On being a published author
Pure Innocent Fun’s release week
I appeared on CBS Mornings yesterday to discuss Pure Innocent Fun.
Some other press:
“Ira Madison III's New Book Is A Love Letter To Pop Culture And His Grandmother” (HuffPost)
“Milwaukee native Ira Madison III blends memoir and pop culture in debut book” (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel)
“From Buffy to Mariah, pop culture got Ira Madison III through his teens” (NPR | All Things Considered)
“The 6 Coming-of-Age Films That Made Ira Madison III a Critic” (W Magazine)
“Ira Madison III On The Pop Culture Moments That Raised Him” (WNYC | All of It with Alison Stewart)
It’s been a full week since my book was released into the world. I hope as a Frank subscriber, you’ve gotten your hands on Pure Innocent Fun! But if you haven’t, it’s available in book and audio form. The audiobook was finished in December/January, so I updated a few jokes. And don’t you want to hear my Oprah impersonation?
Anyway, it’s weird to now officially be a published author after four years of working on this book. The publication date seemed so far away until all of a sudden; it wasn’t. There haven’t been many reviews yet, but I am grateful for a positive response from Kirkus Reviews and legendary music critic Ann Powers: “This is such a fun and charming book and will make you reconsider things you’ve taken for granted.”
I can’t wait for more people to discover the book soon. I think people understated how monumental it is going on your first book tour. I have the good fortune to already have an existing fanbase thanks to Keep It and Frank (it’s been nice to meet so many subscribers on my tour!), so I’ve had sold-out book events and lines of people excited to meet me and tell me how much they’ve enjoyed my podcasting or writing over the years. Not many first-time authors get that and I’ll never forget what it’s meant to me to see so many fans in Portland, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, New York, Brooklyn, and Boston! Unfortunately, D.C. was canceled tonight due to weather,1 but I’m looking forward to tomorrow evening’s event in Minneapolis!
In 1993, Liz Phair released Exile in Guyville as a response to the Rolling Stones’ 1972 album Exile on Main Street. Using the Stones album as an inciting incident helped Phair figure out how to even write a record. For me, C Chuck Klosterman was the Stones, and I was Phair. I referred to his book Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs often to figure out how to write my pop culture manifesto. I mean, the book’s introduction is titled “On Chuck Klosterman!” But of course, I kept wondering what Klosterman’s response to all of this would be. Phair told Rolling Stone about meeting the band’s frontman Mick Jagger in the 2000s:
I met Mick at the A&M studios in Los Angeles. It was, five, six years ago, and they were doing a listening party and it was such a big deal. I was working with John Shanks and he was like, you want to meet him? We go back to meet him and I swear to God, John must have said something like, this is the woman that did the Exile in Guyville thing, and Mick gave me this look as if to be like, “Yeah, all right, I’ll let you off the hook this time for completely making a name for yourself off our name, but don’t think I don’t know.” It was very clear they live in some second dimension where little tiny people like me don’t exist and as far as he understood it he was going to forgive me because I was so charming for using their name to further my own. I wasn’t mad. He’s Mick!
In Portland, Live Wire Radio surprised me on stage with an appearance from Klosterman. It was an out-of-this-world moment and the best kickoff to my tour I could’ve ever imagined. He was also incredibly gracious about me using his name to pimp my book.
After that, I had an incredible first book signing in San Francisco at The Booksmith. And a fantastic conversation with Molly Lambert in Los Angeles. And a visit to my hometown where my family and high school friends, including moderator Charlie Berens, showed up to support me. And in New York, I was joined on stage by Phoebe Robinson who urged me to keep having fun writing books.2 In Brooklyn, I did a staged reading of the essay “Fan Fiction” with a cast of readers. In Boston, my Keep It co-host Louis Virtel joined me and we did a live podcast taping.
I’ll have more thoughts about the tour and about the book being a living, breathing thing. But for now, thank you to everyone who’s read or will hopefully read in the near future. Talk soon!
“It's all about books. Everyone who's anyone has a book.” - Samantha Jones, Sex and the City
D.C. will be rescheduled!
I’m already working on a follow-up!
Can't wait for you to reschedule DC!
Congrats! I've just started the book and it is everything I could ever want. A bell hooks and NeNe Leakes quote to kick things off? I'm in.