If you liked that reading-a-book-at-a-bar guy’s apology…

…how about some more book-related apologies?

As you probably know, apology fans have been raving about Reading In A Bar guy, aka New Jersey food & culture writer Jeremy Schneider, who infuriated Twitter with 15 simple words: “Please know, if you’re someone who brings a book to a bar…no one likes you.”

After three days of objections, venom, and general mockery — including feedback from bartenders saying that they DO SO like bar-readers, who they count among their easiest customers — Schneider revisited his tweet.

His thread begins here:

After three days of reflecting on this tweet and an evening spent reading at a bar, I have some thoughts.

— Jeremy Schneider (@J_Schneider) February 9, 2022

And it’s good! Schneider names the offense, makes it clear he understands why it offended, notes that he was wrong. He tells us he tried reading at the bar himself, thus putting himself in the shoes of those he peeved. He notes his own bias — he had a friend who ostentatiously read at a bar to pick up girls — and acknowledged that this colored his perspective. He listened to people (not said, but probably mostly women) who said they read at bars so as not to be hit on.

Schneider’s tweets do not constitute the greatest apology in the universe in part because he doesn’t explicitly point out the gender imbalances at play. He also makes the thread a little too much about HIM. But it intrigues us that so many people sent us his apology. Sometimes it’s hard to know why online mishegas gets traction, but we suspect that people loved this apology because it was funny as well as self-abasing, explicit, and rare in its I WAS WRONG-ness. It was relatively short, simple but satisfying.

It is, however, not the best apology for being a douche about other people’s reading habits. That honor goes to comedian Paul Scheer, who in 2018 tweeted mockingly about the genre of hockey-focused romance novels. Scheer discovered that Romance Twitter is not to be fucked with. But instead of reacting with a hat trick of defensiveness, bluster, and “get a sense of humor, embarrassingly horny ladies,” he reacted thoughtfully AND with real humor. He researched hockey romance, bought one by the author whose book he’d mocked (tweeting a picture of the receipt), and live-tweeted his enthusiastic reading of it. Alas, the resultant thread has since been deleted, but we covered the whole delightful saga when it happened.

Again, the man did the thing he’d initially sneered at. His apology consciously brought attention and praise to the female-coded activity he’d been snotty about. He provided major compensatory entertainment to romance-novel readers. He apologized to the author as well as to the public. The apology ticked all six (and a half) SorryWatch good-apology boxes:

1. Say you’re sorry
2. For what you did (NAME IT)
3. Show why you understand it was bad
4. Don’t make excuses
5. Say why it won’t happen again.

6. Offer to make up for it.

AND 6.5. LISTEN.

Paul Scheer is not as famous a writer as John Steinbeck, but he is better at saying he’s sorry. Steinbeck, who unaccountably did not write any hockey romances, apologized back in the day for his breakout 1935 novel Tortilla Flat. (Pause to shout out Providence, RI’s 48-year-old Mexican party bar Tortilla Flats, and pour one out for the West Village’s late, lamented 35-year-old dive bar Tortilla Flats, which closed in 2018.) (Why are the bars named Tortilla Flats when the book is Tortilla Flat? We do not know. We are but a humble apology blog.)

Snarly read Tortilla Flat for this post; she had not read Steinbeck since “The Pearl” and “The Red Pony” in junior high and The Grapes of Wrath in high school. (Perhaps she will go read East of Eden at a bar.) Tortilla Flat is not great. It is very dated, very white dude. It romanticizes young, physical, ambiguously ethnic men drinking, stealing, and … Snarly was going to say “whoring” but we don’t even know enough about the women in this book to know if they’re professionals or enthusiastic amateurs. They are all either sluts or mothers, except for that one who is both. Some even get to have names! Also, “Jew” is used as both a verb and a noun, and the book’s Chinese character is named Chin Kee.

Steinbeck clearly loved his swarthy, indolent, hard-drinking “paisanos” (they are “a mixture of Spanish, Indian, Mexican, and assorted Caucasian bloods,” he informs us helpfully) and their tight but not at all homoerotic friendships. They’re supposedly based loosely on the Knights of the Round Table. Steinbeck got upset when he felt his heroes were being condescended to. Alas, he did not entirely understand by whom. In an introduction to a reprint of the book in 1937, he wrote:

When this book was written, it did not occur to me that paisanos were curious or quaint, dispossessed or underdoggish. They are people whom I know and like, people who merge successfully with their habitat. Had I known that these stories and these people would be considered quaint, I think I never should have have written them…I wrote these stories because they were true stories and because I liked them. But literary slummers have taken these people up with the vulgarity of duchesses who are amused and sorry for a peasantry. These stories are out, and I cannot recall them. But I shall never again subject to the vulgar touch of the decent these good people of laughter and kindness, of honest lusts and direct eyes, of courtesy beyond politeness. If I have done them harm by telling a few of their stories, I am sorry. It will not happen again.

