Something was bound to go wrong eventually — Book tour stop #8: St. Louis, February 13

Before my book tour ever started, I tried to think of all the worst-case scenarios that might occur as I traveled from city to city: belligerent hecklers; readings consisting entirely of bored family members; frenzied, fascistic book burnings, wherein enraged audiences hurled copies Vagabonding into roaring bonfires.

So far, none of this has happened. Nevertheless, I’ve held on to a grain of pessimism, just in case. I’m generally an optimist, of course; I just want to be emotionally prepared in case I’m blindsided by some book-reading fiasco.

In St. Louis, my pessimism finally bore fruit. Not a book tour fiasco, necessarily — but certainly not a success. A wasted stop, if you will. I suppose it was bound to happen eventually.

Things in St. Louis started off pleasantly enough, when I arrived at mid-afternoon to meet a group of cousins I rarely get to see. In addition to the St. Louis crew, my cousin Lori had traveled up from Memphis just for the event. We had an informal party, and everyone brought copies of Vagabonding for me to sign (more, in fact, than I would sign later at the store).

As I signed the books, I realized that I hadn’t ever devised anything special for my autograph. Years ago, when I fancied myself an author (this was long before I’d ever been published), put a lot of thought into this kind of thing. For some reason, I didn’t like my standard signature, so I devised all kinds creative alternatives: a minimalist, macho scrawl; hip, block-like capitals spaced with asterisks; swooping, curvaceous letters with a single line jolting across to notch my f and cross my t’s. By the time I’d actually written a book to sign, however, I just fell back on the spiky, straightforward signature I’ve always used. When I half-seriously brought up the possibility of using my old autograph designs for book signings, my friends unanimously told me to stick with my standard Hancock. So that’s what I’ve been doing.

My one concession to novelty, however, is that I’ve made up a little “VGB” ink logo (in the same design as the VGB stickers), so that I can “stamp” people’s copies of Vagabonding, passport-style. It’s a nice enough gimmick, I suppose, though not many people seem to understand the passport allusion. This idea to put something suitably unique alongside my signature stems from Douglas Coupland, who used to sign copies of Generation X by tracing his hand onto the title page. (Interestingly, my assigning editor at one point asked Coupland to write an introduction to Vagabonding. He replied: “Thanks for the kind offer to write the intro, but I don’t think I’m your guy here. I’m the opposite of a vagabonder, being more of the Armchair Tourist. Good luck to you…. seems like a lovely project.”)

After an afternoon of signing/stamping books and catching up with my cousins, a half-dozen of us caravanned out to the Backwoods on Olive Avenue, where my St. Louis reading was to be held. I took it as a bad sign when we swung into the parking lot to find that the lights inside Backwoods had been turned down. By all appearances, the store had been closed down for the night.

Fortunately, the main door was unlocked, and a small group of staff were sitting inside. When I walked in introduced myself, a grumpy middle-aged fellow I’ll call “Harold” identified himself as the store manager, and explained why the lights were down. “I called the Backwoods head office to ask if you were still coming,” he said. “They told me that you were still coming — but you didn’t call to check in — so I wasn’t sure.”

Now: In my universe, when the head office tells you that an author is going to show up to do a book event, it would seem to imply, well, that the author is going to show up to do a book event. Harold, however, had taken this as a cue to assume the event was canceled. For reasons that were never made entirely clear, Harold hadn’t prepared a slide screen or projector. Harold hadn’t sent word out to the store’s email list, nor had he promoted the event inside the store. Harold had, bafflingly, prepared the store for my reading by making it look like it was closed for the night. Hence, I came to the realization that I’d just driven across the state of Missouri to read for an audience consisting of six relatives, three store employees, two vagabonders who’d read about the event on my website, and one inexplicably petulant store manager (who proceeded to talk loudly to a customer while I was reading from my book).

All of this considered, the St. Louis reading went well enough. In lieu of slides, I passed around a few prints (the same prints, actually, that I keep as conversation-starters on my overseas travels) and told some stories. The small audience asked plenty of questions — particularly (since we were in an equipment store) about what kind of gear to take on a long-term trip. After it was finished, I took two of my cousins and a store employee out for beers at Growler’s Pub — which for some reason was full of people dressed like Dungeons and Dragons characters. I drank my beer, joked with my cousins, and gaped at the medieval-looking punters in the bar (who, in detail that seems odd even as I write it, started a bar-wide contest to see who could give the most creative toast).

As far as muffed book events go, St. Louis could have been much worse — and, if nothing else, I got a rare chance to hang out with my Missouri cousins. Still, I made note to myself to stick to actual bookstores (as opposed to outdoor equipment stores) when I do this again for my next book. Bookstores just seem to have a better grip on how to promote and host these kinds of events.

Two more cities to go: Wichita and New York. I’m especially interested to see what happens in Wichita, my childhood home, since I’ve been struggling of late with ideas of just what or where home is. Perhaps I’ll know a little better by this time next week.