My Petition for Someone To Please Kindly Inform Me of the Next Petition, Thank You Very Much.

I'm signing everything, goddamn it.

ABOVE: Not me.

Many people imagine the life of a writer to be pleasant, blessed even. And in many ways it is. But the truth is more complex. Because not only only must we write, find an audience and face criticism, we also have to sign petitions.

Lots of petitions, the more the better.

Not because the issue the petition aims to correct has vexed us for very long, or even that we know much about it, but to put our names on the same list as other writers and thereby make ourselves seem important.

It’s the first question writers ask when they get a petition – not “What’s it for?” or “What’s it against?” but “Who else signed it?”

So imagine my shock last week when I found out that thousands of writers recently signed a petition pledging to boycott Israeli cultural institutions over the continuing war in Gaza.

I was livid. I was furious. How come nobody told me about this fucking petition?

Sally Rooney, Percival Everett, Jhumpa Lahiri - these are no slouches, and I could have been on a petition with them! Imagine the first paragraph of the Times article: “Signers included such writers as Sally Rooney, Percival Everett, Jhumpa Lahiri and Shalom Auslander.”

But it gets worse.

Much worse.

It turns out a second group of writers signed a counter petition, the second petition condemning the first petition’s call for a boycott. Mamet, Schama, Gopnik. And where am I? Nowhere! I say this as a writer and a Jew: this is fucking bullshit.

We are known by the company we keep, for fuck’s sake – hell, I would have signed both of them (Note: I suggest someone check if anyone did that; I wouldn’t be surprised, and I’d kinda/maybe be impressed).

But was I told?

No.

Did any of the other writers who signed these petitions - many of whom I know personally, by the way - bother to tell me about the petition going around?

No.

Not a word.

Would it have killed you assholes to give me a heads up?

“Hey, Shalom, how’s it going – big petition opportunity today, sign on before they cover it in the Times!”

Would that have been so hard? Now I’m fucked. One of the biggest issues of our times, and I missed out.

So let this post serve as a petition of its own, you may sign by simply liking it below:

We the undersigned do hereby demand that Shalom Auslander be sent all future petitions so as to not miss out again on an opportunity for career advancement. And not some bullshit local petition about adding crosswalks or putting a stop light at 4^th and Main, either – something thorny, something complex. Knowledge of the issue not required, nor any genuine concern. And we don’t want him to be at the bottom of the list, either, where nobody ever gets to - we want him at the top. Thank you.

Signed, in the fetal position,

S.

illustrations by orli auslander