[APPLAUSE]
I think I'll just stop right now and we'll all just go home
and I won't screw up that beautiful introduction.
Thank you so much.
Thanks also to Corey and to Reed for being such great hosts
and for taking me to the baseball game today, which
is above and beyond the call of duty, and also to the students
that I just met with.
You are really amazingly bright and generous,
and I really appreciate your attention
and that you're here, if you're here.
If you're not here, we'll talk later.
I thought, yeah, so this is the new book that's out,
and my publisher just called me and told me
that they work out this special thing where if everybody here
buys five copies when it comes out,
then something amazing will happen.
[LAUGHTER]
For me.
I don't know about you.
So, well, OK, so the other thing is
this is always kind of awkward, because I don't know you,
you don't know me.
The idea is that this is supposed to be funny,
and I always feel a little rude for imposing this humor thing.
So I just want to say, I'm going to start reading a piece that
should be funny, but I don't want
you to feel any obligation whatsoever
to laugh, because I brought a back up thing,
and I'm a multifaceted person.
So I brought an essay I've been working on about legumes.
It's only I'd say about 90, 100 pages.
So it's agriculture, it's legumes,
and I think it's very good.
So if laughter isn't happening, I'll
just go right to the legumes.
Please don't consider that a threat, but I'm just saying.
A couple of years ago, I noticed this trend in commercials
where the subtext of the commercial was kind of like,
if it wasn't for this product, life wouldn't be so good.
Life wouldn't be good at all, in fact.
Everything virtuous and wonderful,
including your spouse, including your kids,
comes to you from some corporation.
And I first noticed this, there was a commercial where there's
a sleepy upstate New York town.
Dead of winter, bitter cold, wire are blowing loose
and it's kind of honest and threatening.
And suddenly this Coke truck shows up and drives through,
and as it drives through, everything behind it
lights up beautifully.
Christmas lights and happy families in windows.
And the implication is sort of like Coke is Christ, you know,
which I thought was maybe overstating the case a bit.
So I thought it would be kind of fun.
I talked to some of the students earlier about
how one approach that I take to writing
stories is to take the smallest, least literary idea and just
start goofing around with it.
So I gave myself a challenge of trying
to write a whole story just in commercials, with nothing
but commercials.
So this is the story called "In Persuasion Nation."
One, a man and a woman sit in a field of daisies.
Forever, he says.
Forever, she says, and they kiss.
A giant Twinkie runs past, trailed
by perhaps 200 young women.
The woman leaps to her feet and runs to catch up with Twinkie.
The sweetest thing in the world, the voiceover says,
just got sweeter.
The man sits sadly in the field of daisies.
Luckily, a giant Ding Dong runs past, trailed
by perhaps 200 young men.
The man leaps to his feet and runs
to catch up with the Ding Dong.
But not to worry, the voiceover says.
There's more than enough sweetness to go around.
The Ding Dong puts his arm around the young man,
and the young man smiles up at the Ding Dong,
and the Ding Dong bends down and gives the young man
a kiss on the head.