidst a lonely sea of empty purple chairs that had evidently been set out in anticipation of a modest crowd.

The day started well enough. I got up at 7:00, gassed up the car, grabbed a coffee and struedel and hit the open road. Good ole Mapquest got me to Milwalkee at 1:00 in the afternoon, where I found my digs were the swank downtown Pfister hotel. I had a beer in the lobby---Sprecker Amber; kick ASS beer, served in pint bottles, like they used to with Labatt 50---and waited for my liason, Mary. We drove around to 4 or 5 bookstores and signed whatever copies they had in stock. Then I was dropped off back at the hotel where I changed and, 2 Spreckers later, Mary came and grabbed me for the 7:00 reading.

I knew something was amiss the moment I walked into Schwartz's. Dan and Taylor---2 cool guys, by the way---met us at the front door. The place was empty. I may've spotted a tumbleweed drifting lazily across the floor. There was a funereal air about the place. I signed the copies they put in front of me, and we all chatted about this and that. It was maybe 7:10 and we hadn't moved past the cash registers. I'm no Inspector Clouseau, but I figured I was in for some grim tidings.

"Let me take a look around the place," I said airily.

"Let me show you around," Dan said quickly. He showed me around the corner, where indeed a very nice reading set-up was in place: twenty or so chairs, a signing table, a glass of water, a podium.

"Nobody's here...yet," said Dan.

I very much appreciated Dan's grim optimism; I very much appreciated that "...yet."

Mary and Taylor joined us like mourners at a wake. They all sat on the purple chairs and for some very odd reason I stepped behind the podium. I don't know why I didn't sit on the chairs with them; after all, we were just chatting. But no, I for some bizarre reason insisted on standing behind the podium. They let me. I drank the water someone had nicely poured. I stood there behind the podium for ten minutes before it all started to seem rather silly so I sat...in the signing chair behind the signing desk. Mary and Taylor and Dan all sat in the chairs, like they were my audience. It was kind of them to indulge me.

Some guy walked by. For a moment, my heart fluttered---had he come to hear me read, or at least buy a book? No, he was browsing for a book by someone by the name of Palliser, and the signing table was blocking the "P" section. Dan told him who I was and why I was here. The guy made the sort of face one might make watching a car careen out of control and skip the freeway divider into oncoming traffic. He said, "Eeeeeee---sorry, man."

We all helped the guy look for his book by Palliser. Unfortunately the bookstore wasn't carrying a copy.

I don't really know what to make of it all; I've been thinking about it much of the day and can come to no suitable accounting of my feelings. On one hand, I feel that I've done all I can for the book: I wrote it to the best of my abilities, I edited the hell out of it, I worked hard for the quotes, and I'll go out and do the best readings I can (when people show up). And I feel that I've been so lucky on so many levels: to be working with editors and publishers and publicists and houses who do their best for me, and want the best for me. And yet I'm not sure it's enough. In fact it seems that maybe, in the final reckoning, it just might not be enough. And I think about the luck I've had: to have had the support of family and friends and everyone who's been so great about bringing me to this point and giving so much of themselves to help...and I wonder if I've maybe run out of luck. Maybe there is only so much luck any one of us is entitled on any one endeavor, and yeah, I've wondered if my well's run dry. And I can't whine or complain if it has---there are 10,000 better writers than me who've maybe not had some of the breaks I've had---but at the same time it seems the worst time of all to run dry. To build something up only to find that, right at that point when you could use a few breaks, they just aren't to be had. Sorry old chum---your quota's been used. I mean, it's foolish, it's totally unreasonable and illogical and maybe just the byproduct of spending 6 hours driving home in the blowing snow, but I can't shake it.

