Anne Lamott embraces her reputation as a popular novelist, but admits that she sometimes gets caught up in the pretentious side of her profession.

Question: Do you likernthat you're known as “The People’s Author?"

Anne Lamott: Irncan honestly say there is nothing I would rather be known as than “The rnPeople’srnAuthor.”  I’ve never heard that,rnand I’m thinking you got it from some blog from some guy who is like rncompletelyrnwasted on ecstasy and cheap red wine when he said it.  Butrn if it were true, I would love that. 

And, being a person who believes that all truth is rnparadoxrnand contradiction, I just get a sucked in as any writer into the jungle rndrumsrnof publication and wishing that I were on the “Today” Show this morning rninsteadrnof David Remnick and how it’s not fair and how it’s not fair that he’s rnnot thisrnand that and he’s on “Fresh Air” and so I have a kind of bitterness thatrn goesrnalong with this sense of being “The People’s Author,” and really feelingrn like arnmissionary most of the time and just wanting to tell people... the truthrn of myrnexperience is that we are all a lot more alike than we are different. rnAnd thatrnif I share something that seems kind of intimate, or autobiographical, rnit’srnbecause I assume it’s true for you too. rnAnd I’ve told it so many times and everybody said, “Oh yeah, me rntoo.”  I’m not telling anything that isn’trntrue for most of us.  And it justrnhas to do with it.  We can seemrnsort of spiritual and hippy-dippy like I think I come across, and tree rnhuggerrnand San Francisco and all that. rnAnd at the same time be sort of enraged that the New York rnglitterati arerngetting the great spots in the media the week that I’m on tour on the rnEastrnCoast. 

Question: Do yournconsciously try to win more fans?

Anne Lamott: Irn would say the most important thing is to pretend that you’rernabove all of that.  But certainly,rnI’m just finding this week—we’re taping this the day of publication—and rnI’mrnfinding just so much manipulation and kind of desperado stuff going on rninsidernme, and I’m trying to suck people into my web, and I’m trying to use oldrncontacts kind of in the most casual way to try to get them to shoehorn rnme ontornCNN maybe later today after I sign stock at the Riverhead office.  So, I find a lot inside me. 

The thing is, I’ll be 56 at the end of the week andrn I don’trnact on it as much as I used to. rnBefore, I would have done it all and I would have just been rndancing asrnfast as I could to try to suck in and please everyone and seduce rneveryone andrnpush everyone harder to get—and now I just feel too tired, and I’m kind rnof achyrnfrom the long flight and so, the impulse is there, and probably this rnside ofrnthe grave.  It just comes with thernterritory; it comes with the turf of being a well-known writer is that Irn have arndisease called "More."  And if Irnhave a huge audience, I’d like a bigger audience; maybe slightly a rnslightlyrnmore illustrious audience.  Maybernif Susan Sontag were alive she would want to be my best friend.

Recorded April 6, 2010
rnInterviewed by Austin Allenrn