How I Became a Famous Novelist

By Steve Hely

Book Overview

This story of a slacker who sets out to take the book-publishing world by storm is "a hilarious send-up of literary pretensions and celebrity culture." (USA Today).

Pete Tarslaw wants some fame and fortune and, perhaps most importantly, the chance to get back at his ex-girlfriend at her upcoming wedding. After listening to a vapid author prattling on during an interview, while nubile young women watch adoringly, he figures becoming a literary icon must be the easiest con game going . . .

This "gleeful skewering of the publishing industry and every clich of the writing life" pinballs from the college town 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 (The New York Times Book Review). The tale of how Pete's "pile of garbage" titled The Tornado Ashes Club became the most talked about, blogged about, admired, and reviled novel in America will change everything you think you know about literature, truth, beauty, and those people out there who actually still care about books.

"Nothing is sacred and all is skewered: critics, Hollywood, MFA programs, students, literary journals, panels, conferences and resulting hook-ups . . . I rooted for Pete, a scheming underachiever whom the late great humorist Max Shulman would have been proud to call his own. I may have read a funnier book in the last 20 years, but at this moment I'm hard-pressed to name it." --Elinor Lipman, The Washington Post

"A pitch-perfect takeoff on the insipid conventions of the best-seller racks . . . caustic wit with an unexpected depth of emotional insight." --Austin American-Statesman

"How I Became a Famous Novelist has a laugh-out-loud quotient inappropriately high for reading in public." --St. Louis Post-Dispatch

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802170609
• ISBN13: 9780802170606
• Release Date: July 2009
• Publisher: Grove Press, Black Cat
• Length: 224 Pages
• Weight: 0.88 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.4" x 8.4"

Customer Reviews

A Very Funny Book For Serious Readers

Anyone who has ever wondered, "How did that book get published?" or "Why did that book from James Patterson or John Grisham become elevated to literature" MUST read this book! It is without a doubt THE funniest parody of the publishing industry that I have EVER read. It all starts out when Pete Tarslaw decides to write a best-seller to gain fame, respect, and copious amounts of money while humiliating his ex-girlfriend at her wedding. Pete -- a writer of college admissions essays for kids that shouldn't ever get accepted to college -- sets up a number of self-imposed rules, including Rule #2: "Write a popular book. Do not waste energy making it a good book." His role model is Preston Brooks, who turns out best-sellers one after the other, with prose like this: "Myra turned back to her plate, back to the runny eggs, the bridge of bacon. And that apple slice. The thin slice that looked so much like the place she'd never seen. The slice of earth and sorrow and bravery where her husband had fallen to the earth. And gone back to the earth. The slice called Vietnam." Urrggh! Surely, Pete feels, he can do better than THIS tripe. He analyzes the best sellers and decides that his must liberate his main character from a lousy job, have plenty of highway scenes, include scenes from as many reader-filled towns as possible (so the independent press will lap it up), include a secret club (Dan Brown?), create characters whose lives are changed suddenly through surprising love affairs, target key multicultural demographics, and include meals and plant names. The result is a book he calls The Tornado Ashes Club, and sure enough, it becomes an almost overnight best seller. There is plenty here to make any reader double over in laughter. His spoof of The New York Times Book Review with books descriptions such as "On Nantucket, a beautiful nun who's given up on love finds herself attracted to a psychic who may be a dangerous arsonist" will make any reader howl in mock-recognition. His description of the cynical publishing industry that tries to infuse Christian themes in the most unlikely books to appeal to the Wal-Mart crowd is hilarious. His descriptions of San Diego's big book fair, Montana's foremost writing workshop, Oprah, book critics and other hangers-on is infused with bits of truth and hilarity. And his imitation of the various styles that pass for good reading at the start of the chapters is side-splitting. For anyone who is a writer, wants to be a writer, is a reader, THINKS he or she is a reader, or is remotely curious about reading, run -- don't walk -- to your computer and order How I Became A Famous Novelist. It's THAT funny.

(TAC)/Touches that hit all the bases/Asides that slice & dice/Crosshairs Hollywood

