Harriet Klausner, known to the literary world as Amazon’s #1 reviewer and known for her generosity towards every book that she reads, stunned the literary world when she rated a book three stars, instead of the accustomed four or five.

“She was probably having a bad day,” said Penguin’s Yen Cheong.

Publishers are now debating whether they should send Klausner any additional books in light of this critical solecism. They had counted on Klausner for a steady stream of uncritical raves and began to express some concern that there could be two-star reviews. Or even a one star review.

Klausner responded to these charges by pointing out that three stars was still “a decent rating, nothing to be worried about,” and had merely wanted to shake things up to see if anybody was still reading her reviews.

As reported this morning by Slunch, it has become almost impossible to hate Sloane Crosley. Until now. Josie Harris, a 34-year-old paralegal, has decided enough is enough, and has decided to commit her energies to hating Sloane Crosley.

“There is nobody in the literary world I despise more than Sloane,” said Harris. “Nobody can be that fucking nice all the time.”

What’s considerably astonishing is that Harris came out as a Crosley hater despite being on a considerable daily regiment of antidepressants.

But is Harris simply being contrarian?

“No. I read two sentences that Sloane wrote in the Village Voice and I was so angry that it caused me to place my pet hamster in the microwave and watch it explode. This is not a common reaction that I get from writers. But Sloane’s words caused me to do this. I was depressed for weeks. And I blame her for running me over the edge.”

Harris plans to advance her protests further. Mass book burnings of I Was Told There’d Be Cake, followed by a giant Sloane Crosley effigy in front of the Random House building. She has also issued an open challenge to enter into a kickboxing match with Crosley. Crosley, however, has not responded.

Hack Hollywood director Michael Bay informed friends and colleagues that he was “sick to death” of turning out crappy films and announced that his next project would be a film adaptation of Flann O’Brien’s At Swim-Two-Birds, mainly because, as Bay put it, “the Lost writers may be onto something with this fucking literary trend.”

Bruce Willis is now in talks to portray the book’s main character: a college student who writes a novel and spends time shooting the shit with his pals. Some O’Brien enthusiasts have expressed reservations about casting Willis, who is bald and 53, in the role of a character some three decades younger.

“Fuck you. I’m Michael Bay. And he’s Bruce Fucking Willis,” said Bay, who cited Sylvester Stallone’s recent septuagenarian turns as Rambo and Rocky Balboa. “You get John McClane and David Madison in one package! Plus, there aren’t many action stars these days who like to smoke in bed.”

Bay would address the age difference through CGI effects that he pioneered with his live-action version of Transformers. Bay was also considering hiring an additional actor who Willis could “transform” into between scenes.

Dalkey Archive’s Chad Post has distanced himself from these developments. He had no comment, but is reportedly “not sleeping very well.”

US Customs and Border Protection, galvanized by their successful efforts to prevent Sebastian Horsley from entering the United States, have decided to take things further in an effort to protect America from itself. Starting on January 1, 2009, all writers who look or sound even remotely foreign — and that includes those pesky Canucks who don’t know how to pronounce “about” correctly — will be prevented from entering the American homeland.

“Frankly, these foreign writers all sound a little faggy,” said Cletus Dorrell, a 44-year-old director who rose up the ranks quickly because of his commitment to stubbing out moral turpitude. “And we have plenty of writers here in America. Just look at John Grisham!”

How this would effect such events as the PEN World Voices Festival remained to be seen, but PEN America was considering renaming their annual event the “PEN America We’re #1 Voices Festival.”

New York Times Book Review editor Sam Tanenhaus welcomed the move. “All the damn bloggers keep complaining about how little we cover translated titles. Well, I’ve always been a company man who never asks questions. And this policy certainly explains why things have been the way they have been on the Review’s pages. Frankly, I’ve been munificent under the circumstances.”

This morning, booksellers finally figured out what to do about the massive influx of pretentious literary fiction that has taken over the “Fiction” section in bookstores. Starting next month, “Pretentious Literary Fiction” will get its own section in bookstores, in an effort to hinder confusion for today’s customers. Nearly all books published by Ecco would be part of this new reorganization.

“It was really getting out of control,” said Thelma Rhustein, manager of a Barnes & Noble in Peroia, Illinois. “These New York people actually believed that these mutant books were fiction, and tried to ram them into our stacks.”

Of course, there is only so much space. Since other genres — such as science fiction, mystery, YA, comics, chick lit, and romance — have become less pretentious and are now more acceptable to the reading public, the elaborate plan calls for these genres to be integrated into the main Fiction section.

Many newspaper book review sections have begun adjusting their sections accordingly. Now that “pretentious literary fiction” is a lesser genre, many plan to begin ghettoizing “pretentious literary fiction” to capsule reviews while moving previously little-regarded genres up to full-length reviews.

“It’s purely a business decision,” said a spokesman for Tribune Newspapers.

Ecco spokesman Michael McKenzie could not be reached for comment. He was reportedly too busy playing an addictive Flash game. But he did pledge to a co-worker that he would cut down on his pedicures in an effort to figure out what it was that average people found pleasurable about books.

Psychiatrists have also been enlisted to make many pretentious literary fiction publishers less douchey.