Free Deliriously Happy by Larry Doyle Page B

Rhythmic, primal, it begins:
    REE-ding… REE-ding… REE-ding!
    â€œAl,” I say, finishing my drink. “I don’t think I can do this tonight.”
    She sighs. Alison’s a seasoned tour pro and has heard this before, from me, from DeLillo, from all the chicks with lits. “You’ve got twenty thousand people out there, some paid scalpers three hundred bucks to come hear you read,” she preaches from the playbook. “Not to mention what they spent on T-shirts, and readings CDs, and giant foam bookmarks…”
    â€œThey’re not even laughing at the jokes anymore. They’re laughing at the punctuation.”
    â€œYour punctuation is funny.”
    â€œSo many people. Such long names.”
    â€œYou’re lucky it’s not a memoir,” Alison says. “They’d tear you apart.” Poor choice of words, I think, considering this very stadium held the last reading of James Frey, somewhat ironically torn into only eighty-seven little pieces.
    Ree-ding!… Ree-ding!!… Ree-ding!!!
    I hoist out what used to be my writing hand. “It’s dead,” I pronounce.
    â€œMarty,” Alison says.
    Dr. Marty, the tour physician, shuffles over. He lays my bloated corpse of a paw across his lap. He pokes it. “Boy’s right,” the doc says in his syrupy Staten Island drawl. “This thing’s about to fall off.”
    â€œIf I wanted your medical opinion, I would have asked for it,” Alison snaps.
    The good doctor nods and reaches into his bag, removing his fixings. He pops the syringe into the vial, pulls back on the plunger, and slowly withdraws a potent cocktail of vitamin B, morphine, and Major League Baseball–grade steroids. He taps my wrist twice and plunges the needle in. I don’t even feel it.
    â€œThis got Updike through the Couples tour,” Dr. Marty says. “You think it’s bad now. Back then they not only bought the books, they read them.”
    Outside, the crowd has gone into an undulating roar. They are doing the wave, apparently.
    â€œWe better get you in there,” Alison says. “We don’t want another San Antonio.” The Last Symbol fiasco. Dan Brown’s flight was delayed. Before he could be helicoptered in, eight people were dead and posed ritualistically.
    As I climb into the golf cart, I notice something on Fox News. People. Anger. Flames.
    They’re all throwing my book into the fire. I could tell because of the distinctive cover.
    I had said a stupid thing. The reporter showed me one of the full-page ads my publisher had taken out in newspapers across the country, quoting some blogger calling my novel “the greatest book ever written.” Surely, the reporter asked, I didn’t think my book was better than the Bible .
    â€œIt’s funnier than the Bible,” I said.
    And I believe that. The Bible isn’t funny at all, except in a broad conceptual way. But I shouldn’t have said it, probably.
    There are bonfires going in twenty-six cities, Megyn Kelly says, and on a couple of cruise ships. I stare at the screen. My words, on fire. My lovely books, thousands of them, turning to ash.
    I chuckle. They didn’t even get a volume discount.
    The cart comes out of the tunnel into what was once center field. The crowd roars and squeals in equal measure. They have come for the word. And I’m going to read it to them.

Let’s Talk About My New Movie

    It’s about more than an alien invasion, or a big dance contest, although if you’re a fan of invading aliens or professional choreography you won’t be disappointed. It’s also a love story, born of deep space and lived on an underwater dance floor; and it’s about the characters: the hero, the babe, the bad guy, the black guy, the guy who was funny when he was on SNL , and others. More than anything, though, it’s about freedom—the idea of freedom as opposed to any specific