Author Teju Cole finished his reading and looked up at the crowd of 40 listeners surrounding him. He smiled at the applause from fellow writers, friends, interested buyers and even a local homeless man.
“This is one of my favorite places in the city, in the world really,” Cole said. “It’s bizarre for me to be the star tonight and not in the public.”
Cole’s reading from "Open City," his first novel published in the U.S., was held on Feb. 21 at McNally Jackson Books, an independent bookstore located at 52 Prince St. Before the reading Cole mingled with the crowd in the cafe area, personally greeting many of them by name.
“Teju is a fascinating writer,” said Wah-Ming Chang, who first met Cole through his blog. The protagonist of “Open City,” Julius, made his first appearance on that blog. (I would link it but Cole deletes his blogs over time.) Here's his Web site http://www.tejucole.com/ and a new blog for the novel http://op-cit.tumblr.com/
“It’s been fantastic to see Julius from blog form to this,” Chang said.
The day of the reading coincided with the release of Cole’s review in the New Yorker by James Wood. http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2011/02/28/110228crbo_books_wood
Wood said “Open City” was “beautiful, subtle, and, finally, original.”
Sharifa Rhodes-Pitts said she was very excited about the reception the book was getting. Rhodes-Pitts, also a first time novelist, is giving a reading with Cole Mar. 1 at the National Arts Club.
“We feel a sort of kinship,” she said. “We are among a group of people doing similar work.”
Cole’s novel, as well as Rhodes-Pitts’, is centered in New York City. It is a reflection of place and race in the city five years after 9/11.
The character Julius is a psychiatrist of German-Nigerian descent. Cole is an art historian whose parents are both Nigerian. Although he was born in Michigan, he grew up in Lagos, Nigeria. He returned to the United States as a 17-year-old in 1992.
Cole said he faced the challenge of navigating what it meant to be African in America.
“It’s very hard to be a black American that joins that story midstream,” he said.
Like Julius, he wandered through the city contemplating his surroundings.
“It’s not a record of my experience, but it’s backed up by that kind of observational research,” he said.
“That character is not him,” said Madhu Kaza, a friend of Cole. “The novel is a way of approaching experience.”
Robert Perry, a local homeless man, wandered in and stayed for the reading. Perry, a man with few teeth but many words, said he was particularly interested in the ideology of the book.
“I loved the reading,” Perry said. “He seems like a cool guy.”
“Teju has a way of drawing unusual people to him all the time,” said Hawkins Boyle, an acquaintance of Cole.
Cole said that in some ways he feels more at home now in New York than in Nigeria.
“When I travel and come back into the city, that moment of getting into the airport and there’s like a Sikh guy at security and a Haitian guy driving the cab, you just breathe the air like ‘I’m home!’” he said. “These people understand me.”
Cole said all the attention the book is getting has been an intense experience, but his friends have kept him from being too paranoid or self-absorbed.
“Today I was doing laundry and washing my dishes,” he said. “And that’s a pretty great thing to be able to do the day your New Yorker review comes out.”
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