“Questions for Lena? Do you have a question for Lena? Would you like to ask Lena Dunham a question?”
Early Monday night the Lena Dunham book tour and circus of earnestness and irony rolled into Chicago, promising cultural spectacle and community where other authors delivered mere words. And so, just after entering the lobby of the Northwestern University School of Law’s Thorne Auditorium, you were greeted by staff of the Chicago Humanities Festival — Dunham’s visit marked the opening of its 25th festival — bearing clipboards and notecards, offering a chance at (sort of) interacting with Dunham: the (cheekily) self-described “voice of a generation,” creator of HBO’s “Girls” and newly minted author of an essay collection, “Not That Kind of Girl.”
Christine Garcia turned in a card. “I asked why Hannah (Dunham’s character on ‘Girls’) uses the marimba for her ring tone,” she said. “I really doubt that’s unintentional.”
Abby Callaghan turned in a card asking if Dunham had advice for a young author and/or a contact in publishing; Callaghan wrote a book called “Killing Boys,” and she really thought Dunham could sympathize. Sydney Stone, a Barrington High School senior, turned in her card and grinned sneakily. Her question was: “Have you ever considered pulling back your hair so people can see your pretty face?”
This was not your father’s book tour.
Or even Joyce Carol Oates’.
Dunham’s charming book of lessons learned at summer camp and adventures from her years in therapy was sold to Random House for a reported $3 million after a heated, two-day publishing auction. Its release was feted recently at a book party held at the Manhattan apartment of no less than David Remnick, editor of The New Yorker. Dunham is visiting 11 cities, and she asked artists of any medium to send her videos of their work so she could select favorites to open for her; she received 600 videos, from sand artists to Chicago comics. She also brought along representatives of Planned Parenthood, which set up a table in the lobby, and arranged for food trucks to wait outside the venue. Tickets, which sold for $38 and included a signed copy of the book, sold out everywhere almost instantly; tickets for the 772 seats at Northwestern were so hard to come by that only a few appeared on reseller StubHub, and only then at about $500 a pop.
So, to recap: no in-person book signing, no questions lobbed from the seats.
But a definite sense of community.
The crowd, to broadly generalize, was 25 percent Anna Kendricks, 25 percent Maggie Gyllenhaals, 10 percent St. Vincents, 20 percent Lena Dunhams, 15 percent Allison Williamses and 5 percent Jesse Eisenbergs. Samantha Rose (more of a Lena) said she asked as her question “if (Dunham) feels pressure to include feminism in her content, or does the feminism come naturally to her content, or something like that?”
An hour before her Humanities Festival appearance, Dunham sat in a chair overlooking Lake Shore Drive, acquainting herself with the politicians she would endorse at the event. Before you see Dunham, you hear her: Sprightly and hyperformal, her voice sounds sincere and fake all at once. We spoke for a bit; this is an edited transcript of our conversation.
Q: How’s your first book tour going?
A: Great. This is our third stop. The first was a hometown show in New York, at the Union Square Barnes & Noble, a place I have a lot of personal history. Then we did an away game, a night in Boston. We had this amazing a cappella group called Cordially Yours open, and they were a bunch of adorable girls, and they beat-boxed and sang a mashup of “Stacy’s Mom” and “What Makes You Beautiful” from One Direction. Then we took the weekend off, and my sister talked about having a “growth mindset.” In Boston, though, we also did a writers workshop for girls between 18 and 20 years old, and we talked about writing and did exercises. Chicago is one of the few cities where we are not doing that; we have commitments, and, selfishly I wanted to hang out with my best friend, Jenni Konner, who is doing the interview (Monday and is “Girls” co-showrunner).
Q: How often do you talk to fans?
A: The only time I see actual so-called fans is when they come up to me during shooting or I run into one at a deli. But the experience of meeting 500 or so people and creating dialogues about their concerns and lives, it reminds you why you do what you do. That’s why I was excited about a book tour. I wanted to engage. I feel like the people who hate you online don’t necessarily buy a ticket that includes a copy of your book. There are more efficient ways of screaming, digitally. This morning on Twitter, someone called me …
(REDACTED! You’re welcome. Still, ewww …)
Q: Do you think people can have problems with you and still admire you?
A: That’s an interesting question. I don’t know. We tend to, egotistically, divide people into those who enjoy us and those who do not. But I bet you’re right, there is more nuance there. I hadn’t thought of that much.
Q: I bet that’s a big part of your audience, the fence-sitters.
A: Maybe, but people never come up and say mean things.
Q: Really?
A: The Internet exists. Ninety-nine percent of aggression on Twitter is from someone who never engages in face-to-face negativity. I live in a peaceful neighborhood, but there is a tiny person under those comments.
