Simon Lewis: Comrade Hack

I woke up on saturday morning looking at a massive blotch of mold on nicotine-stained wallpaper, and I thought, oh yes, I know this, I’m in a Chinese no-star hotel room, with cigarette burns on the carpet and a spittoon in the corner. It was a couple of seconds before I realised that, no, the mold was just a shadow, the wallpaper was tastefully marbled and I was in fact lying in a massive bed in a ritzy hotel on Sunset Boulevard, and for perhaps the first time in my life I got out of bed with enthusiasm.

I was having the best time. Yesterday afternoon I had been met at the airport and put in a limousine. The driver was a half-Filipino half-Belgian army vet. He was writing a novel, worked on it while waiting for people to come out of restaurants. He, like every American I met, was disarmingly friendly and happy to tell me his life story. I don’t know if that’s cause they are more open than Brits or just like talking about themselves. A bit of both I guess. I had spent ages in immigration and the LA traffic was slow so when I got to the hotel I only had half an hour before I was supposed to be picked up again – just time to shower and change into a suit.

I got down to the lobby and there were the other nominees. They put us on a coach and I sat next to an eminent theoretical physicist, Leonard Susskind. You don’t meet one of them every day. He told me about Stephen Hawking’s dinner parties. He went all round the world lecturing so mostly we talked about travelling. We had a good chat cause the bus was stuck in traffic for an hour.

We were taken to the LA times building and then there was like a cocktail party.  I wasn’t going to stand on my own twirling a bit of cheese on a stick so I went up to people and talked to them. I met a biographer who was writing a history of the lightbulb and a cartoonist and a wise cracking private detective turned novelist, and his agent, who quickly seemed pretty keen to be my agent.

Most of them seemed to be from New York or other cities and wanted to stress to me, the US newbie, that I shouldn’t think that the rest of the country was like this.

The actual awards ceremony was in this big hall and there were a thousand people or so and it was a format like the oscars, lots of categories. I met James Ellroy on the way in. He was very tall and bald and wearing a bowtie. He said, or rather barked, ‘I think you’ll win.’
‘Why?’
‘Cause you’re white. And you look heterosexual. And a white straight man has to be favourite.’ Then a black guy walked past and he said, ‘No, he’ll win cause he’s black. It’s cool to be black now, have you heard?’

Then we started talking about Wales – he’d been there – and he said how confusing the road signs were and I got to tell an anecdote about the road sign that says in Welsh, ‘The translator is out of the office right now but will get back to you shortly’.

Every winner made a brilliant speech, and I started to dread winning my section, mystery/thriller, cause I hadn’t written a speech, and was drunk, tired and hungry, so not in a good state to improvise one. But the private detective, Michael Koryta won, and made a funny speech, so I was relieved. I was pleased to see the physicist win his ’science book’ category. Terry Pratchett, who won the Young Adult category, sent his acceptance speech in by video. He was filmed in his office and this grouchy old cat was in the foreground, looking like it was trying to take a shit on his computer. A few titters started, then increased as the cat looked more bemused and uncomfortable and pretty soon you couldn’t anything that Terry was saying for people laughing at his cat. 

Then there was another, even bigger, cocktail party. So – six hours of cocktail party after a twelve hour flight. Still, I was one of the last to leave. And I had another long chat with a novelist lady on the bus back to the hotel. I am rarely so social, I guess cause I was psyched by the whole thing. And drunk of course, cause all I’d eaten was canapes.