So you want to be a famous novelist

I don’t want to ruin a streak, so just as pretty much everyone who has chosen a book has said: “I loved this book!” I mean, really loved it. Since I finished reading it, I’ve evangelized it to everyone who mentions any of the following: books, reading, Barnes and Noble or awesomeness. Or pretty much to anyone who uses words, really. I probably could have finished it in just a few days, but I forced myself to dole it out in smaller pieces and took the better part of a week because I didn’t want it to end. (I’d be interested if anyone else did this, or if I was just being weird.) To me, the most powerful thing about the book was that since I finished it, it has made me very aware in the real world of the different clichés he used to make his own book popular. This does make me a more skeptical consumer of popular culture, which I won’t necessarily value-judge as good or bad. But in fairness, I’d also say that the good that came from reading this book is that it has encouraged me read more than I have in years (I’ve finished three books since I started this one).

I liked a lot about How I Became A Famous Novelist (or HIBAFN). I thought the book managed some sharp criticism, impressively covering all aspects of the writing business. It takes on everything from MFA programs, literary criticism, the business of the publishing industry, the sometimes-ridiculous nature of genre fiction, the editorial process, the mass-reading audience and even Hollywood and a few more that I’ve probably neglected to list here. Additionally, this is one of only a few books that had me laugh out loud while reading. (Yes, I LOLed.) I think the funniest parts of the book were the asides-- the excerpts from other books, the faux NYT best-seller list, the fake reviews of The Tornado Ashes Club and things like that. But like any good criticism, it was so funny because it was so true.

What I didn’t like about the book? Honestly, I didn’t like that Hely felt we needed to learn lessons by having Pete constantly doing the wrong thing. We’re set up from the beginning to see Pete as a kind of anti-hero, a slacker who is only self-interested, skating by doing the very minimum… but I really wanted him to succeed with his master plan. There were many times when I was like “Man, I would have kept it together if that was me.” Now granted, if Pete didn’t mess up all the good he created in the first half of the book, I suppose there wouldn’t have been a very interesting second half. But I kind of felt let down when Pete wasn’t awesome at Polly’s wedding, when he screwed up the Television interview and when he gets pwned at the literary debate. This is probably my own fault for identifying too closely with the main character, but I am also curious if others were looking for that atavistic pleasure of being the badass Pete thought he was going to be when he set out to write the novel.

I wanted to open this section up for general discussion about HIBAFN, or any of the questions above. Further discussion to follow.

Preston Brooks: Flaming A-Hole or no?

Personally, I disliked Preston Brooks as a character, and would have liked to see him get his comeuppance at some point. Even by the end of the book I wasn’t convinced he wasn’t just a bloviating windbag. However, the book sets him up as a sort of voice of truth. In his television interview, Preston Brooks says, “Writing is a cudgel I wield to chase away the brigands who would burn down the precious things of the human heart.” That moment makes Pete realize that Brooks, and very likely all novelists, are “con artists.” Is he right?

Fame? I, for one, want to live forever.

I thought the novel was also very incisive when talking about the nature of fame and mass popularity. Consider the following excerpt:

Anyone who’s paying attention in America can tell you it’s strange which things become famous and popular and why. I like to imagine that, around 800 B.C., somewhere in ancient Greece, a guy, let’s call him Linus, wrote an epic poem. It was pretty good, full of adventures and strange animals and sexy goddesses and five-armed monsters and all the stuff epic audiences go for. Linus started orating it, or whatever they used to do. But somehow, people just liked The Odyssey better. No one could explain why. Maybe a particular king or something insisted on the Homer version, and everybody went along. Maybe Homer got there first, or had a better orating voice, or ran a better marketing campaign. But 2800 years later, we’ve all heard of Homer and nobody’s heard of Linus.

You could argue that The Odyssey was the better work. More intelligent or poetic, or addressing universal themes – and that’s why it lasted. But I don’t think so. There’s not much evidence that fame and popularity follow any kind of logical pattern. And who can tell these days anyway? The whole thing’s more or less a crapshoot. For every Charles Dickens who catches a break, there’s probably some guy named Bartles Osbrook who was just as good but less lucky. In some alternate universe they gather and read Osbrook’s classic A Christmas Fable around the holidays.

After cracking the 23^rd spot on the NYT Best-seller List, Pete spends Christmas with his family. He says that he was “nervous that I’d be called upon to say witty things, but instead everyone assumed the regular things I said were witty.” What does this observation reveal about the nature of fame, or about the nature of family dinner table conversations? What do we think of Hely’s take on popularity?

Is it the message, or the messenger?

Things could have worked out differently for Pete if he had simply not revealed his literary insincerity. In some way, he is like a magician who reveals his secrets, a cardinal sin in that business. Do we think his primary error was admitting his motives, or did he commit a graver sin against Literature, with a capital L? Consider his statement at the bar with the MFA students: “I’d profaned the evening. These people treated stories like sacraments.” Should they be in general, or is it commentary on the literary bubble within these programs?

