Grith alert!
Sep. 27th, 2003 12:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
madbakerMet a friend last night for dinner, chattage, and the Neal Stephenson signing. It all went very well - this is a friend that I don't see much of, due to living distance and life fu.
Neal Stephenson is an introvert and doesn't enjoy doing signings (on his web page he refers to himself as "Umberto Eco without the charm") so it was a bit surprising that he devoted a couple weeks to doing a tour. Then again, his publisher may have told him that it sells books, so if he wants to be a financially successful full-time writer...
He did a 30-minute Q&A and then signed books. The place was packed. At least 200 people, probably more but we were closer to the front so it was hard to tell. During the Q&A, Neil wouldn't make eye contact with anyone. I found it amusing rather than annoying. He's an introvert, people; he doesn't want to be here.
But it was well worth it. He started the evening by talking about the ground rules; his publisher had suggested "no video recordings", which he liked; but upon further thought, he decided that it would be futile to enforce (as recorders are so small these days). So he invoked the Anglo-Saxon concept of grith - "Protection or sanctuary provided by Old English law to persons in certain circumstances, as when in a church or traveling on the king's highway." See, Keplers is on El Camino Real.
(wait for rimshot)
Other fun bits: when asked which items of technology fascinated him these days, he paused briefly, then replied (paraphrasing here as I'm working from memory) "Buttons. They hold your shirts shut, and they make no sound. Um, tires. Think about how much we depend on them and how much work they do. Scissors. They work perfectly every time, think about the contrast between them and cutting with some sort of floppy knife. Beer."
The other other good part of the signing: Keplers ran it intelligently. You took a ticket and they called numbers up in groups of 10. That way, if you knew you weren't going to be called for a while, you could browse through the bookstore (hopefully buying more), grab a cup of coffee across the way, whatever. You didn't have to mindlessly stand in a line for 6 hours. (Neal joked about signing until 2 AM. It may have been that long, though.)
That was so much better than the last signing I went to, at a chain big-box store whose name shall go unmentioned. But it rhymes with Sparns & Floble.
Neal Stephenson is an introvert and doesn't enjoy doing signings (on his web page he refers to himself as "Umberto Eco without the charm") so it was a bit surprising that he devoted a couple weeks to doing a tour. Then again, his publisher may have told him that it sells books, so if he wants to be a financially successful full-time writer...
He did a 30-minute Q&A and then signed books. The place was packed. At least 200 people, probably more but we were closer to the front so it was hard to tell. During the Q&A, Neil wouldn't make eye contact with anyone. I found it amusing rather than annoying. He's an introvert, people; he doesn't want to be here.
But it was well worth it. He started the evening by talking about the ground rules; his publisher had suggested "no video recordings", which he liked; but upon further thought, he decided that it would be futile to enforce (as recorders are so small these days). So he invoked the Anglo-Saxon concept of grith - "Protection or sanctuary provided by Old English law to persons in certain circumstances, as when in a church or traveling on the king's highway." See, Keplers is on El Camino Real.
(wait for rimshot)
Other fun bits: when asked which items of technology fascinated him these days, he paused briefly, then replied (paraphrasing here as I'm working from memory) "Buttons. They hold your shirts shut, and they make no sound. Um, tires. Think about how much we depend on them and how much work they do. Scissors. They work perfectly every time, think about the contrast between them and cutting with some sort of floppy knife. Beer."
The other other good part of the signing: Keplers ran it intelligently. You took a ticket and they called numbers up in groups of 10. That way, if you knew you weren't going to be called for a while, you could browse through the bookstore (hopefully buying more), grab a cup of coffee across the way, whatever. You didn't have to mindlessly stand in a line for 6 hours. (Neal joked about signing until 2 AM. It may have been that long, though.)
That was so much better than the last signing I went to, at a chain big-box store whose name shall go unmentioned. But it rhymes with Sparns & Floble.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
Yah, it was nice
Date: 2003-09-27 09:59 pm (UTC)NOT a floppy knife! He did well with the questions, too.
Re: Yah, it was nice
Date: 2003-09-27 10:29 pm (UTC)How late did the signing go?