I had one of those childhoods that seems cool to other writers, and surely some librarians and academics. One of the literary luminaries I grew up around was Gore Vidal, the famed cultural critic and political pundit. He was brilliant and acerbic and famous for many things, like running for Congress or debating William F. Buckley on television.
While I do, in fact, turn down the chance to have sex, perhaps because I’m married and boring, television is another story. Oh, CNN needs me to talk about’s legal problems on Yom Kippur? Sure thing! Swing by 30 Rock before dawn? On my way. I’ve written for years—mostly novels, essays—but the requests from cable news bookers ratcheted up during the Trump presidency, the era of peak resistance television. I was tweeting my way through it as well as writing political columns and podcasting, so punditry just fit into the mix. One TV hit begets another, and I’m suddenly a full-fledged member of the cable news commentariat.
No matter how early we’d get to the greenroom, there would always be a half-eaten platter of warm melon sitting on a small coffee table. The room would always smell faintly of hair spray and mildew. This was before the time of cell phones or even Game Boys, so often I would just sit there staring into space or watching my mother on whatever local TV show she was on. Sometimes, there would be other people in the greenroom—agents, friends of other guests, animals from an animal act.
Writers, or at least the ones I knew, were always desperate to sell their writing. Maybe it was a function of the fleeting nature of fame and my mother being on the wrong side of the famous–normal person continuum, but I always felt like she was desperate to sell her books. In fact, she was often accused of being a relentless self-promoter. But Mom wasn’t the only person in my life desperately selling things on television.