The Book of Other People (30 page)

There are a thousand kinds of thirteen, more than there are kinds of fifty, or eighty. There is Oddly Childlike Thirteen, and Worried and Obsessive, and Alarmingly Manly, and Girlish, and Gothic Horror, and Scapegoat, and Something Happened to Him as a Child, and Beatific and Despised, and Lonely, and Just Plain Stubborn. There is Manic and there is Depressed, still leading separate lives. There is Loves Adults and there is Steals Dad’s Antique Pornography. There is Steals Everything, Period. There is Already Smokes and Already Drinks and Already Screws. There is Weeps Alone. And Misses Childhood. And Hates the World. He was none of these; he was less than these. He was the kind of boy who had been a prodigy at six and faded by seven, the kind who would be handsome by twenty and show his old yearbook photos to girl-friends, unable to feel joy when they’d exclaim how hopeless he used to be. Somewhere in between those points was where he lay, and somehow - and this was the hopelessly sad part - he knew it. If you asked him, on a test sheet, to name his own type of thirteen, he would write in his seismographic hand: ‘Waits for Time to Pass’.

Pictures, also, reveal very little. There is one of him at that age, in 1984, standing by the fireplace in a navy blazer and gray slacks his father had helped him pick out, clearly dressed for some acquaintance’s bar mitzvah, his hair parted and set with a wet comb, dried into long lines like grass when it’s been raked of leaves - possibly also sprayed with a canister of his father’s Commander, it’s that solid. It’s a shame that photos, like children, remember only rare moments and never the everyday, for he has never looked like this in his life. A look of guilt, of surprise. Eyes a deep blue, the blue of a baby’s eyes that will eventually turn to brown, wide open. Eyebrows raised, perhaps in his first failed try at posing, at elegance. Or perhaps he has set his face this way as he waits. For his father to adjust the lens; for the sweat to trickle into the pits of his new shirt; for the terrible moment when they have to go. A dismembered hand floating in the ink of navy. One gold button, the only proud thing in the room.

The photo has captured nothing. Not the glow from the flowers on the mantel behind him, a present, which in this picture might as well be fake, or the evaporating droplets on the windowpane. Not this boy’s beautiful, desperate love, tamped-down inside him like brown sugar in a measuring cup, which should fill every corner of the frame. Which should make that sad house plant beside him burst into flower. You would never guess that he is not looking out of a picture at all but is standing in a room looking at a grown man, at his own father, and what he thinks of that man we, looking at the picture, will never know. His is not the first photo not to capture these things, but for the viewer they might as well never have existed.

DANIEL CLOWES was born in Chicago in 1961 and now lives in Oakland, California, with his wife, Erika, their son, Charles, and their beagle, Ella. His books include
Ghost World
,
David Boring
,
Caricature
and
Ice Haven
.

 

EDWIDGE DANTICAT was born in Haiti and moved to the United States of America when she was twelve years old. She is the author of several books, including
Breath
,
Eyes
,
Memory
,
Krik? Krak!
,
The Farming of Bones
,
The Dew Breaker
and, most recently,
Brother, I’m Dying
, a memoir.

 

DAVE EGGERS is the editor of
McSweeney’s
and the author of four books, including
What Is the What
. He is the co-founder of 826 Valencia.

 

JONATHAN SAFRAN FOER was born in 1977. He is the author of
Everything Is Illuminated
, which won the National Jewish Book Award and the
Guardian
First Book Award, and
Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close
. He is also the editor of
A Convergence of Birds
, a tribute to the work of the American assemblage artist Joseph Cornell. He lives in Brooklyn, New York.

 

ANDREW SEAN GREER is the author of three works of fiction, most recently
The Confessions of Max Tivoli
, a national bestseller. He is the recipient of the California Book Award, the Northern California Book Award, the NY Public Library Young Lions Award, and a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. He lives in San Francisco.

 

ALEKSANDAR HEMON was born in Sarajevo, and moved to Chicago in 1992. Upon his arrival in the US of A, he had all kinds of lousy jobs, including, but not limited to, canvassing for Greenpeace and teaching English as a Second Language to the people who suddenly found their First Language nearly perfectly useless. He acquired an MA degree in English from Northwestern and dropped the pursuit of a PhD the moment he sold his book
The Question of Bruno
. Then he wrote
Nowhere Man
. His stories have appeared in
The New Yorker
,
Granta
,
Esquire
,
The Paris Review
and in the
Best American Short Stories
, among others. He writes a column in Bosnian, under the unfortunate title
Hemonwood
, for the Sarajevo magazine
Dani
. He is a Guggenheim, MacArthur and decent fellow. When he lives, he lives in Chicago.

