carolyn kellogg

The first thing I learned upon meeting Eric Bogosian is that for years I have been mispronouncing his name (it is not boh-goh-zee-ann). Then I learned many other things, after he said something like wouldn’t it be nice if we could have a conversation like people talking for real, which I am mangling because he said it before I turned on the tape recorder.

What he did say, verbatim, is in this feature in today’s LA Times.

While Bogosian was in LA, he did several readings. I made it to two. Above is him at Skylight Books, where he seemed more worn out than he’d been when I saw him at his hotel a few days before. Maybe it was the bookstore, which was kind of an energy suck that night. Maybe Hollywood had been beating him down.

I admit I am charmed when someone who I perceive in one way — in this case, Bogosian as the angry New Yorker — turns out to have other dimensions, especially when they are literary, because I am so fond of books. Bogosian is, in addition to being a tremendous performer, a reader and a writer of the first class. I am grateful that he chatted with me as he did in his hotel suite, as if we were people having a real conversation.

And here I am in New York, after reading his very New York book and talking about his very New York experiences. I will not be here long enough.