How I Became a Famous Novelist
-
- 3,99 €
-
- 3,99 €
Publisher Description
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.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Biting, hilarious and improbably affectionate, comedy writer Hely's debut skewers the literary world with a sendup of the quest to write the Great American Novel. Words are Pete Tarslaw's thing, and after watching a bestselling novelist prattle on about the truth, his "calling" and other ridiculous ideas on TV, Pete concludes that the sole way to save face at his ex-girlfriend's upcoming wedding is to become a famous novelist himself. His quest to construct a by-the-numbers bestseller is guided by rules like "At dull points include descriptions of delicious meals" and where to live ("An easy way to get credibility as an author is to live someplace rugged"), though the real adventure starts once he bags $15,000 for The Tornado Ashes Club: his dance card is full of one-night stands, dizzying meet-and-greets with Hollywood big shots and appearances at grad schools. Meanwhile, Pete senses his moral barometer plummet as his Amazon ranking rises. Granted, Hely's shooting at some pretty easy targets that have been hit before, but it's hard not to love the way he does it with such merciless zeal.
