Lebowitz’s response to Didion’s speech: “pretty funny.”

Ira Glass is now presenting. They don’t applaud for Ira in quite the same way that they do for Didion. But it could be because Ira is wearing all black.

Yes, he’s presenting for FREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEESHHHHHH AIRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

First 9/11 reference of the night! What the hell do 9/11 hijackers have to do with Terry Gross? Oh, he’s rambling on about a 9/11 interview. “And then this interview goes incredibly barebone, when this writer confesses — that when he started reading — that, uh, yeah this was an amazing interview. Not just the strippers. The flying planes in the building.”

Ira, this is not your therapist’s office. You are presenting an award. You are not accepting an award.

“It was great radio, of course.”

Of course.

Didion is now on stage. A lengthy applause. And now a standing ovation.

Didion is very small, as everybody has often reported.

“I didn’t start writing to get a lifetime achievement award. In fact, it was pretty much the last thing on my mind.”

Words on “Self-Respect” written in 1961 in Vogue. A real writer at Vogue at that time was “pretty much anyone who wasn’t on staff.” Lengthy stuff about San Bernardino. Yes, the woman can write, but to reproduce this speech is to possibly bore you readers. Didion-is-read-ing-like-this-in-a-flat-line-voice.

“Overwhelming impulse. I need to go back to the airport. So each of these pieces was a job, a craft. But each of these pieces were an exercise in learning how to live.”

Aha, the first Mailer mention of the night! “There was someone who really truly knew what writing was for.”

Michael Cunningham — the author of The Hours — is now up to present the Lifetime Achievement Award. He is accompanied by a young gentleman who looks like a Williamsburg hipster. I presume he is the “assistant.”

Cunningham: A long pause, then a sigh. He is nervous and then not so. What’s that? An audience! The literary establishment at my beck and call! Talking about a long trip to Los Angeles. He is emphasizing words like “frighteningly” and looking more than a bit pompous. The air that escapes from his lungs does so with a stunning regularity. This is a windbag that came from the factory. If Didion kicks Cunningham in the ass when she gets the award, I will have nothing but good words to say of her from now on. The likelihood of this happening is nil, seeing as how Didion avoided an interview from videographer Jason Boog.

One thing’s for sure: I don’t believe that he loves Didion as much as he says he does.

Lebowitz is now holding a sixty-page list containing the non-winners since 1950. She points out that A Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger is a “non-winner.” Beloved by Toni Morrison also lost. “She didn’t go to New Hampshire. In fact, she’s here tonight. (applause) And if were to ask me, she looks kind of expectant.”

Lebowitz’s barbs are quite funny (at our table, Marydell even tittered!), but it is too clear that she is reading from the paper.

I will have more podcasts later, but Fran Lebowitz has taken the stage. She is mentioning many things about the writer strikes and, contrary to her thoughts expressed to me on the podcast interview about winging it, she’s reading from a piece of paper.

Of reruns replacing first-run television shows: “Apparently, there are some people who observe the difference.”

“So in the generous spirit that I know exists in this room, if there are people at your table who you cannot place, please extend a warm welcome to the Bailey family from Toronto, who couldn’t get in.”

“It was rumored that illegal immigrants were given library cards.”

This is light humor, but she has the crowd downstairs laughing.

“There are four categories, yet there are twenty finalists. Therefore, there will be four winners and sixteen non-winners. I am happy to call them non-winners, but I must tell you that of all the phrases that bug me, the oft-repeated ‘win-win’ that bugs me. We know there’s no such thing as ‘win-win,’ because it’s often spoken by the winner-winner. There is such a thing as lose-lose, and that’s what is known as life-life. And there has in one case been lose-win, which was known as Bush v. Gore.”