Penn Group

Barbara Walters continues to tear the book world asunder with her memoir, Audition.

First, the New York Times ran its review of the book early, in spite of the fact that Knopf warned news outlets not to publish reviews before May 6. Now, journalists, including Doree Schafrir of the Observer, are angry that the Times managed to get its piece in before anyone else.

Lit blogger Seth Godin, however, is angry that the Times is covering Walters, period - he claims that, by running three pieces on Audition, they’re denying more obscure writers much-needed publicity.  To be fair, we never considered writing a blog post about Seth Godin until he started complaining about Barbara Walters coverage, so it can’t be all that bad.

The furor surrounding reviews of Audition is almost enough to drown out Star Jones’s fury over the book itself. Lest we forget, Barbara claims that Star was “so obese that she could barely walk onto the View set,” and fired her because she wouldn’t talk about her gastric bypass on the show. Star has a few choice words, which she chose to convey through US magazine:

“It is a sad day when an icon like Barbara Walters, in the sunset of her life, is reduced to publicly branding herself as an adulterer, humiliating an innocent family with accounts of her illicit affair and speaking negatively against me all for the sake of selling a book. It speaks to her true character.”

To be honest, all of this fussing and feuding is almost enough to make us want to buy the book. Also, we’re touching up our own memoirs to make them more offensive - when people start shouting about your book in public, it’s better for sales than any “book trailer” yet produced.

 Not much to say about this one. Just take a look at the title: Things Unimportant, But Remembered.

Things Unimportant, But Remembered.

I believe this was also the proposed title for Augusten Burroughs’ latest memoir. Just saying.

  At last! A week of remarkably bad behavior in the book world - bad behavior not entirely confined to J.K. Rowling! This gladdens our headline-hunting little hearts. Below, the best of the bunch.

- The LA Times reports that con artists are calling up bookstores and pretending to be the authors they’ve booked for signings - shortly before hitting them up for cash. Authors impersonated thus far have included Mark Sarvas, Nick Hornby, and Eric Gower. Of course, stealing is wrong. That said, if Nick Hornby called us up and asked for a quick loan, we would not be at all suspicious - or surprised.

[Read more →]

 Barbara Walters, master of televised sympathy, is releasing a new memoir about how much she hates everyone she knows.

Here are a few revelations about the book, gathered from the New York Daily News.

1) Walters had an affair with U.S. Senator William Brooke, the first black senator since the Reconstruction. When he told her that she was the oldest woman he’d ever been with, her response was “Oh yeah? Well you are the blackest man I have ever been with.” Um… zing?

2) Star Jones got fired for being a liar. She didn’t choose to reveal to the View audience that she’d had gastric bypass surgery, and so her co-workers couldn’t mention it on air, which caused them all great psychological trauma. There was, Walters implied, no solution but to let Star go.

 But - shocker! - the recently fired do not tend to be charitable toward their former bosses. Star complained about her termination in an interview, thereby further wounding the delicate feelings of View staffers.

“Star seemed to have a difficult time finding another job. I still feel it might have been easier for her to find a new position if she had left the program in the graceful way we had suggested,” Walters writes, thereby entirely eluding the recognition that taking away someone’s job tends to have just the tiniest little bit of impact on that person’s employment status.

3) Rosie got fired for stealing the spotlight.

“The premise of ‘The View’ is that of a team working together, but for Rosie it was more like Diana Ross and the Supremes, as little by little she took over,” writes Walters.

Silly Rosie! Everyone knows that Barbara is the only person allowed to do that.

Let’s be honest here: if you were psychic, wouldn’t you know it? Because, you know, you’re… psychic? And know things? Or maybe the author construes “psychic” to mean “given to irrepressible screaming fits.”

In the words of the author, “prepare for a sense of deja vu. Aaagh!”

Aaagh, indeed.

What’s your favorite kind of food? If your answer is Chinese, you probably wouldn’t go to a Tex-Mex restaurant and find chow mein and eggs rolls prominently displayed on its menu. Nor would you expect to find New York–style hot dogs if you went into an establishment whose specialty was advertised as English tea and scones.

