Chapter 1 Building Your Brand
Building Your Brand
“Finite Scroll,” The Talk of the Town
Jack Branksome wants to know when the pound sign became a hashtag. For him, the answer is right now. I start our lunch unsure if his claim—that he truly didn’t know what a hashtag was before this moment—is genuine.
“Ash’s daughter frequently says things like ‘Hashtag who cares.’ I put it down to teen lingo I wouldn’t presume to try to understand,” he says as he tucks into a bowl of mussels in garlic white wine broth at a cozy Minneapolis bistro he insists I not name as a condition of our interview.
“I don’t want it to be overrun. I want to be able to come back here. ”
Ash is Ashwin Bajwa, fellow novelist, fellow tech-avoidant literary savant—both men were longlisted for the National Book Award last year—who is in town leading a weeklong fiction master class residency at the University of Minnesota, and the pair is having a reunion.
Unlike the relentlessly single Branksome, who declares romantic entanglements “distractions that weaken the constitution,” Bajwa is married and in possession of a hashtag-using, Instagram-scrolling teenage daughter.
When I try to explain that a hashtag organizes content online, Branksome’s expression goes from confused to contemptuous.
“A person can choose to have a rich interior life. If a person makes such a choice, a person might find himself called to protect that choice.”
“I think what he’s saying,” the genial Bajwa interjects, “is that the infinite scroll afforded by social media is the enemy of creativity.”
“No, what I’m saying,” Branksome says, “is that authenticity, which I believe we are called toward as humans, sometimes comes at a cost.”
When I tell Branksome I might have an inkling of how Blair Kellermoon felt when he rebuffed her invitation to feature his debut novel in her Books with Blair reading club, he takes his time prying a mussel from its shell, chews slowly, and only when satisfied that mastication is complete says, “Ms. Kellermoon has a lot of little projects on the go. I’m sure she’s forgotten all about me. ”
Jack Branksome looked up from his computer screen at the clock on the wall in his office.
The minute hand had not moved since he’d last checked on it.
The little red second hand—this was a vintage analog clock of the sort that used to hang in the classrooms of Jack’s elementary school—had not even made a full revolution.
It was too early to go down for the mail.
As the second hand approached twelve, he stared at the minute hand, sensing more than hearing the click when the long black blade that had been taunting him all day made its tiny stutter forward. Twelve fifty-five.
“It’s too early to go down for the mail,” he said into the room that was empty except for a desk, an overpriced ergonomic chair that was not doing what it was supposed to do, and the clock of doom, as if saying the words aloud would make them more true than when they had been only a thought in his head.
He turned back to the screen. Checked the word count in the lower left corner of his document. It had not moved. Just like the minute hand of a minute ago.
That was what happened when you stared at a screen without doing anything.
He sighed. He was downtrodden.
An hour later, Jack, not a fan of adverbs, had to conclude that not only was he downtrodden but he was exceedingly downtrodden. It was almost two o’clock, though, and therefore no longer impossible that the mail should have come.
He pushed himself out of his chair, and something in his back protested. It was a fucking Aeron chair. It had cost a small fortune back when he thought he had one of those to spare.
His wrists hurt, too, which was ridiculous given that he hadn’t written a God damn word for three days.
It was probably psychic pain manifesting in his body. “How can one be well,” Tolstoy asks, “when one suffers morally?”
Jack had a dinner at seven that he was dreading. If he started writing at two, he could get four hours in by the time he had to stop to shower and make himself presentable.
He checked the clock: 1:56.
It wouldn’t take him more than a couple of minutes to go get the mail. It would be good to stretch his legs, get the blood moving.
When the elevator arrived at his floor, there was someone in it, so he pretended he’d forgotten something in his condo. The second try deposited him in the lobby, but the mail had not yet arrived.
He looked at his watch: 2:04.
If he started writing at two thirty, he could get three and a half hours in before he had to stop.
Coffee.
He would go out for coffee, and by the time he got home, the mail would be here. It would be two thirty, and he would be caffeinated, in receipt of the mail, and ready to write.
It was a beautiful September afternoon, the first hint of autumn in the air. Not decay yet, but a kind of precursor to it, a ripeness that was aware of its own impending demise.
The door at Maud’s jingled. There were only a few tables occupied, it being too late for lunch, at least for Midwesterners, and too early for dinner.
“Jack.” An unsmiling but not unfriendly man lifted a palm from behind the bar at the back of the small bistro. It was Oliver, Maud’s proprietor—and son of the real-life Maud, whose landscape paintings hung on the restaurant’s exposed brick walls. “Americano?” he asked as Jack approached. “Barolo?”
“Too early for wine. I’ve got to write yet today.”
“Americano it is. To go, I assume, if you’re working?”
Jack glanced at his watch: 2:17.
He pulled out a stool. “Make it a cortado, and I’ll drink it here.” If he drank quickly, he could be back at his desk and writing by three o’clock.
Maud’s didn’t really do coffee. Well, clearly it did, as evidenced by the whirring of the espresso machine behind the bar. But it wasn’t a coffee destination.
Oliver set the miniature cup and saucer in front of Jack. “How goes the struggle?”
Jack sighed and took a sip.
“That bad?”
“I have to go to a Friends of the Library dinner tonight.”
Oliver wrinkled his nose. “Libraries. Friends. Dinners. All known bummers.”
Jack rolled his eyes, but something in him loosened a notch, like an overtightened screw being eased.
