It's the 2009 National Book Awards and These People Feel Fine

2009's National Book Awards went down last night. In delightful twists of irony, they were a) sponsored by Google, b) held on Wall Street, and c) James Franco was there. So were Party Crash Photog Mo Pitz and I. BOOKS!

"Look up, see that?" An editor at Reagan Arthur drunkenly smiled during the boozy, Bat Mitzvah-y after party held on the balcony overlooking the ballroom of the Cipriani Wall Street, and woozily pointed up to a perch some 25-feet above the dance floor. "See where the DJ is?" We stared above us. "Next year, it's not going to be a DJ. It's gonna be a Kindle." Brilliantly wasted drunkspeak that it was, she had a point. And she couldn't have been the only one thinking it.

Just like film, TV, and music, everything's going digital, and some of the people in that room might be scared shitless that their product's going the way of the buffalo. Hence, the hysterical irony of Google sponsoring the party. The guys hoarding — and then giving away for free — the beautiful words that should cost money to buy, those fucking guys who call it "content" and are mainlining it into concentration camps of data, those were the guys holding the party.

Every year, media industries have their traditional back-patting ceremonies where they heap upon their products awards saluting their best and brightest. Cynics see it as a way to drive sales to products that need it (see: The Oscars, The Tonys, etc). The pompous, starfucky nonsense put in plain view at awards for film, TV, and music doesn't stick, here, and it shouldn't since basically everyone in the room more or less knows each other. The dance floor's raging and you get the feeling that people are genuinely humbled by winning. Truly, it's nice. And the general consensus was that it was a fun, fun party. That always helps.

Mo and I showed up to Cipriani's Wall Street ballroom around our invite's stated start time of 10pm, along with all the rest of the media folk there to get fucked up on the cheap. We were turned away immediately: The ceremony's running long, it'll be another half an hour 'til the after-party. We stood outside with a bunch of publishing assistants while I decided whether to put on my tie, which was rolled up in my pocket. "There're people in tuxes in there, goddamnit" Mo warned me. The invite said "festive attire." I decided to put my tie on. "You look like a Young Republican," Mo warned me.

The reason for the delay? The explanation I got was that Gore Vidal gave a "sad, rambling, 20-minute speech." His opening salvo: "'Most Presidents fear assassination. It is my impression I shall vanish from your view because I have been fired,' said Roosevelt." It's bad enough that your industry's fighting for its life. Letting your keynote speaker deliver an unintentionally sad requiem couldn't have been the best move.

We were let in to bum-rush the party just as host Andy Borowitz introduced the final award: the prize for the year's Best Fiction Book. I'd been having a cigarette with a guy who'd introduced himself as a member of James Franco's Columbia MFA class before we walked in. "$20 on McCann," I thought to myself, except, I said it out loud. Whoops. Sure enough, Colum McCann's book Let the Great World Spin, won. Someone knocked over a chair standing up applauding for him. Franco's classmate laughed at me. "What?" I looked at him. "It's the only book anybody's heard of." How could McCann's book not have won?

But maybe that's why my woozy, wobbly-footed editor friend was smiling when she stared up at the DJ and made her draconian prediction of a Kindle telling us how to dance instead of the Jersey DJ bumping Top 40 hits all night. Because there's still some esprit de corps amongst book authors, because they still care, because there's still a reason to get crunk. Books might be fucked, but at least they're worth saving. It's not all bad.

Mo and I got drunk and took pictures. We also got people to sign a magical book for charity, which you'll learn about later. In the mean time: here's who we saw. All of these people are drunk.