What Would Ian McEwan’s Webmaster Do?
Sometimes in the course of my day-to-day activities, I just have to pause and think: how does my lived experience differ from that of my colleague, Ian McEwan? Like me, Ian McEwan probably eats breakfast every morning, and wears shoes. Like me, McEwan also has a website: http://ianmcewan.com. The existence of this website proves that someone must be maintaining it (the “first cause” proof); which, in turn, raises the question of what McEwan’s webmaster is like. How do his character, appearance, and biography differ from those of my webmaster? Does he bartend?
In September, after the reading at NYU, n+1 kindly let me use their offices to have a small party. It was really nice of them, especially since they also donated a significant amount of beer, ice, and labor. I remember they had their interns lugging around huge bags of ice and industrial-sized garbage cans. “What heroic interns!” I exclaimed, to which one of the ice-carriers (more substantially built than the others) remarked: “I’m no stinking intern.” 
This turned out to be the artist and critic Dushko Petrovich, founding editor of Paper Monument, n+1’s “sister publication” about contemporary art. Petrovich also contributed a piece of original artwork (right), which we have saved in case it might “appreciate.”
Anyway, the reason I mention this party is that my webmaster, Mathias, bartended for a good three hours, impressing all with his affability and good coordination.
Now you have enough information to appreciate the following email, which I received from Keith Gessen in November, regarding my blog and also regarding the n+1 Bay Area party of 12/1:
…And, in the spirit of my age-old battles with bloggers, I object to the use of the word “used” in reference to my suit. I mean, yes, it was, but I’ll be damned if it wasn’t the most expensive used suit in history. Or at least in the history of me.
Elif!… please tell everyone you know to come to the party on Saturday. It’s at the Swedish-American Hall on Market.
Elif: Can you bartend?
Elif: It will be free for subscribers, $7 for non-subscribers. Subscriptions $20 at the door. Drinks will be dirt cheap! There will be dance music.
Tell Mathias to tell everyone he knows!! Of course he should also bartend.
I’m going crazy. —Keith
I took this mostly in the spirit of jest. Then, on the day of the party, I received a telephone call from Gessen. “So can Mathias bartend?” he asked.
“Seriously?” I said. “I thought that was a joke.”
“That wasn’t a joke,” Gessen said.
“Keith Gessen just called on the phone,” I told Mathias, after hanging up. “He wants to know if you can bartend.”
“Seriously?” said Mathias.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I think so.”
“That’s really funny,” said Mathias.
We took Muni to the Swedish-American Hall. My neighborhood (in Twin Peaks) is served exclusively by the 37 bus, which prefers to wander through life with an existential freedom from “preexisting scripts” such as a timetable. This time it came 25 minutes late, relative to our expectations. Mathias and I passed the time by expanding my vocabulary of grouchy comments in French. Just as we were grumbling, “On s’éclate, on se gèle les miches” (”We’re having so much fun, we’re freezing our butts off”), the bus came, causing a middle-aged guy who was also waiting for the bus to exclaim, in a Germanic accent: “C’est un miracle!”
At the party, drinks really were dirt cheap ($1 for beer and wine). The one who ended up doing the most bartending seemed to be former n+1 intern and current Stanford graduate student, Nikil Saval. “I’m behind bars,” Saval observed, “behind the bar.”
Eventually, Saval fled the bar to go dancing; and guess who was playing the irresistible dance music? That’s right! The incredibly tall and skinny guy in the black dress (wearing tonight a very long and narrow skirt, made of some black quilted material), who left the Berkeley reading early! Not only was he a great DJ—you couldn’t keep the bartenders behind bars, that’s how great—but he was also really polite. During our single brief interaction, he shook my hand and assured me that he would have liked to stay longer at the reading, but had had to go DJ another party.
$3 of wine later, I was explaining to n+1 editor Chad Harbach (who probably wasn’t interested at all… sorry, Chad) my theory about how and why the South Beach Diet doesn’t work. “You know what diet clearly works,” I said, “is whatever diet the DJ is on.” Let me tell you, that DJ was really, really skinny.
“I happen to know the DJ’s diet,” Chad said. “The DJ is a vegan.”
As it turns out, the DJ was Chad Harbach’s college roommate! But, as it also turns out, he was always that skinny, even before he became a vegan. So much for that “diet.”
Speaking of diets, I was peculiarly moved that evening when a fat guy rushed up to me in what seemed like a panic, asking where he could find Mark Greif. Alas, I told him, Mark wasn’t at the party, he had to go back East early. The fat guy looked stricken, and said that he had subscribed to n+1 entirely on the basis of Greif’s “Against Exercise,” the best thing n+1 has ever published. I later reported this incident to Greif, who was very sorry to have let down his fan. (Greif mentioned in the same email that he is “working on mustering up enough anger to write ‘Against Hygiene’ for smelly people”; but I think this was a joke.)
By that point in the evening, Keith Gessen was bartending, industriously. A lot of people were interested in the $1 beer. I decided to lend a hand—partly, in order to preempt anyone trying to make my webmaster do any bartending, because I think he didn’t feel like it that night. (I don’t know how McEwan operates, but I’m considerate that way with my staff.)
Previously to this evening I had never actually operated a beer keg, so I didn’t know that you had to use a pump, or that you had to hold the nozzle below the level of the beer in the keg. Luckily Keith Gessen was there to “walk me through” the process, and also to shout encouraging remarks, e.g.: “Like that, Elif, like that! Keep making more money!” Or: “That’s a good pour! A good pour with a nice head!” In fact, despite my efforts to hold the glass at an angle, pretty much all the beer I dispensed came out 85% foam. Some of the beer drinkers weren’t happy about this. “Elif Batuman is pouring you a beer!” Gessen periodically shouted, I guess to raise their spirits. One guy told me: “I think you should stick to writing.”
Dear readers: this concludes the story of the n+1 Bay Area Tour! I leave you with photographic documentation of the solved mystery of the identity of the tall skinny guy in the black dress (taken by my webmaster, on his cell phone camera). I took the precaution of labeling the important elements.
God natt! och lycka till!
Tags: Bay Area public transportation, beards, d-list, events, Keith Gessen, music, n+1