Pink by Jennifer Harris

Author:Jennifer Harris [Harris, Jennifer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781602820432
Publisher: Bold Strokes Books
Published: 2008-04-01T07:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

When the first copy of my little pink book arrives in my mailbox in Chicago I will hold the book next to my heart and keep it there for a good five minutes. I will feel my heart beating through the pages. And even if I won’t be able to explain my need for solitude, the book at least will stand for all that time alone: late at night in the dark, sitting in my straight-backed chair, listening to the wind rattle the windows of my apartment, staring at my computer across the room, wondering if I would ever get it right. And the book will be it. That something right. The book I will write will cost $13.75 before tax.

When James’s roommate, Franke, the one who works for the publisher of my little pink book, actually reads the book I will write for the first time, she will have been dying to get her hands on something new, something fresh. Because publisher types always use those terms: fresh, new, vibrant. Which reminds me why I used to be obsessed with Stein. Everything was Stein Stein Stein. She had this theory of the “Continuous Present” and once wrote that “Nothing changes from generation to generation…except the composition in which we live and the composition in which we live makes the art which we see and hear.” I guess the point is that nothing is ever new, is only re-created by new generations, but then, everyone writes that so it’s funny like that.

Only my book surprises everyone. Especially James’s roommate who will call me as soon as she’s finished the first page—the first page alone! She’ll call me up and say, “I can’t believe this manuscript, where have you been published before? Do you have an agent?” And I’ll laugh. I will look toward my pile of rejections that I keep in a brown paper bag under my bed and say, “Well, I’ve had a few publications but no, no agent.” And she’ll say, “As soon as I finish this, I’m taking it to my boss. How long did it take you to write?” I’ll be vague. She’ll think I’m aloof at first, which is okay because I’m a writer, but then, after she gets to know me, she’ll think it was just nerves.

I will never get used to disbelief. Critics will say things like “one dog pony” and “kitsch.” But I will try to explain that it’s bigger than me. When I’m with Barbara Walters, right before the movie of the book I will write is released, I will say that it’s about values. About valuing. Self-love (even though I will refuse to say it is self-help). Barbara will wear a red scotch-plaid dress like the kind my grandmother used to wear, and she will look at me with those big almond eyes. I will feel that I don’t belong there, sitting next to her, pretending to know things that no else does. But then, she will change the subject to my childhood because she always does that.

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