The return of Day 1. Act III or I heart the nightlife

I left the cocktail party to check out The Lolita Update at the Gallery at the Continental Club. I was kind of bummed as Marisha Pessl, the only author on the panel whose book I'd read, couldn't make it. But for serious: family emergency trumps silly literary sex panel. I wish her the best.

The discussion was pretty fun. At times it seemed as though it was just an excuse for authors to talk dirty into a microphone, best evidenced by Mark Z. Danielewski's repeated refrain of "I have an orgy." Heidi Julevits is ridiculous. Her allusion to The Happy Hooker's German shepherd scene was well-received.

Also noteworthy, Cristina Henríquez's admission that she really started writing at the behest of a boy she liked in middle school. Even more noteworthy, advice given to Henríquez by the greatest sex writer of our time, Steve Almond: "do not compare a woman's nipples to A.) cherry pits and B.) Frankenstein's bolts."

Julevits offered this advice on keeping sex scenes from being stale:

The way to avoid it being cliché is to always make every sexual situation extremely fucked up. So that it just seems totally misguided and wrong and nobody's attractive and you're rooting for nobody and it's just total degradation.

Heidi Julevits, ladies and gentlemen, is the greatest.

The sandman would not leave me alone last night so I took off before the Q&A session started. BTW: The Book Festival inspired one of the best nights of sleep in my life. Thank you Texas Book Festival.