SIGNS OF BOOK-TOUR FATIGUE

Occasionally one comes across a sign that an author has been perhaps stuck peddling a book for too long. How can it not be tedious to answer the same questions over and over again, without seeming fatigued or bored? How can it not be odd to engage with so many strangers over what you've composed--alone and in your head--now that it is public? It is a funny thing, the way that relentless exposure follows authorial lonerdom (for the lucky few, that is).

So I was amused by this exchange at the L Magazine between Sharon Clark and Rivka Galchen, whose debut novel "Atmospheric Disturbances" recently came out in paperback. (Galchen, FYI, is someone we've cornered ourselves, owing to the considerable charms of this book.) It is a good Q&A, full of reasons to read the book and follow Galchen's career. But after a year of fielding queries about her motivations, the author is clearly keen to entertain herself:

The L: The omnipresent character Tzvi Gal-Chen is named after your father. Is there significance behind the names of any of the other characters?

RG: If you take all the letters of the names of the different characters, shuffle them, then transpose their value an X increment, it reveals the terrifying and silent name of the God of our divine disorder.

~ EMILY BOBROW