Jo Piazza is always telling me I bury the lede. The shortest version of what follows is: if you’re inclined to order I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself, please do so in the next six days. Bisou bisou.
When I was little and we needed to leave the house my mother would stand at the front door and call out “the time has come the Walrus said…” We were not big Lewis Carroll fans in our house (C.S. Lewis fans, yes…adventure over absurdity and word play) so it was years before I understood what she quoting, or even that she was quoting from something.
This was true of many things she said. My mother came from a generation and education that prioritized memorizing poetry, and I was well into university before I could match the phrases I’d grown up hearing around the house with their sources. (“Lead on, Macduff!” was another favorite.)
Sadly, my poetry brain is far less accomplished than my mother’s (though certain passages from 1990’s issues of Vogue do so seem to have lodged themselves in there) but as I head into pub week for my second memoir the phrase “Once more unto the breach, dear friends…” does keep popping up.
And truly, the time has come. The book publishes Tuesday. If you are at all inclined to buy it, I’d be very grateful if you did so between now and next Saturday when your purchase will have the most impact. First week sales and pre-orders have an outsized impact on whether a publishing house will invest in the book and author beyond pub day. It’s a broken system that does a disservice to everyone involved — writers and readers — l but it’s currently the one we’ve got.
There is a bunch of press planned for the coming week — including an excerpt running in the Guardian tomorrow — which you can keep up with here if you so desire. The excerpt is one of my favorite scenes in the book, and going over edits of it this week was thoroughly enjoyable.
Meanwhile the op-ed I wrote for the New York Times a few weeks back has gone so viral it’s now a meme, which I find hysterical. Far more importantly, Tracee Ellis Ross shared the op-ed on her Instagram, which…3AM-post-waitressing-shift, circa 2003, Girlfriends-watching me nearly died.
Here are nice things people have recently said about the book.
CNN: “The “sad character” narrative is a longtime feature of the way we’re trained to think about single, aging women. There’s something about a woman old enough to know herself, and, perhaps, to care a lot less about others’ opinions than she did a decade earlier, that seems endlessly threatening to some factions of our society. A forthcoming memoir from the brilliant writer Glynnis MacNicol, “I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself: One Woman’s Pursuit of Pleasure in Paris,” addresses this provocation head-on.”
Ann Friedman: “And so I devoured two new books by women slightly older than me—Glynnis MacNicol’s I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself and Miranda July’s All Fours. The authors are both big-sister types with boundless energy and iconic curly hair who are still sexy, still reinventing, still creative, still free as they round the corner into 50. Both are cis white women who are outside the norm in their own ways (July is queer; MacNicol is single and childfree). The difference: Glynnis matches my excitement about aging.”
Lindsey Tramuta: “Her new memoir hitting shelves next week, I’m Mostly Here to Enjoy Myself, is an absolutely delightful romp that documents her liberated period of self-exploration. But the message goes far beyond one of self-care and unabashed enjoyment— the book challenges the idea that to have a compelling story as an older, single woman sans enfants, the journey (wherever it takes places) must necessarily lead to love.”
As always, you can find an updated list events here. Current line-up below.
June 11/NYC - The Strand w/ Katy Tur
June 17/LA - Skylight Books w/ Ann Friedman
June 19/Baltimore - Jennifer Romolini and Glynnis MacNicol, in conversation with Leslie Price
Poetry is not a luxury. See you on the flippity flip.
I have never been so excited for a book to be published! Would you know if your book is available in any anglophone bookstores in Paris? I prefer to avoid ordering online when I can...
Huge! I can totally see Tracee in the movie version of the book 🤞🏼😉