How I Became a Famous Novelist - Softcover

Steve Hely

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1849015724 ISBN 13: 9781849015721

Publisher: Corsair, 2011

Synopsis

In this blistering evisceration of celebrity culture and literary fame, a roguish loser sets out to write the best-sellingest best seller of all time. When he actually pulls it off, he winds up tearing like a tornado across America's cultural landscape. What Pete Tarslaw wants is simple enough: FAME-Realistic amount. Enough to open new avenues of sexual opportunity. Personal assistant to read mail, grocery shop, etc. FINANCIAL COMFORT-Never have a job again. Retire. Spend rest of life lying around, pursuing hobbies (boating? skeet shooting?) STATELY HOME BY THE OCEAN (OR SCENIC LAKE)-Spacious library, bay windows, wet bar. HD TV, discreetly placed. Comfortable couch. HUMILIATE EX-GIRLFRIEND AT HER WEDDING This is the story of how he succeeds in getting it all, and what it costs him in the end. Narrated by an unlikely literary legend, How I Became a Famous Novelist pinballs from the postcollege slums of Boston to the fear-drenched halls of Manhattan's publishing houses, from the gloomy purity of Montana's foremost writing workshop to the hedonistic hotel bars of the Sunset Strip. This is the horrifying, hilarious tale of how Pete Tarslaw's "pile of garbage," called The Tornado Ashes Club, became the most talked about, blogged about, read, admired, and reviled novel in America. It will change everything you think you know-about literature, appearance, truth, beauty, and those people who still care about books. It is the winner of the 2010 Thurber Prize for American Humor.

About this title

Review

Amazon Best of the Month, July 2009: Steve Hely's satiric novel masquerades as the tell-all memoir of Pete Tarslaw, author of the runaway bestseller The Tornado Ashes Club who's become a lit-world pariah. Two years out of college, Pete still moons after the brilliant Polly Pawson, who dropped him post-graduation for law school. His hygiene and motivation have degraded such that he's accumulating beer bottles next to his bed as convenient substitutes for the toilet. His dubious job transforming the convoluted prose of wealthy foreign students into earnest college entrance essays depresses him, more for its lack of prestige than any ethical implications. When Polly announces her engagement in a gleeful mass email, Pete's desire to upstage her at the wedding inflames his obsession with the fame, fortune, and female attention enjoyed by bestselling authors--clever charlatans, in his estimation. What follows is Pete's exposé of the Machiavellian tactics he employed in creating and selling a maudlin mess of a book. It lands him a spot on the New York Times bestsellers list (hilariously parodied by Hely) and an unwisely candid prime-time TV interview, in which his theories on authors as con artists spark a book-world feud, spike his Amazon sales rank, and force him into a literary showdown at a Texan book festival. Along the way, no one connected to books--writers, writing teachers, lit agents, publishers, critics, book buyers--gets off unskewered by Hely's rapier pen (and readers may wonder, on occasion, if Steve Hely has employed Tarslawian strategies in his own bid for a slot on the bestsellers lists). But out of the irony emerges something that feels like genuine reverence for great books, and for those who write out of honesty. For fellow book lovers weary of tracking book sales trends, Hely's wrap-up might feel like a catharsis. --Mari Malcolm

About the Author

Steve Hely was a writer for The Late Show with David Letterman and the acclaimed animated comedy American Dad. He is also coauthor of the comic travelogue The Ridiculous Race.

About this edition

• Publisher: Corsair
• Publication date: 2011
• ISBN 10: 1849015724
• ISBN 13: 9781849015721
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320