No Charges Were Filed

October 7th, 2005 by Hennessy

My lady love, Zadie Smith did a reading at Harry W. Schwartz Books on Downer last night and man, was it packed. Her new book On Beauty, has been getting raves and even a Booker nomination. Can’t wait to read it, the segment she read was entertaining.

Unusual for this event were the actual intelligent questions asked afterwards. None of the typical: “How can you, __ my favorite author, get my book published for me? Gee, I really, really love your work”, or the even more painful “What magic formula do you have for writing such amazing books? What? You mean, you have to sit down and write? Isn’t there another way?” This was an actual scenario I witnessed a few years back at a reading at Schwartz’s, when Suzan-Lori Parks was there. More striking was that Suzan-Lori Parks tolerated that question several times throughout the Q&A, all with surprise remarkably similar answers.

And, no, to the questions of many of you, there wasn’t any embarassing bended knee proposals, stolen kiss, or even mild attempts on my behalf to grope Ms. Smith.
Besides, my girlfriend was there with me, it took enough convincing to get her to take my picture with Zadie.