I'm a bit jealous, honestly, of Sloane Crosley. Her writing is very similar to mine and here she is, the talk of the town, with a potential TV series in the works based on said writing. I'm here writing this watching "Curious George" on PBS in my shorts.
Be that as it may, the Guardian offers a brief profile of the wonderful writer that is Sloane Crosley.
From the story...
We are in Balthazar, a smart New York brasserie which, along with taxi cabs, disgusting flatmates, small apartments, reminiscences about childhood pets, mild behavioural tics and Crosley's strongest piece in the new book, an account of her disastrous affair with a cheating scumbag, feels like a staple of the wry personal anecdote, all told with the zippy air of the 90s newspaper column. ("Some people have coke guys. I had an upholstery guy.") If her whimsy runs out of control here and there – the first essay in I Was Told There'd Be Cake is about Crosley's adorable toy pony collection – she is, for the most part, sharp enough to get away with it, enlivening the funny-thing-happened-on-the-way-to-the-fridge type jokes with the occasional standout image. In the new book she goes on holiday to Portugal, where she sees "ancient Portuguese ladies, their spines bobbing beneath their cardigans as they scaled the city's steep inclines".
She is strongest on the question of New York neuroses, however, so I present her with this: for weeks a friend and I have argued over the rightness or otherwise of "double dipping", the habit, after taking a bite, of reintroducing your corn chip to the communal dip along the edge where you bit it. This causes New Yorkers to make a face like they just sucked a lemon, while withstanding a headwind and being attacked from behind. Crosley's eyes open wide. "That's how people get Aids."
Oh for goodness sake; what's a bit of saliva between friends?
She gathers herself up. "You think? Honestly, I mean why don't you just make your face cream out of salmonella at this point? God knows what you've touched during the day in this filthy city. I feel like if you do that naturally, in public, what are you doing when no one's looking?"
What you wonder most, after reading Sloane Crosley, is how many friends she lost when the first book came out. It contained snippy pieces about her ex-boss, her ex-flatmate and someone who must, at this stage, be an ex-friend, whose wedding she was invited to and then devoted many pages to mocking. She smiles.
"I got disinvited."
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