Jack was aware of his reputation, and he didn’t mind it.
Being known as a curmudgeon came in handy.
But the truth was, he liked talking to people.
Well, he liked talking to specific people in specific circumstances.
It didn’t have to be a real friend, or a deep conversation.
In fact, it was better if it wasn’t. Jack’s ideal conversation partner was intelligent and quick-witted.
Someone who knew him, but not too well. Someone with whom he could skip the small talk but also not be on the hook for any kind of deep, lasting connection.
Oliver was one of those people. He reached under the bar and produced a dish of cashews, and Jack’s innards relaxed another notch. Regular retail interactions were exactly Jack’s speed. Sometimes he thought back to his teaching days and wondered how he had survived. So many people. So much talking.
The day he’d presented the principal with his resignation letter had been the best day of his life.
And the day he had to slink back and ask to be rehired was going to be the worst.
It was almost three thirty by the time Jack was done with his coffee.
The mail consisted of two bills—internet and gym.
He couldn’t live without the internet—alas—but it might be time to cancel his membership at the very expensive gym he’d joined when his first book took off and it seemed like he was going to be the subject of a lot of media attention.
It wasn’t as if anyone could see his biceps under his clothing—he’d been posing for pictures in Newsweek, not Men’s Fitness—but it had been the principle of the thing.
He’d wanted to look his best. Look the part.
An intellectual, but not your father’s intellectual.
Not his father’s intellectual, not to put too fine a point on it.
The gym in his building was decent. He could survive with—Oh. The New Yorker was here. The New Yorker usually arrived on Thursdays, and today was only Wednesday. Well, he hoped today was Wednesday. If not, he was not going to have any friends left at the library.
He took himself back up to his place—3:43—and flipped open the magazine, but not before trying and failing to parse the cover image, which was an abstract jumble of dark blues and blacks with a fuzzy green dot off to one side.
Jack would have liked to be the kind of person who didn’t read press about himself.
His dad always said that reviews were for readers and professed not to read his own.
Maybe that attitude came with time, with the accumulation of an august backlist that was taught in college literature classes.
For now, Jack was the kind of person who—secretly—read his reviews.
Not that this was a review.
There was nothing to review at the moment, his first book having come out more than a year and a half ago. Those reviews had been stellar, beyond his wildest dreams.
Jack’s second book didn’t exist yet, because he’d had to ask for an extension on his deadline.
He was originally supposed to turn it in this coming January 1.
When he’d fessed up to his agent that he wasn’t sure if he was going to make it, a new date had been agreed on: March 15.
Beware the ides of March, he’d thought jauntily, because at that point, March 15 had seemed doable.
At the rate he was going, there would be nothing to review again, ever.
Hence the “Talk of the Town” profile in The New Yorker, arranged by his publisher. By his chipper but, he had to admit, competent and well-connected publicist.
He read it.
He read it again.
Well. If he’d had a heart, it might have sunk.
He called Lyn, the aforementioned competent and well-connected publicist.
“Have you seen The New Yorker?”
He realized belatedly that he should have announced himself. He wasn’t Lyn’s only author. But she probably didn’t have more than one author in the current issue of The New Yorker. That sounded like self-flattery, but it was just a fact.
“I have seen it. It’s great.”
“Is it?”
“Is it not?”
“Do I come off as a jerk?”
The pause before she spoke answered his question. “Does it matter? ‘Jerk’ works for your brand.”
“I have a brand?”
“No, no,” she said soothingly, probably because she understood that he was the sort of jerk who would hate the idea of having a brand.
“But I already had that… thing with Blair Kellermoon. And now that line about her ‘little projects.’” Why had he taken the bait when that journalist asked about her? “I didn’t mean that as snidely as it reads.”
“You’re overthinking this. The piece is great. You show some personality. It will keep people interested until the next book.” Another pause. “How is it coming?” Pause. “You don’t have to answer that. I’m not editorial.”
She wasn’t, and he wasn’t going to tell her anything.
She must have taken his silence—he didn’t do platitudes—for the dismissal it was, for she eventually said, “Well, I can’t wait to read it!”
Jack couldn’t wait to read it, either.
Three fifty-two.
His phone rang at three fifty-five.
“You didn’t tell me you were going to be in The New Yorker.”
“Dad, hi.”
“Good piece.”
“You think?” Jack asked, and immediately regretted it. He didn’t need his father’s approval.
“You made the right choice turning down that Hollywood person.”
“Mm,” he said vaguely, refraining from pointing out that he hadn’t asked for an opinion on the Books with Blair offer, then or now.
“That’s not what we do,” his dad said.
“That’s not what you do, and it’s not what I do.” Which was subtly but importantly different from That’s not what we do. “Dad, I have to go. I’m doing a Friends of the Library dinner tonight, and I’m trying to get some work in beforehand.” I’m trying to get some staring at the screen in beforehand.
“So it’s dinner with rich assholes.”
“It’s dinner with rich assholes,” he said, both because it was the path of least resistance and because it was probably true. “Sometimes you have to have dinner with rich assholes.”
“But do you? If those rich assholes don’t have anything you want, do you?”
“Apparently some rich assholes give their money to the library.” And apparently Jack hadn’t become a complete cynic.
“Well,” his dad said, “don’t let it distract you from your purpose. You can’t ask for another extension.”
He was aware. He was also aware that his father had never missed a deadline.
“Bye, Dad.”
Three fifty-seven.
He googled Blair Kellermoon.