 Steinbeck apologizes, but he blames readers (“literary slummers”!) for misunderstanding his work and being patronizing about the paisanos’ crystalline purity (their “honest lusts and direct eyes”!). This is the equivalent of a comedian apologizing for the fact that audiences do not “get” his edgy humor. Steinbeck pulls a literal “sorry if.” Then he flounces metaphorically out of the room; NO MORE PAISANO STORIES FOR YOU! Steinbeck himself is actually blameless; he has only told a few of the paisanos’ stories. (Why, he is not even a novelist! He is but these people’s amanuensis! He is only presenting them in their own words, as they are! ¡Claro que sí!) Sure, “merge successfully with their habitat” sounds a little Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, a little dehumanizing, but that’s on you, duchess. (Oh, hey, another gendered term.)

Let’s end this post on a hopeful note, with an unabashedly good literary apology. Author Alex Gino apologized for the title of their bestselling middle-grade novel George, the story of a 10-year-old kid who everyone thinks is a boy but isn’t. (It’s delightful, by the way. Funny, sweet, not didactic.) In the book, the main character Melissa wants to play Charlotte in the class production of Charlotte’s Web, but her teacher says she can’t because she’s a boy. Can Melissa and her best friend Kelly make everyone understand who Melissa really is? (Guess.)

Gino had titled their manuscript Girl George. But their publisher, Scholastic, felt that today’s kids wouldn’t get the reference to gender-bending glam rocker Boy George. And conventional wisdom has it that one-word titles sell. Gino’s rock-star editor, David Levithan (who is an acclaimed queer young adult author in his spare time), also pointed out that the word “girl” in the title might keep boys from reading the book. “The concern wasn’t just that boys would self-censor,” Gino wrote on their blog in 2018, “but that adult gatekeepers wouldn’t give boys a chance to make that decision in the first place. Aha, I thought, sneaky feminism. My favorite!”

Indeed, conventional wisdom says that boys will not read books about girls, but girls will read books about boys. This may be why there are so many more kids’ books with boy protagonists than girl protagonists. Boys are not encouraged to read about girls…even when they want to. Conventional wisdom is not wise about everything.

Gino wasn’t thrilled about the title change, but they were a first-time author; they didn’t feel comfortable pushing back. Once the book became a huge hit, though, the title kept weighing on them. Their apology, like the book, is written in kid-friendly language:

I made a mistake when I named my first published middle grade novel. A big mistake. I used a name for my main character that she doesn’t like for herself (i.e. George, the title of the book) instead of her actual name. My main character’s name is Melissa, and I apologize to her, to the larger trans community, and to all of my readers for the error. I’m sorry.

 

She is not real, so I can’t hurt her feelings, but the title of my book makes it seem as though it is ever okay to use an old name for a person when they have provided you with a different name that works better for them. I want to be clear – it isn’t.

 

I know. The cover is beautiful. Iconic, even. But here’s the thing: so many transgender people have been told that we are beautiful/handsome as a reason not to transition, myself included. We are told that we will mar something special, as though looking pleasant to others is more important than being ourselves. As if it’s not more important than seeing who’s really there, scars and all.

Gino went on to explain that when they began writing their manuscript in 2003, “the idea that a trans kid would be listened to and allowed to be themselves was mostly an impossible dream for most of us.” (Today, many folks are more understanding, accepting, and embracing of trans kids. But as trans kids become more visible and accepted, other folks try to push them back. Snarly herself could be put in jail if she lived in Texas, fwiw.) In the time leading up to publication, Gino didn’t understand just how big a problem the new title was. Now they did.

Using the hashtag #SharpieActivism, Gino suggested that the book’s readers change the title themselves, adding:

I can’t change the system, but I can change my actions. I can’t change every cover, but I can change mine. And you can change yours too. (Note: I can only endorse fixing copies you own.)

 

So maybe part of the process of reading Melissa’s Story (for now, at least) is to get to the end and fix the title yourself. Call it interactive reading. Heck, when you give Melissa’s Story as a gift, include a permanent marker.

 

So fix your copy! Do it up! Creativity is queer!

Gino shared images of reader-revamped covers on their blog. Community is powerful! Scholastic paid attention. And in October 2018, the publisher officially renamed the book Melissa. On the Scholastic web site, there are now downloadable covers and stickers that readers can use to revamp their existing copies. Newer copies have the newer title. The book is findable in library catalogues under both its former and current names.

Yay, another bookcentric apology that ticks all the SorryWatch boxes! May there be many more.