How to write a best-selling novel

Based on research conducted in bookstores and the NYT best-seller’s list, Pete Tarslaw devises a set of rules for how to write a best-selling novel. Among them:

• Abandon truth.

• Write a popular book. Do not waste energy making it a good book.

• Must include a murder.

• Must include a club, secrets/mysterious missions.

• Main character is miraculously liberated from a lousy job.

• Novel must have scenes on a highway.

• At dull points include descriptions of delicious meals.

Are there any common best-seller tropes that he left out? What can we add to the list? Also, how does this list of rules compare to the common “rules of fiction” widely taught in high schools and universities? If it were real, would we have chosen to read The Tornado Ashes Club in this book club?

What is “good” writing?

Late in the book we meet Professor Mintz, who believes that books should be judged not on their literary merits but based on their popularity. Instead of teaching Moby-Dick in class, his students read an 1880s novel about cannibals that he deems superior to Melville’s classic because it was more popular in its time. Is there an intellectual case to be made in support of Mintz’s literary approach, or is it absurd?

Editing in HIBAFN

The technology exists today for anyone to publish a book. Without an editor, however, a vanity press will still put out books like Moon People (first page link).

Within HIBAFN, Lucy engineers the sale of Pete’s book and becomes its editor and also manages to come out of the novel not only professionally successful, but “wise” (considering her choice of, and Pete’s reading of, Peking). At the same time, mega-successful author Pamela McLaughlin says “Editors are accountants with red pens.” What is Hely trying to tell us about editors/the editorial process, or is he merely highlighting the divide between authors and editors?

Bad Good Writing

I wanted to include one last section for anyone to write in some intentionally bad Good Writing, or good Bad Writing or any combination thereof. I’ll try and work on a paragraph of my own, but I thought it’d be fun to give people the opportunity, since it seemed like so much fun in the book.

How I Became A Famous Novelist, by Steve Hely

Hello again, friends. We've passed the first lap and here we are back at the beginning. After changing gears (behind the scenes) about nine times, I've finally settled on our next book which will officially kick off the second season of a very special book club (or AVSBC, as television without pity calls us). That book is How I Became A Famous Novelist by Steve Hely.

After some of the heavy reading we've had, I think of this book as a palate cleanser. More importantly, this is one of the few groups out there that I can trust to be literary enough to actually get this book and why it's funny. I think it can open up discussions of what makes "bad" writing... well, bad, and why so much bad writing is popular. So yes, it's a book about writing a book, which delves feet-first into meta territory, but having just sampled some snippets of it, I can tell you it is not only very funny but also very, very smart.

I don't want to give away too much, or ruin any of the jokes in the book (the fictional NYT Bestseller list is particularly hilarious) so I'll add a quick note from the publisher's site here...

"Narrated by an unlikely literary legend, How I Became a Famous Novelist pinballs from the postcollege slums of Boston to the fear-drenched halls of Manhattan’s publishing houses, from the gloomy purity of Montana’s foremost writing workshop to the hedonistic hotel bars of the Sunset Strip.

This is the horrifying, hilarious tale of how Pete Tarslaw’s “pile of garbage,” called The Tornado Ashes Club, became the most talked about, blogged about, read, admired, and reviled novel in America. It will change everything you think you know—about literature, appearance, truth, beauty, and those people out there, somewhere in America, who still care about books."

And I'd like to link to a real fake website for the fake book in the real book. It should give you a pretty good idea of what we're about to get into. (I highly recommend the fake interview with the main character). Additionally, here's an excerpt from the (fake) book The Tornado Ashes Club by the main character, Pete Tarslaw:

In strewn banners that lay like streamers from a longago parade the sun’s fading seraphim rays gleamed onto the hood of the old Ford and ribboned the steel with the meek orange of a June tomato straining at the vine. From the back seat, door open, her nimble fingers moved along the guitar like a weaver’s on a loom. Stitching a song. The cloth she made was a cry of aching American chords, dreamlike warbles built to travel miles of lonesome road. They faded into the twilight, and Silas leaned back on the asphalt, as if to watch them drift into the Arkansas mist.

Away from them, across the field of low-cut durum wheat, they saw Evangeline’s frame, outlined pale in shadow against the highway sky, as it trembled.That’s the way it is with a song, isn’t it? she said. The way it quivers in your heart. Quivers like the wing of a little bird.

In a story too. He spoke it softly in a voice that let her hear how close they were. That’s the way it is with a story. Turns your heart into a bird.

I made this choice because I think we're a group in America that still cares about books. (Hopefully I also found something that no one has read yet!) Discussion questions to follow in a few weeks. Let me know of any questions, concerns, etc.