Cal Hoffman Brings Down the House—Thankfully, Not the Mezzanine at Barnes & Noble UWS, NYC.
Cal Hoffman and John Burnham Schwartz at the Easy to Slip reading and discussion at the Barnes & Noble on the Upper West Side this past Thursday, April 3rd.
Last Thursday night, the mezzanine floor of Barnes & Noble’s Upper West Side flagship somehow managed not to buckle under the weight of literary heavyweights who gathered to hear Cal Hoffman read from his debut novel, Easy to Slip, and discuss the work with fellow author and literary force, John Burnham Schwartz.
The night crackled with energy—an eclectic crowd of literary icons, neighborhood regulars, curious readers, and a few bold-faced names filled the space with anticipation. In conversation with Schwartz, Hoffman spoke with candor and humility about the emotional excavation that led to the novel—a coming-of-age story set in the 1970s that spans New York City, Washington D.C., and Hollywood. At its core, Easy to Slip is a meditation on identity, trauma, and the quiet—but radical—possibility of personal transformation.
What gives the novel its quiet voltage is not what it proclaims, but what it withholds. As Cal Hoffman shared, the protagonist’s life is subtly shaped by the rise of a family member—his uncle—who becomes a global film icon. But fame, like bright light, only serves to sharpen the shadows. What emerges instead is a far more intimate narrative: the struggle to remain whole while the world insists on splintering you into roles you never auditioned for.
The crowd, documented by celebrity photographer Patrick McMullan, was a who’s who of New York’s creative class: Molly Ringwald and Panio Gianopoulos, actors Peter Riegert and Cornelia Read Riegert, Josh Hamilton, Amy Stiller, Ellen McLaughlin, Jack Merrill, playwright David Auburn, authors Thomas Beller, James Sanders, Joanna Hershon, artist Will Ryman, theater producer James Nicola, musicians Tom and Steve Chapin—and Academy Award-winning documentarian Barbara Kopple, who took her seat in the front row.
After the reading, guests ascended to the rooftop of the Lucerne Hotel for a celebration hosted by Victoria Leacock Hoffman. It was a balmy, wind-stirred night—perfect for an evening of literary stargazing and gentle reinvention under the Manhattan sky. Cal Hoffman signed books late into the evening, as the line curled around the terrace like a well-earned epilogue.
With rapturous blurbs from Pulitzer Prize winners Carl Bernstein, Geraldine Brooks, David Auburn, and Doug Wright already attached with their glowing praise, Easy to Slip is doing anything but—it’s landing with grace, weight, and quiet insistence. It may be a debut, but it feels like a return—an arrival not of fame, but of voice. Here are the author's blurbs:
“At once memoir, novel, and reportage, Cal Hoffman brings us his remarkable gift for the most intimate storytelling: probing his own young psyche, through the language and tools of a writer, to unravel and overcome the hellish mysteries of psychosis. It is impossible not to marvel at this harrowing tour of the mind from deep within and the triumphant distance of recovery.” —Carl Bernstein, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author of Chasing History: A Kid in the Newsroom, All the President’s Men, and Loyalties: A Son’s Memoir
“An uncle’s sudden stardom has unforeseen effects on his nephew’s family. As his celebrity soars, an impressionable boy must grapple with new definitions of success and an unbearable pressure to be special. When he arrives at college in the gritty New York of the 1970s, his mind is overrun by malevolent voices and visions. Raw, brave, and gripping, Easy to Slip is an uncommon exploration of adolescence, psychosis, and recovery.” —Geraldine Brooks, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of March
“Intricate, hallucinatory, funny, and harrowing, Cal Hoffman’s absorbing novel takes us deep into the psyche of an exceptional everyman, whose coming-of-age is at once singular and universal.” —David Auburn, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Proof
“With the veracity of a diarist, Cal Hoffman uses vivid stream-of-consciousness prose to dramatize the story of a precocious young Columbia student doing his very damnest to stay on th right side of sanity. It is a story that touches the heart and the mind in equal measure.” —Doug Wright, Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright of I Am My Own Wife