“Embrace Your Madness”

Her thin, cellophane voice on the phone: “And this is a gift that Tristan has given me.”

If only Colin Evans had seen it that way. When Colin heard the news out in Indiana, he immediately started drinking. He took it hard. In the days and weeks that followed Tristan’s death, Colin’s lungs deteriorated. He began to take long walks in the woods with his dog and a small revolver. On the afternoon of May 9, 2006, almost a year to the day after Tristan’s suicide, Colin shot himself in the head. He was 31. His family believes he died playing Russian roulette.


AS FOR TRISTAN'S final book, it fared a little better. Paula worked with Grove Press to tie up the loose ends and get it out the door, seven months after Tristan’s death. Kornwolf has so far sold north of 4,000 copies — four times as many as Skirt, but hardly enough for a best-seller. Nor did his other books benefit from a “death bump,” perhaps because his death generated almost zero interest outside of his family and friends; the only people who tracked his obituaries were obscure webloggers. Lord of the Barnyard plugs along at about 500 to 800 copies sold in the U.S. per year. Kornwolf has yet to be released in France; it may sell faster there.

At Gallimard, the book is being handled by Christine Jordis. Christine is brilliant and formidable. She has a Kathleen Turner voice and hair the color of a new nickel. Last year, on a quiet weekday afternoon in Paris, she sat in her dark office at Gallimard HQ, telling stories about Tristan. A few times, at Gallimard events, he drank so much that Christine had to carry him home — insofar as a wispy Frenchwoman can carry an American man-child — and place him as gently as possible onto the doorstep of his hotel.

“He had no gift for living,” Christine said. “He was so ill at ease with himself. He was so unhappy. He told me he literally couldn’t live without writing. And that was true. A lot of writers say this. But with him, it was true. He was either drinking, writing or dying. And certainly no joy in him. Great torment.”

After some more reflection, she added, “The pity is that he couldn’t make writing out of it, in the end.”

That afternoon, Christine, as usual, was having a busy week. Her wooden desk was piled with stacks of new manuscripts waiting to be read. On the wall behind her, a dry-erase whiteboard listed the foreign books that Gallimard would be publishing in 2007. Jack Kerouac’s name was on the board, as well as Philip Roth’s, Zadie Smith’s and Marisha Pessl’s.

Pessl was an interesting one. Thirty years old. Luminous skin. Super-talented. She’s the newest lit-world discovery and Times best-seller: went to Barnard, worked on Wall Street, did some acting, scored a jackpot six-figure advance for a debut novel — Special Topics in Calamity Physics — full of tightrope sentences and bright colors. Youthful exuberance without the torturedness. No misery, no pain. No Discordia. Nothing to keep Tristan from spinning happily in his grave