            A correlation can be made to the ingredients found in different kinds of books, plays and movies. While there are plenty of stories that have “a little of this” and “a smidge of that,” most of them concentrate on one specific flavor that they prepare especially well. This is called “genre” and it refers to the style or type of story that is being served up to a target audience that’s hungry for good entertainment.

            Genre is also what makes it easy for you to find your favorite type of movie rental at the video store or a specific type of book at your neighborhood  Barnes and Noble. If the selections were all thrown together like goulash, it could take you forever to find the latest martial arts film or historical epic. Instead, these works are neatly categorized according to their primary content. Keep in mind that there are a number of basic genres (like beef, chicken and fish) and, within these divisions, subgenres (think of these as the compatible side dishes). This is important to remember as you start developing your project because, unlike an online store where items can be virtually located in multiple sections, a traditional bookstore or video/DVD outlet isn’t going to have the shelf-space to cross-file your title in every conceivable grouping.

This is also a good place to warn you not to make up genres that don’t exist, e.g., “a science fiction action-adventure romantic thriller mystery novel with comedic overtones.” Stick to the basics and you — and your readers/viewers — can’t go wrong.

- A fine German publishing company has perfected the art of Not Getting It. They are printing out the German Wikipedia, binding it, and turning it into a book. Those who miss the “enraged bickering via comment” feature of Wikipedia are encouraged to scribble vigorously in the margins.

[Read more →]

 15-year-old Miley Cyrus - also known as Hannah Montana, also known as Miley Stewart, also known as the inhuman force that keeps your daughter awake at night as she feverishly plots new ways to gain precious, precious tickets - has signed a seven-figure deal with the Disney Book Group for her memoirs.

Let me repeat: 15-year-old Miley has signed a book deal for her memoirs. Aside from the fact that her life story is short enough to fit inside of two pages, she’s at an age when most people are still struggling to learn the difference between a noun and an adjective. Logic would suggest that Ms. Cyrus is using a ghostwriter.

[Read more →]

When you’re writing a book, a play or a movie script, you not only have the power to control the pacing of the plot but also the chronology of events themselves. A mystery, for instance, can start with a murder followed by the investigation or it can begin with the murder but shift to a “prequel” of what happened up until discovery of the body. Example: the Fox series Reunion shifted between 1987 and 2005. Its sustainable secret? The actual identity of the deceased.

            The most common method of storytelling is linear. Linear time is just like real life in that characters start at Point A and move sequentially toward Point B. Another popular method is “bookend” storytelling. In this instance, we initially meet characters after the main event has already occurred; the event itself is told in flashback, followed by a return to the same time period as was shown at the film’s start. Thirdly, we have the “parallel universe” whereby a character’s momentum suddenly splits into two simultaneous journeys which may or may not arrive at the same destination. A fourth strategy is the “maypole,” a device that uses multiple flashbacks and points of view which all revolve — like a maypole — around a common event or theme. Even more complicated is the concept of “reverse engineering” in which the layers of plot and character are revealed in a backwards, repetitive or serpentine fashion.

            The style of exposition you use in your own project depends on your target audience’s comfort level with abstraction and ambiguity. A younger, less sophisticated crowd will be happier with a storyline that simply moves from Point A to Point B. In contrast, those who can juggle multiple concepts and complex transitional details will be excited by plots that don’t adhere to standard formulas.

It’s been a relatively slow week for the book publishing industry. The only real action seems to be coming from the infamous Harry Potter trial. Here’s the salient news of the week. 

- As the Harry Potter copyright-infringement case wound to a close, J.K. Rowling seemed to repent of her harsh words to and about the defendant, Steven Jan Vander Ark.  

“I never once wanted to stop Mr. Vander Ark from doing his own guide - never ever,” she said, according to the New York Times. “Do your book, but please, change it so it does not take as much of my work.” 

We have decided to reward Ms. Rowling for her suddenly reasonable attitude by using a slightly more flattering picture for this post than we did for our last.  

[Read more →]