Deborah Eisenberg becomes newest genius

Deborah Eisenberg just got the MacArthur Genius Award. I saw her once at Wash U read “Some Other, Better Otto” wearing knee high high-heeled boots. She is funny and sly, like Mary Gaitskill but louder and full of cynical laughs.

Afterward I asked a question that she completely ignored about the internet’s effect on her writing. At the end of the hour someone asked about her writing habits and she said mostly it happens in bed and then added, “That can’t be the last thing I say. Someone ask another question.”

I also saw her introduce Zadie Smith and Gary Shteyngart read from Memoirs of an Anti-Semite, which made me read the book and her introduction to it (Elise has my copy) which says something to the effect of: future generations are going to wonder about the hearts and souls of those living in this decadent age of immorality, the Bush years, the willfully ignorant years…the way we look back at Nazi Germany and look for an honest account of life on the ground among the non-victims, aka the people that ought to have taken responsibility. She was at the event with her partner, Wallace Shawn, the writer/actor best known as the lisping bepoisoned wiseacre in The Princess Bride.

In honor of her award and to cheer myself I spent some time reading “Twilight of the Superheroes” and illegally dozing in the awesome basement reading room of the Mulberry Street NYPL.

Below are some choice quotations (that remind me of my friends who are Jewish, Elise and Sean):

“But wait. Long ago, panic had sent his grandparents and parents scurrying from murderous Europe, with its death camps and pogroms, to the safe harbor of New York. Panic had kept them going as far as the Midwest, where grueling labor enabled them and eventually their children to lead blessedly ordinary lives. And sooner or later, Nathaniel’s pounding heart was telling him, that same sure-footed guide, panic, would help him retrace his family’s steps all the way back to Manhattan.”

“Nathaniel would wait, an acid pity weakening his bones, while his parents debated worriedly over their choices, as if nobody ever had before or would ever have again the opportunity to eat ice cream.”