We are all unfamous celebrities.

I simultaneously love and hate going to book signings. I love going to book signings because I like hearing the author speak and answer questions, especially a guy like Chuck Klosterman, whose business card should just read “Professional Conversationalist” and we should all just agree that he doesn’t have to pay for things anymore. He’s a national treasure.

Klosterman is the kind of person who, when posed a question, will not answer until he has fully fleshed out the arena created by the question. Chuck was in typical form Tuesday night, which is rare form for most commoners. When posed questions, he often asks clarifying questions to make sure he understands what he is answering. This is great, because it makes him, as a conversationalist, kind of a question doctor. If someone asks, “What movie do you wish you could experience over again for the first time?” probably because they would want to call-back to an Esquire article he wrote about the “forget” pill that dulls your memory to painful events, in which he stated it might be nice to forget he’d read some of his favorite books to regain the joy of re-reading them. Instead of just saying “The Graduate” or “The Pope of Greenwich Village,” Chuck would likely first say, “Well, the key here is that it would have to be a movie that I really enjoyed the experience of watching, but not one that dramatically affected the way I live my life. For example, if someone saw ‘Annie Hall’ and knew, instantaneously, that this was their reason for wanting to be a filmmaker, and grew up striving to achieve all that is ‘Annie Hall,’ wouldn’t it stand to reason that removing all related experiences from their brain, like ‘Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind,’ mean that their entire reason for their career choice was either dulled or completely removed, rendering them sort of a career-zombie?“ After receiving confirmation of some sort, or permission to continue in rapt silence, he’d probably continue: “The movie couldn’t be a life-altering event, for fear of the butterfly effect – not the movie, the actual effect – but something that blew my mind without altering my state of being, something like Pulp Fiction – I’d already knew what I wanted to be, yet I enjoyed that movie so much the first time through, watching it over again and again is still a joy from start to finish, but watching it with an amnesiac’s mind would bring me back to the first time I ever just thoroughly enjoyed the movie.” I like experiencing an author’s thought process, and sort of getting the cliff notes version of meta-discussion about the work they are debuting or speaking about.

What I hate about attending book signings is that people who ask questions at book signings are really asking questions they have a prefabricated answer to, and hope that the author agrees with them. To ask a question in the forum setting of a book signing means that you’re probably interested in sounding intellectual, since we tend to feel like book signings are the last shred of symposia in our society. As a performed art, to ask a question in front of a large crowd of strangers is to take the stage and present a mini thesis to be judged by the agreed-upon intellectual in the room. Those who ask questions at book signings are rarely asking open ended, simplistic questions. Rather, they want the audience to wish they’d asked that question, the Author to remark how smart the question is (and, realistically, what Author is going to openly say, at a book signing event where his books are on sale, “that’s a clown question, bro” to a supposed fan?) In order to pose these interrogative mini-theses to the expert in the room, question askers have to ramp up to the question, ask the question, and, in the case of Chuck Klosterman, endure scrutiny to their question, almost like a microscopic colloquium defense, in front of strangers.

Question askers almost universally have their own opinions on the answer to their questions, but they want to see if the Author will agree with them. It’s public crowd-sourced, multi-layered affirmation. It’s also why I don’t ask questions until I have the opportunity to banter, awkwardly, with the author for 20 seconds while he scratches out their name with a sharpie on the title page of my copy of the book they wrote. This is only partly some stand to not come off as some prick who thinks a random, half-drunk question at a Barnes and Noble in Stony Brook, Long Island is his or her opportunity to apply for an internship with the author, which will surely result in fame, fortune, and a book deal of their own, just from the reflected glory. The other part is that I am worried that my question won’t stand up to that scrutiny. It’s probably that second part, way more than the first part, that keeps me from volleying some manifesto comparing the between-wars eras of England and the United States vis-à-vis Atonement, Downton Abbey, and The Great Gatsby at the bemused author who just wanted to read their own prose, answer questions about narrative and plot development, sign a few books, and hit the mini-bar in the hotel room.

I find it odd that, as we reach the age of seven billion screaming voices, we all assume the other screams are adulation for ourselves as we ask perfectly worded questions, hashtag selfies by the Holiday Inn Express pool with #SweetLife, and craft the perfect career-starting tweet, wanting external and crowd-sourced affirmation of our lives. We’ve become Patton Oswalt in “Big Fan,” sitting in our crappy, low-wage jobs, meticulously arranging our lives like his talk radio diatribe, overestimating its importance to anyone but ourselves. It’s as though when we catalog the amazing qualities of our existence, it’s because others depend on us to live the lives they’ve imagined; like our glamour is a noble pursuit.