Interview: Andrew Sean Greer
Who is that charming young man riding his scooter up Divis for the early-bird special at the Metro Cafe? It's Andrew Sean Greer, California Book Award winner for The Confessions of Max Tivoli, San Franciscan, and one of the featured readers at Picador's 10th Birthday Event (scroll down) at A Clean Well Lighted Place For Books, this Wednesday at 7 p.m. To kick things off, we have some copies of Max Tivoli to give away, here on SFist!
Just fill in the blanks below to win -- and don't enter if you write for an "-ist," please.
To whet your appetite for Greer, read his SFist Interview after the jump!
We hear that you were the commencement speaker at your own graduation -- how did that work? Did you have to shake your own hand?
It's not at all as smarty-pants as it sounds---my friend and I wrote part of a speech and submitted it to a committee, and then the school voted, and we won! So actually there were TWO of us--me and my friend Alaraby--who read a kind of tag-team piece. We also made a comment about the needs of poorer students that nearly got us booed offstage....
Since you're Mr. Graduation speaker, what's your advice for recent grads?
Same as it was then--don't fall into a career path you don't love just because it's paying the rent, and don't fall into a marriage you don't love just because you dated them all through your twenties. That is to say: don't just react to things.
Students and writers are always looking for good spots to write in The City. Do you have a place (cafe, restaurant, other) you're happiest writing, in San Francisco?
I can't write in a cafe, sadly. Too noisy and distracting! But for my money, I'll put down Cafe Soleil on Haight and Fillmore because Mustafa, the owner, is cool and it's on my block in the lower haight and they have these almond croissants....
Introduce yourself in one sentence: Hello, I'm a complete fraud.
Occupation: Writer
Home town: San Francisco. Oh you mean where I'm born? Rockville, Maryland....
How much time have you spent in the Bay Area? 8 years...but lived there also when I was 20 and had a fake ID
Favorite website: Betty Chu's Angora rabbits. Abandon all hope....
Favorite local business: Creativity Explored
What I'm currently reading: Kenzaburo Oe: Rouse Up O Young Men of the New Age!
Best deal in San Francisco: Early bird 3-course dinner at Le Metro on Divisadero; was twelve bucks last time I looked.
Favorite mode of transportation: Scooter
Favorite local hangout: Toronado
SF would be soooo much better if only: They had followed the original post-1906 earthquake plan and extended Golden Gate Park all the way to the bay; also of course if rents were cheaper....
Best burrito: La Taqueria
Best restaurant: Panchita's #3
Best movie scene filmed in or about SF: Whatever sea creature tentacularly destroys the Golden Gate Bridge in that old movie...
Best thing to do in the city in the summer: Visit New York and be thankful we don't have sweltering heat
Favorite author to come out of the Bay Area: Daniel Handler
Place you always tell visitors to check out: The Columbarium
Favorite bridge in the area: Weird stepping-stones on Stowe Lake over malfunctioning waterfall
You have two hours and $15 bucks to kill in SF, what are you going to do?
Walk through Golden Gate to Clement Street, pig out on pork buns for 2 dollars, and spend the rest at Green Apple in the used book section
I have found/sold/bought the following on craigslist: Left a broken coatrack on the street, advertised it as free on craigslist and sat with a cup of coffee at my front window watching who showed up. Within five minutes, two guys in a van nabbed it and raced away. Wonderful; hope it ends up as art.