How I Became A Famous Novelist: Literary Con Job

There are your boring, everyday cynics, and then there is Pete Tarslaw, the slacker and faux-novelist who weasels his way into the literary discussion in Steve Hely's hilarious publishing-industry satire How I Became A Famous Novelist. Pete, who works at a company that furnishes admissions essays for rich college kids and Asian businessmen who want their MBAs, is convinced that literary novelists are nothing more than talented con artists and readers are deluded idiots. He forms a begrudging respect for the former because it takes one to know one, and he plans to exploit the latter. How? He'll simply write a novel — so he can become rich and famous, so he can have a "stately home by the ocean (or scenic lake)" and, most importantly, so he can "humiliate Polly (his ex-girlfriend) at her wedding." His literary intentions are as pure as the driven snow, as you can tell.

So, aided by an experimental drug that helps him concentrate, he commences work on his novel. He bases his plot on an examination of the common characteristics of the (fake) NY Times Best Sellers list. His list of rules for what his novel must include (Christmas, food, cross-country trips, murders, etc.) and the justifications for why these are in novels is one of the hilarious highlights of this book. For example, "Rule 15: Must have obscure exotic locations" because "Americans trust knowledge acquired abroad....as evidenced by their love of Andrea Bocelli and the Olive Garden. Even kids like Chef Boyardee."

Hely: Nerdy, but funny.

The fake NY Times Best Sellers list Hely includes is, other than the fake blurbs: "America's Cervantes has appeared," my favorite part of the novel. It's clearly intended to illustrate how silly we readers are for reading the  novels we do. Even though the names and titles are fake, you'll recognize a few real people/novels (Dan Brown, Tom Clancy, Janet Evanovich) here. It'd be immensely worth your time to use Amazon's "Look Inside" feature to read page 43 (or better yet, just buy the book— it's $5.60 right now!). An example: The Lavender Willow, by Thomas Quinn — On Nantucket, a beautiful nun who's given up on love finds herself attracted to a psychic man who may be a dangerous arsonist.

So Pete's novel is published. It's panned by serious critics, but embraced by readers, aided by a series of serendipities. From there, the second half of the novel is a bit predictable and not nearly as well-written or funny as the first part (except for the part when Pete has a tryst with a cougar novelist he hates). But it's a short book, so it's easy enough to cruise through this to find the answer to the key question: Will Pete get his comeuppance? 

At the heart of this satire is the idea that publishers really don't know what's good and what's not anymore. Pete's friend Lucy, who is an assistant editor at a publisher, has a drunken rant to this effect. "I just can't tell anymore," she says. And readers don't know either. They're happy to be spoon fed

You're not going to like Pete, but you're going to like this novel. If you're interested in publishing, if you have a cynical streak in you, and if you like good satire and sharply funny writing (see below for example), this is for you.

(Thanks to Brenna at Literary Musings for recommending this. She was right: I DID like it.) 

My favorite quote from novel: "That false-hearted overcapitalizing strumpet was welcome to marry whatever Pacific Rim lout would call her missus."