Bash Compactor: Death By Paper Cuts

The blood drawn during modern literary feuds has come from paper cuts. So isn’t the title “Literary Death Match”—a reading last week at The Slipper Room, hosted by Opium magazine and bombshell literary agent Erin Hosier—a hopeless contradiction in terms? I didn’t dare pose the question to bottle-blonde Times shopping columnist Cintra Wilson as she got ready to battle it out with the bookish redhead Elliot Holt of The Kenyon Review. The former sashayed past me dressed like a film noir black widow mourning the husband she murdered—a la Barbara Stanwyck in Double Indemnity. Flipping up a black veil from under an enormous floppy black hat, Wilson revealed her eyes were covered in wraparound shades. In Jean Arthur 1930s screwball comedy diction, she pattered, “This is a funeral darling.”

A skinny, middle-aged guy with a hangdog mug crept over with high, exaggerated steps. He pinched Wilson’s ass.When she craned her neck around to get a fix on her assailant, the floppy hat caught him in the face. It was the indie character actor Richard Edson. The actor—no stranger to NYPD detective roles—fidgeted with his long, gray scarf and pointed at a dark-green messenger bag in the middle of the floor.

He whispered to me conspiratorially, “See this unattended bag?” Looking at the literati gathered on stage—which included The New Yorker’s Ben Greenman, former sex scribe Amy Sohn and pill-popping memoirist Joshua Lyon—Edson uttered the unthinkable: “Someone who wanted to destroy downtown culture could just…it could be a neutron bomb!”The gangly, bespectacled hipster bouncer slid it underneath a nearby booth and everyone breathed easier.

Wilson sprinted up to the stage and launched into a reading about the buying habits of plutocratic I-Bankers with an intonation eerily reminiscent of Ed Wood in Plan 9 From Outer Space.There were plenty of chuckles, and the judges were impressed, especially dimple-cheeked Park Slope mom ne plus ultra Sohn. She flipped her chestnut curls and gushed at Wilson, “Your ass looks great.”Then she added something in French.

A few minutes later, the fine-featured emcee announced Wilson as the winner, and she came striding off the stage victoriously.

Her arms were raised up high as a fist-shaped medal was glinting over her neckline. The next morning, the Caligula for President author updated her Facebook status to read, “Cintra Wilson is STOKED TO HAVE KILLED AND EATEN ALL COMPETITORS.”