Viral Marketing
Written by Edward ChampionPosted on April 21, 2009
Filed Under Ellroy, James
As Sarah Weinman reports, in a signed note on the back of the forthcoming James Ellroy novel, Blood’s a Rover, the Demon Dog of Crime Fiction is urging all of his readers to find him on Facebook. This may very well be the most brazen Web 2.0 pitch in the history of book industry marketing. And the last thing I want to do is kick a Demon Dog when he’s down. So go to Facebook, find James Ellroy, and lift this great writer’s spirits for the benefit of arts and letters! Perhaps by befriending Mr. Ellroy in this manner, he might be tempted to write even stranger novels for the joys and pleasures of readers around the world! (That is, when he’s not being poked by people he barely knows, given virtual gifts, or being chatted up by bored 15-year-olds.) Now if only we can convince Mr. Ellroy to get on Twitter and Tumblr, then we may very well make Mr. Ellroy the Demon Dog of All Media.
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Books To Jump Up and Down Over
Girl Power by Marisa Meltzer. During the 1990s, artists such as Liz Phair and Bikini Kill came very close to unsettling the patriarchal pop hierarchy. And this small yet thoughtful volume delineates many connections between girl bands and post-Beauty Myth ruminations, suggesting that we may have come closer to a musical revolution than we realized, but settled for less.
Reality Hunger by David Shields. This book, challenging both "originality" and the conventional narratives we accept in literary "masterpieces," is mandatory reading for every working writer. It's almost designed as a litmus test carefully designed to uproot charlatans. (Indeed, Zadie Smith confessed last November in The Guardian that she could not write a novel after reading this book. Interestingly, her essay is no longer available online.) The book presents numerous thoughts and maxims: some contrived, some taken from other sources (see the numerous endnotes), and some sincere. And even if you don't agree with the sentiments, you'll come away from the book rethinking your perceptions of the novel and possibly galvanized to reapproach your own work. 
Psycho Too by Will Self. This handsome followup to Psychogeography containing the last half of Will Self's New Statesman columns and accompanied by Ralph Steadman's gloriously savage illustrations -- seems to have escaped the attention of most American newspapers, save for a widely syndicated Alexandra Fuller review in The New York Times Book Review. Small wonder that in a universe happily handing over its glass-encased brains to the likes of People and TMZ that Fuller would accuse Self of penning a "densely written" book and focus her interests more on Self's "rakish behavior" from fifteen years ago rather than his post-Debordian meditations on the dérive. That's too bad. Because Self's enjoyable and hyperliterate essays, laden with cranky asides and thoughtful considerations about the fixed manner in which humans unwittingly accept their spatial limitations, deserves your consideration.Or send materials to:
315 Flatbush Avenue, #231
Brooklyn, NY 11217
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[...] in April, it was revealed that the galley for James Ellroy’s Blood’s a Rover contained a note asking all of [...]