One on One with Thomas Beller
"Every time I sit around I find I'm shot."
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One on One with Thomas Beller
Thomas Beller has loomed large in my life since 1992, the year I started the MFA writing program Columbia, and the year he graduated. For one thing, he’s 6’5” but for myself and the group of young wannabe writers I hung out with Beller was someone we aspired to model our own careers after. A tall, handsome, talented, native New Yorker with a great head of hair who and already a staff writer at The New Yorker, and a few years away from publishing his first novel, Seduction Theory. He would come back to Dodge Hall to speak to students and would be a special guest at cocktail parties Robert Towers hosted for students at his apartment. One night I was with a pack of young sad writers at a Vietnamese restaurant downtown and in the midst of our commiserating about our futures in walked Thomas Beller along with fellow writer Amanda Filipacchi. We raised our glasses of beer in their direction as a way of saying hello and Beller nodded back. On his way out he stopped by the table to say hello and invited us to a party at his agent’s apartment. I’m sure Mary Evans was wondering how our scrappy gang in blazers got on the guest list, but for me it felt like a small step in what it meant to be a part of literary New York.
Beller has written a number of books including the short story collection, The Sleep-Over Artist; a collection of autobiographical essays, How to Be a Man; and the biography J.D. Salinger: The Escape Artist. In his new book, Lost in the Game: A Book About Basketball, published this week by Duke University Press.
If you’re in New York, Beller will be discussing Lost in the Game alongside Alexander Wolff, author of Big Game, Small World: A Basketball Adventure at an event at the W83 Ministry Center on Tuesday, November 15.
Read on for my conversation with Beller as we talk about New York City street ball, Patrick Ewing and the ‘90s-era Knicks, the sadly missed Seattle SuperSonics, taking a break from drinking, John Cheever’s “The Swimmer,” Pavement, and much more