Tonight Paul Auster, as a I type this post, only an hour after that photograph was taken, is speaking before a large group of people on the fourth floor of Barnes & Noble Union Square, the must-stop for anyone who has written something worth knowing about.

The choice this evening was Invisible, and for me the event ended a horror before it began.  I left shortly after taking these shots.

I had planned on quickly saying hello to Auster.  He, Salman Rushdie and I had a small conversation last year at a breakfast honoring Israel’s gift to literature, Amos Oz.  I wouldn’t expect Auster to remember some party chit-chat from 2008, yet it makes a good re-introduction as photographer’s routinely identify themselves to the subject.

But it was made impossible by a man who was almost a penciled caricature of a paparazzo. What made it comical to me (not to anyone else) was that there was absolutely no need to go paparazzo.  He and I were the only photographers there, and it was Paul Auster in a bookstore not Britney Spears on a red carpet.

I should have known the guy was trouble.  The entire twenty minutes before the start he wanted to go on-and-on with me about the guy with Alzheimer’s who won the Nobel Prize for something he did decades ago.  He talked about things I don’t care about, like Einstein and fiber optics, and the tragedy that only now this guy gets the big prize as he suffers from memory lapse.

Most photographers don’t want to talk.  Maybe over the years they see the same photographers covering the same events, and friendships develop; otherwise, they get in and out and don’t want to hear a random photog’s life musings.

Not this guy.  His eyes were so bloodshot that they barely looked like eyes since the inflamed skin surrounding them was the same puffy red-pink shade as his cornea.  It all blended together in a fleshy wrinkled mass.  Somewhere in there I saw blue irises, drowning. His hair was so badly dyed–the gray, coarse base with what looked like a black dye-job over a brown one–it resembled a toupee.

B&N Union Square, despite its size, is somewhat intimate.  Often, I am the only photographer there.  When professionals show up they know from experience to respect the venue.  A bookstore is not the place to start shouting, “Mista Austah!  Mista Austah!  Look left!  Now above!  Mista Austah, toyn some to tha right!”

He did this while Maria, the curator of these events, was in the midst of her introduction of Auster, causing everyone to stare in our direction to a point that Auster, holding up his index finger like a schoolteacher, had to “Shhhh” the guy.  He was making a spectacle of himself (and by association, me).

These photography sessions don’t last forever.  You’re expected to take a few shots and then let the person alone.  Not this guy.  He wouldn’t stop photographing Auster, gesturing, yelling loudly, “Mista Austah, one maw look down please…”

Every photo I took has Auster, lips pursed, staring at this fool.

Auster looked at me and I nodded in a sign that I got what I needed.  I turned off my camera and looked at this guy still going nuts with the flashes.  To stop the endless shots that had long worn out their welcome, I moved in front of the guy’s camera and made the quick introduction to Auster.  Flustered, he only brightened with recognition when I mentioned the Amos Oz breakfast.

Then he was called up to the podium.  I turned toward the exit embarrassed.

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