And another thing is this: I've worked 5 or 6 years on this, became basically a hermit the past 2 years, and in those moments when I looked to the future, it was always this I looked forward to: going on the road, giving readings, meeting readers. Not playing the bigshot or anything. I never saw myself reading to packed houses with fireworks displays shooting off behind me and a line of dancing girls; just a regular old tour, a few readings. And then you see the reality: 20 empty purple plastic chairs, one liason and two booksellers doing their best to soften the blow. And it's strange, too, because I don't really feel bad for myself; a little embarassed, maybe, but not angry or hurt or anything. The last few months, every time I go into a bookstore and see dozens of unsold copies or see the book steadily falling on Amazon or go to a reading and nobody's there, I feel as though I've let down all the people who've put their faith and trust and hope in me: my family, my editors, all the people who've gone to bat for me. There's very little of it that's about me anymore---what I mean to say is, I've come to care less and less about how any sucess might benefit me personally. Now all I want is for the book to not hurt all the people who've been there for me, not be a fucking albatross around their necks. And I know if any of them read this they would tell me not to be an idiot, and I know it IS idiotic in a lot of ways---and yet it's how I feel, and that feeling can't be shaken either. All I want to do is try to ensure (and see, even as I write that---try to ensure---I realize it's beyond me: I can't ensure, or even try to ensure, anything; I can't make people buy or review or push the book. Either they do it or they don't, and there's not a damn thing I can do for it)...anyway, all I can do now is do everything that's asked of me, do the rest of these readings. That's it. It's a hard admission to make: that there's very little else you can do to support your work. That it's out there on its own and you just sit and watch. It exists outside of you, now.

On my way back from Milwalkee I stopped into an abandoned dogtrack. I'd never seen one before, and my mind at the time was sort of stark and unfocussed and maybe I shouldn't have been driving, so I stopped in. It closed awhile back: Mary said that, with casinos opening in Wisconsin, the dogtrack took a nosedive. I don't really know what I was thinking; I love dogs and just thought I would take a look.

It was cold, snow coming in off lake Michigan. There was one van in the parking lot, but that was it. Most of the entrance gates were closed but one was open. I didn't know if it was trespassing---convievably it was---but I walked in. All the betting wickets were boarded over; ditto the concession stand. The kennels---there was a line of them---were empty, the chain mesh gates hanging open.

I walked out onto the track. There were some bleachers under a tilted aluminum roof but these were of course empty. A guy was out on the track with some greyhounds. He wasn't in the track area, but rather the brown grassed oval around which the track circled. I didn't know if he was the track's owner and if he might object to me being here and I was about to leave but then he saw me and he didn't do anything---didn't holler at me or shake his fist---and so I was left with the impression I had just as much right to be here as he did.

He had ten or twelve dogs. All greyhounds. They dashed all over the place with the sort of zeal that suggested they'd been cooped up in dogruns for days but greyhounds are a very energetic breed so it's quite possible this was how they always were. He was an older guy, maybe late fifties, with gloves and a toque and a big puffy jacket. His dogs didn't pay any attention to me except one, a slate-grey one, who trotted over and let me pet it for all of ten seconds before it got skittish and dashed off.

The guy and I said our hellos. He had one of the accents I've become accustomed to in my time here. It's a nice accent---a very, I don't know, homey sort of inflection.

"You race dogs?" he asked.

"No," I said. "I'm Canadian." (I say this in response to almost anything: forgot to bring my ID to a bar? No problem, just say I'm Canadian. If I'm asked any sort of question I don't understand: Canadian. I could probably kill someone and tell the cops I'm Canadian and get off.)

"Well," he said, "you like dogs?"

I said yes, I like dogs fine. He shook his head and looked a little melancholy.

"Don't know what I'm going to do," he said, "now the track's closed. These are racing dogs." He swept his hands over the oval. "Tough to feed and house and keep a dozen dogs I can't race."

I commisserated with a nod of the head. We talked about how cold it was. Out of nowhere he asked did I want one of them. I wasn't sure if he was joking. Maybe he was.

"A dog?" He didn't even know me. I just walked out onto an abandoned dog track, told him I'm a Canadian, and he offered me a dog. "No, I can't."

He nodded, asked did I know anyone who did. I said no. But a weird part of me wanted to take him up on the offer. I would like a dog; I think, if and when I move back to my house in Calgary, I will get one. But not in my little apartment in Iowa, not with me not knowing where I'm going to be next year or the year after that, and especially not a greyhound who needs lots of space to run. It wouldn't be fair to the dog. But yeah, for a minute there I almost said, "You got yourself a deal, sir," taken one of those dogs and driven off with him.

We talked a little bit more---he was a Packers fan---and watched his dogs higtail it about. Then I shivered and got to wondering what the heck I was doing there so I wished the guy a good day and headed back to my car.