On St. Patrick’s day we took the F train in the opposite direction of Manhattan’s shamrock-wearing masses to The Powerhouse Arena in Dumbo. Mary Gaitskill was reading there to celebrate the paperback release of her book of short stories, “Don’t Cry.” Although the shelves there were not her own, she agreed to do a Stacked Up interview by picking and choosing titles at random.
We had half an hour to walk through the stacks. Mary scanned the fiction table and drew a blank. “How embarrassing,” she said. “I haven’t read most of these happening books.” As she paced the aisles, we realized that our experiment of talking to authors outside their own homes might not work.
Shooting this episode taught us that there is no substitute for the writer’s library as a setting for our show. While Mary eventually found titles that she connected with, a good number of them were in the children’s section. (We included a couple of those in the episode, but two that fell to the blade tool in Final Cut Pro were “Bartholomew and the Oobleck” and “The Story of Ferdinand.”)
Our thanks to Mary for being a good sport and participating in our bookstore experiment. Consider her episode a snapshot of a moment in time. A respite from green beer and sparkling emerald hats.
In which the author explains how books about real life are better than fiction.
First editions from her grandmother feature prominently in Jennifer Gilmore’s library.