 

A. M. HOMES is the author of the acclaimed memoir,
The Mistress’s Daughter
and the novels,
This Book Will Save Your Life
,
Music For Torching
,
The End of Alice
,
In A Country of Mothers
, and
Jack
, as well as the short-story collections,
Things You Should Know
and
The Safety of Objects
, the travel book,
Los Angeles: People, Places and The Castle on the Hill
, and the artist’s book
Appendix A:
.

 

NICK HORNBY was born in 1957. He is the author of four novels:
High Fidelity
,
About A Boy
,
How To Be Good
and
A Long Way Down
, and two other woks of non-fiction:
Fever Pitch
and
The Complete Polysyllabic Spree
. In 1999 he was awarded the E. M. Forster Award by the American Academy of Arts and Letters. He lives and works in Highbury, north London.

 

HEIDI JULAVITS is the author of three novels, most recently
The Uses of Enchantment
. She is a founding editor of
The Believer
magazine and the recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. She lives in New York and Maine.

MIRANDA JULY is a filmmaker, performing artist and writer. Her collection of short stories,
No One Belongs Here More Than You
, was published earlier this year. She lives in Los Angeles.

 

A. L. KENNEDY has written four collections of short fiction and four novels, along with two books of non-fiction - many of these have won awards. Her latest novel is
Day
. She produces a variety of journalism and also writes for the stage, radio, film and TV and performs stand-up comedy. In 1993 and 2003 she was listed among
Granta
’s Best of Young British Novelists.

 

HARI KUNZRU is the author of
The Impressionist
,
Transmission
and the short story collection
Noise
, and was named one of Granta’s Best of Young British Novelists in 2003. He is a contributing editor of
Mute
magazine and sits on the executive council of English PEN. He lives in East London.

 

JONATHAN LETHEM is the author of six novels including
The Fortress of Solitude
, as well as two collections of short stories. He lives in Brooklyn and Maine.

 

TOBY LITT was born in 1968. He is the author of
Adventures in Capitalism
,
Beatniks
,
Corpsing
,
deadkidsongs
,
Exhibitionism
,
Finding Myself
,
Ghost Story
and
Hospital
. In 2003, he was named one of
Granta
’s Best of Young British Novelists. His website can be found at
www.tobylitt.com
.

 

DAVID MITCHELL was born in England in 1969. He is the author of four novels. He lives in Ireland with his wife and their two children.

 

ANDREW O’HAGAN lives in London and his latest novel is
Be Near Me.

ZZ PACKER is the author of
Drinking Coffee Elsewhere
, which was a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award and a
New York Times
Notable Book. A graduate of Yale, she has been a Wallace Stegner-Truman Capote fellow at Stanford University, where she is currently a Jones lecturer. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area.

 

GEORGE SAUNDERS, a 2006 MacArthur Fellow, is the author of five books of fiction including the short story collections
CivilWarLand in Bad Decline
,
Pastoralia
, and
In Persuasion Nation
. He teaches at Syracuse University.

 

POSY SIMMONDS was born in 1945 in Berkshire. She studied at the Sorbonne University, Paris before returning to England to attend the Central School of Art and Design in London. She has contributed to the
Guardian
since 1972 and has also drawn for the
Sun
,
The Times
and
Cosmopolitan
. Her bestselling children’s books include
Fred, Lulu and the Flying Babies
and
The Chocolate Wedding
, and her books for adults include
Gemma Bovery
and
Literary Life.
She lives in London.

 

ZADIE SMITH was born in north-west London in 1975. She is the author of
White Teeth
,
The Autograph Man
and
On Beauty
.

 

ADAM THIRLWELL was born in 1978. His first novel,
Politics
, was published in 2003. A book about novels,
Miss Herbert
, is out this year. ‘Nigora’ is from a novel in progress.

 

COLM TÓIBÍN is the author of the five novels, including
The Black-water Lightship
and
The Master
, and a volume of stories
Mothers and Sons
. He lives in Dublin.

 

VENDELA VIDA is the author of two novels,
Let the Northern Lights Erase Your Name
and
And Now You Can Go
. Her first book,
Girls on the Verge
, was a journalistic study of female initiation rituals in America. She is the co-editor of
The Believer
magazine, the editor of
The Believer Book of Writers Talking to Writers
, and a founding board member and teacher at 826 Valencia. She lives in Northern California.

 

CHRIS WARE lives outside of Chicago, Illinois, and is the author of
Jimmy Corrigan - the Smartest Kid on Earth
. He is currently serializing two new graphic novels in his ongoing periodical
The ACME Novelty Library
, the 18th and 18½ issues of which will be released in late 2007.

Thanks to Ted Thompson and Sarah Vowell for suggesting the project, to Linda Shaughnessy and Georgia Garrett for ensuring publication in many territories, and to Nick Laird for the title.