The book launch as a proposal of marriage

A book launch is like an engagement. That proposal of marriage. To understand what I mean, one has to get into the mind of a novelist. And that is a difficult proposition when you look around and see what novelists look like. I mean, how do you find out what is in the mind of a novelist unless you go out there and find one, and when found, get them to talk to you?

First, spot a novelist. Where do you go? Hollywood? Don’t make the mistake of thinking that they look like Jack Nicholson in The Shining or Emma Thompson as PL Tracers in Saving Mr Banks. And you can be sure Jane Austen did not look like Anne Hathaway in Becoming Jane. If that were the case, Pride and Prejudice would never have been written. Sure all the rich guys with ten thousand a year, or more, wouldn’t have avoided her long enough to allow her to complete the first draft!

I’m afraid you have to look elsewhere. Any decent sized restaurant in Mullingar or Athlone would be a more likely place to visit. As you enter said establishment, look out for the most dowdy looking guy or the most dull looking woman of indefinite vintage and there you will find them.

You may think that the Bohemian looking guy with ponytail and Birkenstocks is your man, or the corresponding artistic type of the female species is your only woman. But no, look again. Yes, that’s him in his battle-hardened jeans or Dunnes Stores slacks and a head either bereft of hair or a head of hair that could do with a trimming; or is it that rather tired looking woman gazing blankly into the middle spaces.

And you may think little is going on in middle spaces of their minds, or if you believe in such an archetype, their souls. But you would be wrong, seriously wrong.

Worlds of chaos are being brought into existence, thrilling expeditions into undiscovered lands and unrequited emotions are being organised and launched on an unsuspecting public. Evil deeds that men (and women) do to their fellow persons are being concocted in their imaginations, to such an extent that if you believed that there was some correspondence between the imagination of the writer and gazing into the middle distances, you’d think twice before entering that restaurant and hightail it to the nearest garda station to report the presence of a crime about to be committed, and be convinced that it ought to be stopped before it brings about Armageddon to a nation, a village, family or innocent individual(s).

That’s why book launches are so necessary. Why is that, you may ask, and while you are at it, why compare it to a proposal of marriage or the engagement ring? Obviously, because the dowdy and dull, the quiet and modest mind/soul offers his or her work as a dowry to the reading public!

At the launching of a book, the writer, in fear and trepidation places one knee on the ground and pleads, Will you, my dear reader, buy my book and agree to read it, and in so doing, recommend it to yet another reader?

If the answer is in the affirmative it doesn’t matter that there is no similarity to Jack Nicholson or Anne Hathaway in any way, shape or form. The dull and dowdy has just been accepted, loved and encouraged to keep on writing, creating worlds of wonder and weirdness, emotions of despair and hope.

The marriage between the writer and the reader has mentally, if not emotionally, been, or is about to be, consummated.