First, the Humanities Festival welcomed everyone. Then a Chicago comedian named Patrick Boyd came out and discussed one-night stands, Gabriel Garcia Marquez and inner-thigh rashes. Then arts patrons Elaine and Roger Haydock welcomed Dunham. And, at last, Dunham emerged and read from her book. She was blond and wore gigantic white heels and a blue sack dress that (she informed this writer earlier) was made of scuba-suit neoprene. As it’s been said, her character on her show — high-strung, sincere, petty, insightful, colossally self-involved — and Dunham the human being seemed inseparable. Before she began reading, she said into the microphone, “This is the most Justin Bieber thing I ever requested, but I am getting a fat amount of reverb.” Then she read a story about her uterus and took a moment to endorse Pat Quinn for governor.
She came off vulnerable and in charge.
She read a few stories and a list of badly considered flirtations. (“I only get B.O. in one armpit. Swear. Same with my mother.”) She spoke warmly of Planned Parenthood and then, doubling back for a second, said: “It scared me when there wasn’t much response when I said Pat Quinn, and I thought to myself maybe I had misunderstood all the papers I have been reading and just endorsed a neo-Nazi?” A few beats later, several older Humanities Festival devotees filtered out of the auditorium — perhaps it was a generational thing?
Back to that room high above Lake Shore, before the event:
Q: Why tour a book this way, as a relatively traveling circus?
A: One of my fondest memories is being 11 and forcing my mom to take me to the first Lilith Fair tour, and I remember thinking, “Oh, there are a bunch of people here who like the same things.” It was the closest thing I had witnessed to a utopia. So, basically, I wanted to create a space that was about more than my work and instead celebrate people who express themselves and discuss the beliefs they hold dear; I thought it was kismet timing that we were doing it before the midterm elections. I could remind people (of this) who were engaged but not planning to vote. And I could express my love for Planned Parenthood. Plus, I have enough creative ADD already that showing up and reading and signing some books wouldn’t work for me personally.
Q: But isn’t that what a book tour is?
A: I don’t know if blatant self-promotion is the most comfortable state for anybody. I like the idea of a more joyous event. You could reduce that to “This is what people do on a book tour.” They sell books, they make it an exercise in capitalism. But I like to think of this as more than that.
Q: Have you ever attended a book signing or reading — a book tour?
A: I attended a lot of poetry readings in college but have little experience with the traditional book tour model. But I love hearing writers read aloud. It’s also important for me to get a sense of a writer’s values and aesthetic. Tavi Gevinson and Rookie magazine, they did this. Seeing her Rookie Roadshow a couple of years ago was inspiring. The final piece in my book was something I wrote for Rookie and expanded. The first piece too. If I had a place like (the Rookie Roadshow) in high school, where I could have exchanged emails with girls like that, I would have been a lot happier. I have actually been to Tavi’s house in Oak Park. I was here visiting, and she was grounded, and so we stayed in her house one night and we ate hummus.
Q: Do you come here often?
A: I was here because my boyfriend (Jack Antonoff of the band fun.) was playing, so I spent the night with Tavi. And I shot a Joe Swanberg movie here. We’re close friends, and I stayed with his family, and we threw a fake house party (for the movie “Happy Christmas”). I hung out in his tiki bar. I know Chicago through Joe. I was going to be in his Web series “Young American Bodies” once, but it never worked out. And too bad, because if it had happened, I would have been naked on the Internet a lot earlier than I turned out to be.
For every city on the tour, Dunham was paired with a variety of esteemed literary authors (Mary Karr, Zadie Smith) or artists (Carrie Brownstein, Miranda July), and in Chicago the final section of the evening was a loose 30 minutes of winging it between Dunham and Konner.
Before the event, Konner said: “I was at a dinner years ago with (writer) Liz Meriwether, and she said, ‘You have to see this movie “Tiny Furniture” from this girl who’s 23 and in her underwear the whole time.’ And I was like, ‘I don’t need to see that.’ Then I saw Lena’s film and became a superfan. Her voice is hard to define because I’m so close to it now, but she processes things faster, sees things from a creative angle almost instantly.” But during their conversation, Dunham, who is 28 now, and Konner, who is 42, didn’t really discuss how they become friends.
They selected a handful of questions from the notecards, about career advice, about favorite books, about “Girls.” We learned that “the word ‘garbage’ is having a moment” (Konner), and that though everything in her series seems like memoir, a lot of it is “actually written by older Jewish men” (Dunham), and that Konner and Dunham occasionally get a hotel room for a weekend, watch TV and order a lot of room service and then, in the hours right before they have to check out, they force themselves to write a few episodes. They talked for about 30 minutes. Who was Dunham’s biggest inspiration? Konner. And Konner’s? Dunham.
Yup, nothing like a book tour.
cborrelli@tribune.com
Twitter @borrelli
