Excerpt from Who Is Rich? by Matthew Klam, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

I asked if anyone needed help. Mel fumbled with her pencil sharpener. I heard crickets chirping in Sarah's empty head. Then I walked to the back of the room and looked at the floor. I heard pencils and paper, the steady breathing of humans at work. I stood behind the printing press, my hands on the wheel, like a sea captain trying to get on course.

By the time we took a break, other classes had also made their way outside to the picnic tables in the courtyard. A breeze as light as champagne bubbles swept over us from the bay. Sailboats dotted its sparkling waters. I felt relieved. I'd been nervous before class, and almost puked at breakfast. That first lecture always unhinged me, but I'd gotten through it.

But there was something else not right, and it took me a second to figure out what it was: Angel Solito, walking out of Fine Arts, squinting into the sun, coming toward me. He wore a navy blue hooded sweatshirt with long white strings. His arms hung down at his sides, and he wore eyeglasses. I said something, and he reached out a hand. His face was bumpy, as if a rash was trying to come through from underneath, and his hair had been slept on or pushed up into a ridge.

I couldn't tell if he had any clue who I was, but I knew an editor of a British anthology who knew him. I said her name, like I didn't care either way, and sternly congratulated him on his book.

"Uh-huh."

He was the cartoonist who Carl, the director, had hired. Solito was young enough to be my son, if I'd had a son at fourteen, and on closer inspection the whites of his eyes were laced with red threads and his head tipped forward as if he had horns. Maybe he'd been heading to the big black plastic coffee urn on the picnic table behind me and I'd gotten in his way. Maybe he didn't care, and just needed to vent, and would've talked this way to anybody. He shook his head and said, "Man, it's been crazy," and told me how exhausted he was, how he ran out of money two days ago and was waiting for a check from his publisher. As soon as the conference ended, he'd be hitting the road again.

"The book rolls out overseas, in Sweden and Denmark—"

At some point I realized he was confiding, I was being confided in, and I guess I appreciated that.

"—then the big rollout in Europe, at the end of the summer, beginning of fall—"

Chewing his lower lip, blinking at me, talking about some French fellowship, oblivious, harassed, as if French people had been calling all night and he hated to disappoint them, as a woman appeared at his side, with flyaway hair and skin so fair she was glowing, hugging his book to her chest.

"I'm so tired, man, I haven't done any work in, like, months—"

As another young woman walked past us in pigtails, then stopped short when she realized it was him.

"—new idea for a book but I need to get into a quiet place, and hopefully kind of erupt—"

"Sure, of course."

"You've been living the life for, like, ten years!" he said, taking a step toward the picnic table and his waiting fans. "You gotta tell me what it's like. That's why we gotta hang out!"

"Absolutely!" Fuck you.

He gave me a tired wave, a polite smile, almost sad, and I gave him a reassuring nod.

Tell you what it's like, Angel. I sold ten thousand books in the last six years. He sold a hundred thousand copies in hardback in three months and foreign rights in thirty-eight countries. That's, like, a million bucks in royalties. The woman in pigtails hesitated, but the blond one had her book ready and jumped.

I'd seen his work somewhere, maybe I saw an excerpt in some anthology, or maybe his publisher sent me a galley, or I might've seen it in a bookstore, in a stack on a table in front, and stood over it for however many hours it took to read the thing from start to finish, before stumbling back out into daylight, shivering and mumbling to myself, groping my way out the door.

Excerpted from Who Is Rich? by Matthew Klam. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.