An exciting new deal announcement, via GalleyCat:

 "MySpace and MTV sensation Tila Tequila's HOOKING UP WITH TILA TEQUILA, no-holds-barred thoughts on love, fame, happiness, and success and the remarkable story of how the child of Vietnamese immigrants singlehandedly harnessed the web to become a popular sex symbol, to Brant Rumble at Scribner, for publication in December 2008, by David Vigliano and Michael Harriot of Vigliano Associates (world)."

 No-holds-barred! Love! Fame! A remarkable story!

Of course this won't be in the $1 Barnes & Noble discount section a month after it pubs. Why would anyone assume something like that?  Remember, Tila, if round one doesn't work out, you can always launch a follow-up season--er--sequel. Aren't second chances wonderful?!

5/13/2008 6:04:00 PM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

Janet Maslin really, really likes James Frey's new novel, Bright Shiny Morning. She calls it a "captivating urban kaleidoscope" and goes on to suggest that this book is going to "save" Frey, or that this is how he saved himself. We're back to being...maybe...hopeful? This whole thing seems rather surreal. To top it all off, the review itself reads like Maslin copied out some of her notes and margin scrawls. It's surprisingly quite graceful. We suppose she can get away with anything. Even breaking the Barbara Walter's Audition embargo.

5/12/2008 11:59:21 AM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

Over at Omnivoracious, hosted by Amazon.com. Only one post is up so far and it's annoyingly music-centric. Why all the flashing lights and filler for your readings, James Frey? Why can't you just get up there and, um, READ? We have grown grumpy and tired of you, sir. We don't care what you think of Ozzfest, we would rather hear some things about your forthcoming book and your deal with HarperCollins and maybe, erhm, advice for writers who fucked up and are still trucking along and biding their time and doing their thing, maybe? Please show us what you're actually made of or go away.

James Frey will read from his new novel Bright Shiny Morning on May 28th at the Coolidge Corner Theatre. Tickets are $5 and they're not sold out yet. Head to the Brookline Booksmith for more info.

5/5/2008 11:36:39 AM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

We know that the point of this New York Times Sunday Styles piece on N+1 editor and author Keith Gessen wasn't supposed to be about the fact that he is obsessed with checking his Amazon.com ranking. Though it's nice to know that even good-looking, 33-year-old Harvard graduates who live in Prospect Heights, helm their own literary magazine, and have a book out that's earned its fair share of praise and attention also have moments of paralyzing insecurity. Gessen told reporter David Itzkoff that more people who viewed the page for his first novel, All The Sad Young Literary Men, bought Sloane Crosley's best-selling essay collection I Was Told There'd Be Cake than they did his book. Oops!

After exposing Gessen in a way that will likely have a good portion of New York's literary circles snickering, Itzkoff veered off and got Gessen to talk about themes and issues in publishing that we've been pissed off about for awhile now. We applaud the fact that Gessen is trying to taking risks with his magazine. At first we didn't think his novel sounded very risky at all. The very mention of it bored us. Then we read this:

The book is also a further unpacking of Mr. Gessen’s personal philosophy on the proper function of the novel: to hold up an honest mirror to society, no matter how frivolous and unserious that society may be. Young people in big cities like New York, Mr. Gessen said: “are willing to acknowledge that they’re a class only ironically. So they’ll have their ironic kickball games. Their ironic magazines.”

And that struck home. Immediately, we remembered how risky we thought Diane Vadino's Smart Girls Like Me was (incidentally, she was part of the whole McSweeney's crew). Vadino was inspired by her own situation, and the lifestyles of young, middle-class urban youth as she lived it. We believe it really is important to hold up an "honest mirror," and when elder critics get up on the soapbox screaming about how terrible it is to write about such non-serious subjects, we want to laugh. So while we admit we were bored with the idea of All The Sad Young Literary Men, we have given ourselves a proverbial slap on the wrist for skipping to the same ridiculous conclusion. The piece continues:

 “They’re willing to have the privileges of their class,” Mr. Gessen added, “to go to a good college, and be subsidized in their New York lives by their parents, but maybe not willing to be written about.”

The result, Mr. Gessen said, is that the everyday lives of young urban adults are no longer considered appropriate subjects for ambitious novels.

That last bit is what drives this whole notion forward. It's so easy for people to write off a good book simply because its subject matter isn't considered "appropriate" for "ambitious" novels. Isn't that what makes writing one of them, and making it good, such a huge coup, and such a worthy challenge?

4/28/2008 1:13:57 PM by Sharon | Comments [0] |  

How stoked was Richard Johnson when he and the rest of the Page Six crew got to slap the headline "Mailer's Lust Goes to Harvard" on today's Post? We're still getting over the ick-factor, but the item is pretty interesting, if you like reading about the fact that even Pulitzer-Prize winning authors dare their mistresses to write 50-page sex scenes. Don't believe what you hear in creative writing workshops, because if Carole Mallory can do it, surely, you can, too.

4/23/2008 4:03:22 PM by Sharon | Comments [0] |