My Fair Lazy - Jen Lancaster [1]
Progress isn’t made by early risers. It’s made by lazy men
trying to find an easier way to do something.
—ROBERT HEINLEIN, Time Enough for Love
It is only the wisest and the stupidest that cannot change.
—CONFUCIUS
And as usual, what happens next
is all Carrie Bradshaw’s fault.
—JEN LANCASTER, My Fair Lazy BOOK PROPOSAL
PROLOGUE
Sipping wine out of a paper cup, I’m perched on a tall stool across from my literary idol, Candace Bushnell, who’s interviewing me for her Sirius radio show.
This is the single greatest day of my life.
I’ve managed to keep myself together enough to avoid (a) bursting into creepy fan-girl tears, (b) asking if I can please, please braid her pretty, pretty hair, or (c) shrieking, “OMFG, you’re the real Carrie Bradshaw!” but it hasn’t been without heroic effort. I’m mostly holding my own in the interview until Candace tells me she’s totally into Bow da Lair.
Beaux de l’air?
Botta-layer?
Baudelaire?
I have no idea what she’s talking about. Baudelaire—what is that, a kind of sushi? Some superstretchy Pilates move? This season’s must-have stiletto? I am without a single clue. Yet I quickly confirm that I’m absolutely into Baudelaire, too, and then change topics with the grace and dexterity of a veteran White House press secretary.1
As I try to keep myself from breaking into terror sweat, it occurs to me that I don’t know who Baudelaire is because I’ve become a little bit dumb.
What prompts this epiphany isn’t my dearth of knowledge of All Things Baudelaire. Plenty of smart people are unfamiliar with Baudelaire.2
What gives me pause is the ease with which I cover up my ignorance. I’m confident I used to be smart, but when I got laid off from an executive position post-9/11, I was no longer tasked to use my critical thinking skills. On top of that, while I searched in vain for a new job, reality television went from being an occasional guilty pleasure to a full-time source of solace. I mean, sure, I was unemployed and broke and I’d totally lost what defined me, but at least I wasn’t one of those idiots attempting to get Married by America. And I never had to ask my friend Nicole Richie if Walmart was the place that sold walls. Reality television gave me an amazing feeling of moral and intellectual superiority without actually requiring any effort past moving the dogs to find the remote.
Although my life eventually improved,3 I never weaned myself off of reality television once I started writing. And at this point I’m so used to not having much interest outside of what’s happening with The Real Housewives of Orange County and in the Rock of Love mansion that I’ve become an expert in faking most other knowledge. Lying about what I don’t know has become my lazy but elegant solution to not acquiring the basic facts in the first place. Because I no longer report to a boss, I never have to take on hard or boring tasks, thus traveling outside of my comfort zone is a rarity, and most likely involuntary.
Frankly, my steady diet of sloth and avoidance has served me well, and I will see no reason to change things . . . until the unthinkable happens next week, and I inadvertently end up on the New York Times best seller list.
Ten times.
Dude.
What gets me is the sneaking suspicion that I’d be a better writer if my first thought at this unexpected windfall wasn’t “Dude.” So I grudgingly admit that broadening my horizons is something I should work on, but I’ve got to get through this book tour first.
Anyway, our interview eventually draws to a close, and I leave the studio with no idea if Baudelaire is some kind of yogic breathing technique or French-Vietnamese cuisine.
But I do know if I want to be more like Candace Bushnell, perhaps I should make an effort to find out.
To: angie_at_home
From: jen_at_home
Subject: today’s Jen-point quiz
It’s late in the evening and you’re just about to head upstairs, take a bath, and read a bit before bed when you hear