Sara Nelson: “As for HarperCollins: it is well known that many Regan books—from Wicked to Howard Stern to three bestsellers about Scott Peterson—made a great deal of money for the company. Without her—and really, without her, will the imprint be able to make and market the books that reflected her uncanny and unseemly taste or lack thereof?—won’t Harper feel the pinch? The marketplace certainly wanted many of these books, which may say more about the marketplace than it does about the morals of editors, but we all live and die by that marketplace.And I can’t help wondering what the brass will say if their numbers are down in the first post-Regan year.”

Sara Gran: “For me, things work out fine (I can go to the suburbs or just shop in NYC for books, music, clothes etc.) but what about some poor mom who’s trying to get her kids clothes for school? She has exactly one option in the city: wal-mart, which offers terrible quality at average prices. The reason why I say this is, or might be, the future, is because I wish more people were aware that when it comes to this stuff there is nothing so special about New Orleans, except poverty.”

(via Pinky’s Paperhaus)

I had hoped to serve up a few more podcasts this weekend, but I’m a tad under the weather right now. So content will be lighter than usual. The Pynchon roundtable will also happen: through a more comprehensive format than I anticipated. More soon.

Lizzie Skurnick appears in today’s Style section with an article offering an overview of mommy lit, what Lizzie describes as “written in the wry voices of a generation of women who came of age after feminism, and they have a newly competitive, higher-end set of woes: $10,000 pacifier consultants, nanny-swiping and Harvard-like nursery school applications. Also present is chick-lit’s familiar cast of characters: the single best friend, the dutiful boyfriend (now husband) and a seductive other man who threatens to upset the apple cart.”

Barking Kitten takes umbrage with this, observing, “These writers are but a sliver of society, the hopelessly out-of-touch wealthy inhabiting the coasts. The article does give mention to blogs complaining about this rarified [sic] air, but the publishing world, personified by editor Stacy Creamer, who brought us masterwork The Devil Wears Prada, is all over the trend, anxious to capitalize on a strollerful of publications before the Mummies turn to divorce and menopause.”

Certainly, there have been books, including those cited in Lizzie’s article, that have attempted to capitalize on how to keep chick lit going. As those who read chick lit in the late ’90’s have started families, it makes complete sense to appeal to these new audiences, particularly if you’re an avaricious publisher. However, I must also take partial umbrage with mom lit — not because I have any objection to books which deal with mothers, but because a novel dealing with hyperaffluent maternity suggests more of a masturbatory fantasy than fiction rooted in realism. At least with chick lit, a genre which caters to valid, albeit wildly optimistic tales that often dwell upon women’s issues, there’s some sense of verisimilitude merged with fantasy. Mom lit, by contrast, involves milking the teat on a cash cow.

CNN: “Digesting that fact becomes harder when you consider that the Schuetts earn a comfortable living, with Amy, 39, pulling in $150,000 a year as a hospital psychiatrist. True, their income did take a big hit last summer when Brian got laid off from his job as a sales rep for a pharmaceutical firm (he’d been making a base salary of $82,000 a year, plus commissions as high as $24,000)….
Yet, says Amy, ‘We live from one paycheck to the next, we’re struggling to save and we never seem to have enough money to do anything fun.'”