It’s very awkward. There are more cameras here than people,” laughs Phillip Carlisle, who’s gone to the bar at Kramer Books to dodge the dozen reporters milling around the shelves next door. “I went out there to get in line, and I was like ‘Nope.’” The midnight release of James Comey’s memoir A Higher Loyalty at the Dupont Circle bookstore-cafe drew many fewer fevered buyers than Michael Wolff’s Trump tell-all Fire and Fury did four months ago, when the bookstore sold every one of the 75 copies they’d had on hand within 15 minutes. Monday at midnight, just four customers are waiting to be among the first to buy A Higher Loyalty.
Fire and Fury was lurid and scandal-tinged, and the night of its midnight sale—the Thursday of that fairly slow first work week after the holidays—was better-suited to a nerdy night out than a Monday in mid-April, says a Kramer’s employee who won’t tell me how many copies of A Higher Loyalty they ordered. “We have a large quantity,” was all she said.
By around 12:30 a.m., she generously estimates they’ve sold 12, maybe 15. But only because some reporters bought copies, too. And the satellite news truck outside could have scared away customers: At one point, a CNN reporter and five network affiliates swarm a middle-aged man in a faded denim jacket with Harley Davidson emblazoned on the back, who simply says, “My wife wants to read it,” and hurries out the door.
Whereas Wolff’s book was steamy, Comey’s book is preachy. It’s a self-righteous breakfast of oat bran, compared to a sugary cupcake you’ll regret later. Comey makes clear his disapproval of precisely what made Wolff’s book seem worth standing in line for, writing on Page One: “We are experiencing a dangerous time in our country, with a political environment where basic facts are disputed, fundamental truth is questioned, lying is normalized, and unethical behavior is ignored, excused or rewarded.” Though Donald Trump is the reason the book exists, most of its 309 pages detail the life and work that made the former FBI director a humble enough hero to take on the current commander in chief.
Carlisle says that though he’s read some of Comey’s interviews and enjoys digging into Trump as much as the next Washingtonian, he’ll be reading for more than the headline-grabbing tidbits. Comey’s psychological profile intrigues him: “He obviously likes the attention, but he’s been in a position you wouldn’t expect for such a showboat.”
Two of the Monday night buyers—Nigel, who despises Michael Wolff (“too gossipy”), and Ellen, who also bought Fire and Fury at midnight but found it hard to follow—both say they’ll read A Higher Loyalty to see how the Trump era breaks from the lofty moral standards Comey claims to serve. Ellen, who speaks with a slight Northern European accent, says she’s lived in D.C. for eight years, and considers coming out for the midnight release of a tell-all greedily rushed to print, “Just what you do in Washington.”
Matthew Hoeck, who works on Capitol Hill, says he’s more interested in reading about Comey’s interactions with the president who fired him than his life and work as a federal prosecutor and his pre-Trump tenure at the FBI. Hoeck says that while he “kind of came for the crowd,” he also just lives nearby and had some shopping to do. He’s carrying a stack of hardcovers. “It’s very different tonight,” from the Fire and Fury fest, “but Comey himself is different,” says Hoeck somewhat wistfully—while over the crook of his arm, Madeleine Albright peers at me from the back cover of Fascism: A Warning.
As what little hubbub there was dies down, a less cynical friend and I are debating whether Washington luminaries ever really write books for a loftier reason than the excuse to give endless TV interviews, when I spot Carlisle in a quiet back corner with yet another news camera trained on his face. The last real person left, and thus in high demand, he looks like he’s having a wonderful time.
“Hey, Phillip! How many?” I shout, while the TV reporter looks back and snarls. He holds up six fingers and grins at me. “Sorry,” he tells the reporter, who by now has turned to me to say, Can’t you tell we’re in the middle of something? “But we go way back.”
