Woman of Letters party in San Francisco (May 30th)

My nonfiction book, What’s So Great About The Great Books? is coming out on May 19th. The book tour will only have two stops: a New York event at McNally Jackson Seaport on May 27th, and a launch party in San Francisco at an undisclosed location in the Mission (May 30th).

The purpose of this post is to get RSVPs for the San Francisco event. Right now the capacity is 150 people. I have no idea whether we’ll hit that cap, but you won’t be able to attend unless you RSVP, so if you’re interested, please sign up.

For the San Francisco event I will be in conversation with Ross Barkan, whose novel Colossus is coming out April 28th. Dog-Eared Books will be selling copies of both of our books at this event. I think the in-conversation part should take under an hour, including audience questions, and then it’ll just be a party—the event starts at 6 PM and then I have the venue until 10 PM. There will be drinks and light snacks.

Basically, I got envious of all the New York literary parties I’m always hearing about. If The Metropolitan Review and The Drift can have parties then I figure that I can have one too.

This newsletter has been publishing for two years (in its current format) and over that time has built up a pretty strong following—for my Baltimore meetup, we had people take the train from DC and drive down from New Jersey. I would love to have a chance to meet my readers and to give them a chance to meet each other. Don’t be scared, I am exceptional at small talk and mingling.

In a few days, Ross will push out the event to his list, and there’s a chance it’ll fill up, so if you’re interested in coming, please RSVP—I will use the RSVP list to email people with more details, including the exact location of the event.

I am coming to New York too

The New York event will be at a bookstore, McNally Jackson Seaport. I’ll share more details as soon as they’re announced.

But for that event, I will be in conversation with Clare Frances, who runs the excellent Famous and Beloved Newsletter—it’s kinda hard to describe her newsletter, but basically it is cultural and media criticism that is very smart, but isn’t trying to sound very smart. I cannot explain this distinction better than that, but if you follow this newsletter for a while, you’ll get it. The lowkey and unpretentious (while still very smart) approach is so great.

My book is coming out in five weeks

Hopefully by this point you’re aware that I’ve written a non-fiction book. Many of you (probably more than half) believe that this book has already been released. It has not been. It is coming out on Tuesday, May 19th, in exactly five weeks. For roughly the next ten weeks, I’ll be mentioning this book (What’s So Great About The Great Books?) a lot. Then, sometime around June 23rd, the book release cycle will be over, and I’ll never mention it again.

Although nobody will say it, I think the promotional strategy for my nonfiction book is this: every book-lover has some sort of pre-existing thoughts about the classics, and the purpose of my book is to give people the chance to discuss their pre-existing thoughts. Basically, you just read my book, look through my arguments for and against the classics, and then you’re like, “Oh no! These are not the right arguments! Kanakia did a bad job of making these arguments!” And then you write a post or make a Tiktok or do a tweet that explains your own thoughts.

This is basically what’s been happening over the last year with that W. David Marx book Blank Space, which is about cultural decline. Everyone has some thoughts about cultural decline, so in reviewing this book people can propound their own thoughts.

And what are my thoughts about the Great Books? Well, I think they’re very important thoughts that nobody has written about yet (other than me). I could summarize those thoughts here, but it would be impossible. To really understand them, you’d need to read the book, which you’ll be able to do in a mere five weeks.

You will be able to purchase a copy of this book at either of my events. You can also pre-order What’s So Great About The Great Books on Amazon and on Bookshop. I know many of you have already preordered. If you preorder a book and bring it to one of my events, I’ll happy to sign it there.

Correction

In last week’s round-up of the Samuel Richardson Award finalists I left off Eric Giroux’s Zodiac Pets. Our judge, Ani N, said:

Zodiac Pets shines because it is able to strike tricky balances: between moments of over the top craziness and moments of tender and care, between the characters expressing their totemic qualities and their human frailties, between the overbearing protagonist and the rich world. Above all, it is the rare piece of metafiction - (Hernan Diaz’s Trust comes to mind as another example) that uses the affordances of its format to their full potential.

Sorry for the oversight!

Elsewhere on the internet…

In last week’s paid post I took exception to a ten-year-old Yiyun Li interview that contained some baffling advice for aspiring writers:

If you spend any time around established literary writers, you’ll be subjected to baffling advice about how it’s important not to pursue publication. Don’t be anxious to get published, just work on your craft, and the book deal will come in time.