I Thought I Poisoned William Vollmann

Last week, I had the incredible, unbelievable, amazing, opportunity to interview one of my literary heroes, William Vollmann.  Who is more awesome than Bill Vollmann?  He is the master of fieldwork.  He goes where no sane person would ever think to venture, puts himself into incredibly dangerous situations then brings back insights that, in my opinion, are life altering.  The guy is fearless and brilliant.  I start my days thinking, “Today I’m going to try and be more like Vollmann.  I’m not going to let a little thing like danger stop me from doing what I need to do!” Anyway, he was coming into L.A. on his Kissing the Mask book tour and Tyson Cornell at Rare Bird Lit had organized a lunch interview with me, Vollmann and Joseph Mattson.  Devin Tachum was going to record the interview and it will be posted on The Nervous Breakdown website very soon.  When I heard it was going to be lunch, I begged Tyson to let me cook.  I’m not a great cook but something about preparing food for my idol seemed appropriate.

I got up early Wednesday morning and went to the market.  Lemon rosemary chicken, two kinds of pasta, Caesar salad with the secret special dressing, olives, bread, cheese, salami. (Note: men love salami.)  And most importantly, lots of really good wine.  (I’m a red wine drinker and so is Vollmann!  I was delighted that we had that in common.)  I had enough food for twenty and there were just five of us.  That’s okay, I thought, sometimes men get really, really hungry.

Joe picked up Bill (I love calling him Bill) at the airport and brought him straight to my place.  I hadn’t met Joe (I love calling him Joe) but I did read his novel Empty The Sun and had listened to the excellent soundtrack that accompanies, and perfectly complements, the very tight and compelling book.  I was anxious to meet him too.

Yes, maybe I had a couple of glasses of wine while waiting for the arrival.  Wouldn’t you?  Have you ever had Vollmann over to your house?  You need to drink wine.  Trust me.  It’s a nervous-making experience.  I don’t know what I was expecting but I was completely surprised.  They walked in smiling.  Both men were open and generous and just plain nice.  And it was incredibly easy to talk to them. Sometimes I feel like I belong at the kids table and I notice that I slip into California surf lingo—a dialect that even my children wouldn’t use—but on that day I maintained my writer’s voice and the three of us had a really interesting discussion.  We talked about the research we’d done for our various books and I found we actually had a lot in common.  Life and death experiences—all three of us have been there.  I don’t want to spoil the interview by describing it.  It should be up soon and I hope you’ll listen to it.

Bill had another appointment that afternoon and so he left around 2:00.  I cleaned up the kitchen and spent the rest of the day trying to decide what to wear to the book signing that evening.  Dress up?  Dress down?  I worked it out and arrived at Book Soup early but not early enough to snag one of the seats.  No problem, I got a good spot in the back.  Bill gave a GREAT reading and his discussion of Kissing the Mask was brilliant. It was a perfect ending to a perfect day.  I went home and fell asleep, happy as can be.

And then I woke up.  It was 12:15.  I noticed the time when I ran by the clock on my way to emptying the contents of my stomach.  I knew immediately that I had food poisoning.  It’s just something you know when you’re vomiting every 15 to 20 minutes over the course of four to five hours.  I’m not sure I’ve ever been quite that sick in my entire life and all I could think, the entire time, was that I’d poisoned Vollmann. What?  What had I done wrong?  Was it the chicken?  The salad?  Every time I posed the question, I dry-heaved.  Through my careless culinary habits, I had brought down my great hero in midst of his book tour.  He would never forgive me—nor should he.

The sun finally rose and I dragged my wretched self to the computer.  I know Tyson is an early riser and so I wrote to him: “How are you feeling?”  I held my breath and I didn’t move from my chair except for one quick trip to the bathroom, which turned out to be a false alarm.  Finally the reply: Tyson was fine.  Joe was fine.  Devin was fine.  That meant Vollmann had to be fine.  And then I remembered that before the lunch there had been breakfast, a suspiciously sour tasting egg white and feta wrap from some coffee place.  I alone had been poisoned.  Hallelujah.