Here’s a helpful list for New York freelancers who need to write a needlessly alarmist newspaper piece about what may be killing the novel. So if you’ve run out of ideas and don’t quite know an angle, here are some casuistic ideas for your future pitches! Remember, if you collect a check from any of these ideas, I’m only asking 5%. Be sure to send a check to me within 45 days after the piece runs. Good luck and Allah’s speed!
- Global warming
- David Hasselhoff
- Sudoku puzzles
- People who are really into Settlers of Catan
- Tao Lin
- The bottled water industry
- Right-wing French joggers
- Waffles and pancakes
- Men who leave the toilet seat up
- Women who leave the toilet seat up
- Pet dogs who have been trained by their masters to keep the toilet seat up with their paws
- Marxists
- Eucharists
- Tom Cruise (or any famous Scientologist, really)
- Eco-friendly organic pizzeria owners
- Pot smokers
- Golfers
- Matt and Daniel Mendelsohn
- Lev and Austin Grossman
- Edward Champion
- Killroy
The Call by Yannick Murphy: The always interesting author of Here They Come and Signed, Mata Hari returns with a novel that whips up a worldview from a rather quirky set of limitations: namely, the call logs that a veterinarian maintains as his son is unexpectedly put into a coma and an unforgiving economy denies him work. What emerges is a surprisingly optimistic, often funny, and very moving account on how one family uses acceptance and forgiveness as a way to atone for hard knocks. (
Birds of Paradise by Diana Abu-Jaber: Forget Franzen and Eugenides. If you're looking for a social novel that counts, Diana Abu-Jaber is the author you're looking for. Building from the free-form exploration of consciousness and identity in Crescent and the gripping procedural structure of Origin, Abu-Jaber's latest novel is her finest, equally fluent with gutterpunk culture and smarmy real estate men. It has been suggested by The Washington Post's Ron Charles that you will likely gain some pounds while reading this novel. This is certainly true. Abu-Jaber's description of food is so precise that it often made me want to do more cooking. But I very much admired the way in which Abu-Jaber presents all her characters as unwitting victims of rough capitalism, which permits them some dignity even as they perform terrible acts.
The Last of the Live Nude Girls by Sheila McClear: This memoir isn't so much about the decline of the Times Square peepshow, as it is about one young woman's efforts to pull herself up by by her bootstraps when presented with few economic options. Filled with self-introspective candor and a quiet dignity, McClear's story is one that might befall any of us in these volatile times. While McClear does get back on her feet, her book leads one contemplating the terrible fates of other young women now moving to New York and falling into deadlier vocations. (
Surely it’s novels that are killing the novel.
Readers are killing the novel, one word at a time.
“Lev and Austin Grossman
Edward Champion”
Why do you guys hate America so much?
And does this reason help pick up chicks?
I’m still a bit boggled by the furor in France over Sarzoky’s sweaty jogging. I have underestimated his skills if he really is using it to spread his right-wing propaganda. I vote for him as the murderer. (V.S. Naipaul should be up there too.)
You forgot:
video
radio
iPods
the iPhone
Harry Potter
The internet
The blurring of fact and opinion by bloggers in Terre Haute
Hillary Clinton
Gordon Brown
Gordon Ramsay
Gordon Sumner
I heard that you and your band threw out your novels and bought quills–you’re gonna make a Shakespeare play.
you can use the asian angle on me also
asian + destroying the novel
Definitely not the pot smokers… They’re too busy thinking about writing novels to kill any…that, an eating a lot of Oreos…
Boing Boing.
They’re not killing it fast enough.
Novelists are killing the novel now, but only because publishing is killing the novelist. And believe me, they started it. This is no chicken-egg thing. http://www.literaryrejectionsondisplay.blogspot.com