My attitude when choosing a book is selfish. I want it to be time well spent. My tastes are very eclectic. One, is that I look for a good writer who is twisted. Two, I like humor, & (3) I'am not a corporate kind of guy, in fact the more blood thats spilled upon puff rags/mainstream news, the better. So when I picked this up I hoped that: there will be blood. As a bonus I wanted learn more about the world Hely's lived in(Hollywood). On those scores the book hit a home run. The basic premise, as you've probably surmised from other sources, is that Pete Tarslaw knows that those best selling authors are simply formula driven, like Hollywood, into turning out this new model of literary capitalism. It's just a con game. Pete is certain he can puff this bestseller door down with his wolfish writing skills and that the piggy public will swallow it whole. Hely know this world as runs us thruogh the bases. He doesn't forget the other two/three/four or whatever sides there are in this art/writing/con arena. He's also on the mark when he touches one of the "BUZZSAW bases", Oprah! I'll pass on that tastey morsel/you read it. Remember there is a history there with the Letterman gang. His asides nailed it for me when he's saying that it is not his fault that the world is a nexus of corrupt arrangements through which priveleged power and resources in complex, self-serving loops. (Now what are we going to do about it? Write/Right it?) Would doing something about it cause the universe to impose a Twilight Zone ironic twist? The sad truth is that the word is up against it. Larry McMurtry speaks very elequently on that and Hely Grand Slams IT! Worth the price of the book alone. He talks about writing a novel and it is a tremendous pain [...]. Plus TV's getting better, the Internet is an endless sea of distraction, the big writers are farming out to freelancers, the really bad books are selling ten million copies, and you've got to sell to Wal-Mart to make the math work. But the best parts are when the author puts Hollywood in his crosshairs, pulls the trigger, and blast that bullseye sky-mucking-high!!!/ and then you'll be blessing him every damn time he hollywoods it! That hollywooding it, my friends, was for me the proverbial icing on the cake, and he marries it so well into this fine piece of work. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!!!!!

Funniest book I read this year

Steve Hely is one of those annoying guys who not only gets into Harvard, he ends up running the Lampoon and then, after graduation, almost immediately becomes a writer for David Letterman. Now he's written How I Became a Famous Novelist, and the only reason I don't hate this young punk is because he's penned the funniest book I've read all year and I literally laughed out loud at the spooky rate of at least once per page. How did this happen? Hely went to a bookstore: "Seeing the massive quantities of books of all genres and varieties, I got to thinking, 'What if one book contained all of these?' " That's what he told USA Today. To The New Yorker, he admitted something closer to the truth: "Walking around huge bookstores inspired me --- there are so many books! And so many of them are so crazy!" Well, guess what? So is this one --- just in a good way. Here's the story: Pete Tarslaw's one talent as a kid was writing thank-you notes. Writing his college essay? Cake. So was majoring in English in college. So was scoring a cool girlfriend: "The fetching Polly Pawson first slept with me because it was easier than walking back to her room." Graduation is a double shot of reality. He'll have to make his way in the world. And he'll have to do it without Polly, who has rejected his career plan for them --- "conning a wealthy dowager" --- and is off to law school. When we meet Pete, he's living in Boston, working for EssayAides and rewriting college essays for rich kids. He lives in a dump with an equally depressed roommate. He eats sour cream and chives potato chips for breakfast. At night, he watches TV or reads, for no good reason, the Sunday New York Times Book Review --- specifically, the bestseller lists. Without exception, he concludes, the writers suck, and none sucks more than Preston Brooks, "the Mannheim Steamroller of novelists." Worse cometh: Polly sends a mass e-mail to announce her engagement. Pete cannot go to the wedding as a loser who writes college essays. He needs to be successful. And at something easy. Something like....a novel. Because he has now seen Preston Brooks on TV and decided he's "the greatest con artist in the world". Well, Pete can con too. Because if there's one thing Pete thinks he knows about the writing game, it's this: "The financial success of an author is inversely proportional to the literary worth of the book." And so he begins to write. You do not have to know about the literary world or the book business to find the humor. On the merit of exotic locations: "Americans trust knowledge acquired abroad. The Mediterranean, in particular, has a potent sun-dried magic for them, as evidenced by their love for Andrea Bocelli and the Olive Garden". On the "hard work" of writing: "It was more like shoveling snow or cleaning out the attic, tedious labor toward a very distant end." And there is the Truth about the greats: "Faulkner, a southern huckster in the Bill Clinton mode..." Is there sex? Yes, but not like in

Hilarious

Our hero is desperate to impress an ex-girlfriend who is getting married in one year. He has only one year, then, to change his life from a slacker who makes his living ghosting college entrance essays and college class papers, whose hobby appears to be napping and drinking. He realizes that most best selling authors seem to follow a sort of formula. He analysis the formula with the goal of writing a best seller. How she will be sorry that she didn't marry him! This premise leads us to a very, very funny book. Obviously, people who are writers, or people who read a lot, will find this funnier than folks who won't recognize the formulas he describes. And how pretentious some of the hacks he meets are! This is just wonderful! I loved the decision to include scenes in his book where folks are driving: it will increase the sales for an audiobook version, since folks like to listen in their cars. That is just inspired silliness. Our young author writes his book, has many interesting adventures, and makes some enemies along the way. I loved the way this book ended, too. I won't create a spoiler, but I was deeply touched by the description of a book he is reading. A really good statement about the power of literature comes through. I just loved this book! I understand that the author writes for "American Dad." I should have known. This is just excellent, tight humor. I hope it sells a million!