How I Became a Famous Novelist

"Ethan, Marianne, Tom Buckley, all of them – they were living up here in this shit hole, damn near pulling their hair out, driving around in trucks with duct tape on the windows, telling each other these awful stories they'd accumulated, because of one idea. Because they believed that getting a story right, telling it right, holding it, was a holy duty. They seemed to believe that getting a story right could save the world somehow. Or at least make you a better person. And to fail to tell a story honestly was a sacrilege.
The story I'd put down, whatever it was, wasn't honest. It was a fraud. For the first time I wondered if that was a kind of crime."

- Pete Tarslaw – How I became a Famous Novelist

This is the point at which the main character of the book, Pete Tarslaw, comes close to having a moment of clarity…and then decides to ignore it. This is may be one of the more surprisingly endearing traits that our hero embodies – his ability to seemingly hit rock bottom and then continue in a to push forward and continue the freefall that he has found himself in. This stubbornness persists through the majority of the story, and when it looks like Pete has no choice but to reconcile himself with the fact that he has made a series of incredibly short sighted decisions, he is refuses and is therefore compelled to simply ride the media tidal wave which he has inadvertently created and see where it leaves him.

Pete begins the story as a lowly college entrance essay writer, ferrying inept high school kids and English as a second language students through the admissions process for America’s finest universities. He describes the job as something he “didn’t not feel bad about” but it was simply one of those jobs that people can fall into after not having a strong plan after graduation. Pete had recently had his heart broken by his college girlfriend, Polly, who dumped him on graduation day. Since then he found himself living a fairly miserable existence. Upon arriving at work one day, Pete is blindsided by a mass email from Polly informing him (along with all of their friends) that she is engaged and that they are all invited to the wedding! How exciting! Unfortunately, Pete still hasn’t quite gotten over his ex-love in the same manner that she’s been able to move forward from their relationship. He realizes that if he attends the wedding with his life in its current state the entire affair will be nothing short of a train wreck. He will be ridiculed by the guests for his current job and all the bridesmaids will look down on him as the man who was clearly not good enough for Polly. He formulates a simple plot to resolve all the issues plaguing him – money, career, self loathing – while using Polly’s own wedding as a stage on which he can humiliate her with his own success: he will become a famous novelist.

The story then follows Pete’s incredibly misguided, albeit highly successful, path to becoming a famous novelist (spoiler alert: the title of the book gives away a major plot point). I have trouble describing how much I truly enjoyed reading this book. Simply put, it’s hilarious. I’m not sure if it was Pete’s motivation for writing the book, or if it was simply his sarcastic and self-centered narration style that left me laughing out loud, but I couldn’t stop giggling to myself no matter where I was reading it. I was in New York for a conference recently and I had just finished a chapter in which he meets with an editor from a publishing house at a bar in Midtown. I was curious to see if the place actually existed and after a quick Google search, I had the address and me and the book went to go find the bar (Yeah – I was walking around New York City with a book – the story is about to get worse so I don’t feel any shame in admitting that small misstep). After a short subway ride and walk, I found Fitzgerald’s. I certainly agree that, as Pete points out, it is a little odd to name a bar after a guy who drank himself to death. Nevertheless, we had arrived (yes, that “we” did just refer to the book and I – again, not embarrassed yet). I sat down and ordered a scotch - it seemed both writer-y and therefore fairly appropriate given my motivation for finding the place – I think F. Scott would have approved.

It's at this point that I am almost embarrassed to describe my next move, but really in retrospect I think it was fairly understandable (nay - commendable!). I mean I wasn’t with anybody and I certainly didn’t want to strike up a conversation with anybody else at the bar (I didn't deem it to be appropriate to chat with the man 3 seats down who had his button-up shirt on both inside out and backwards - how he accomplished this feat I have no idea). I looked around briefly to determine if I thought anybody in the vicinity would judge me for doing so, (but then I remembered that we were all in a bar at like 2:30 in the afternoon and I realized these were not the type of people – myself included - who were in any place to be judging anybody) and I pulled out the book and started reading.

As I sat there, I couldn’t stop laughing as Pete compared what he thought would happen after he got published to what actually happened, as he described the sequence of events that led to the popularization of his novel, and as he met some of the authors he had strove to emulate due to their commercial success. Again, just to reiterate here, I was sitting at a bar, in New York, reading a book, and laughing out loud. And I’m really not talking about the silent laugh where your body shakes a little and you are able to mostly hold it in – I mean I laughed and the bartender had to come over and ask me if he was going to have a problem with me. We ended up talking and it turned out he was an avid reader as well. I showed him the section that I was reading and, after reading 2 pages, he was laughing out loud as well and told me that he would be buying the book to read next (he reads one a week – wow!).

This incident is by no means isolated. I recommended it to my dad, and he told me that he has gotten a number of very strange looks on the train to work due to his laughing out loud. He is enjoying it so much that he is limiting himself to only reading it on the train in the morning because (a) he wants to make it last – he said that he doesn’t want to put it down but also wants to pace himself to make it last and (b) he has been in a better mood when arriving to work than usual due to having gotten a large dose of humor during the morning ride to the office.

You quickly find yourself identifying with Pete - and that is what I love about this story. So many stories have protagonists who are geniuses or superheros or some kind of combination of the two - these stories are certainly entertaining but often I find myself not so interested in what happens to the main character but instead how the story will be resolved. The story arc is certainly important; I mean I'm not going to read about some guy who seems like me doing laundry - no matter how witty he may be. However, I think that once a reader can identify with the guy telling the story, they begin to experience the story on a more personal level. Who hasn’t lived in a crappy apartment, or found themselves in a dead-end job, or had their heart broken by a girlfriend or boyfriend? Pete Tarslaw is a misguided fool who you can’t help but identify with and see yourself in (even if it's just a little but). As he ignores, time after time, the indication that he is making yet another mistake, you hope that he finds redemption. And even though he will continue making poor choices you can’t help but smile as you strap yourself in for the ride to see where his adventure takes the both of you.

I think this really embodies the book – it is one of those stories that will, by no means, redefine how you see literature and books, but instead is one that will remind you how much a good book can brighten your day. And while being so funny, it also describes a broader impulse that I think most people have felt at one point or another: they have read a book, or seen an author (much like our hero Pete did), and thought to themselves “I think I can pull that off”. I know I have certainly felt that way before and reading this book really made me consider truly what writing a book entails, and even more: what does it mean? Pete was only concerned about the end result; and he didn’t care about the how or what? For Pete it was about the prestige, the money, and the ability to upstage Polly at her own wedding. Yet later he begins questioning his own motives and starts wondering if there is a greater responsibility that a writer has besides just slapping some words together that will sell to a wide demographic. He later ignores this realization but it returns again with greater force later in the story – writing should be a personal endeavor and finding one’s own reasons for writing is a glimpse into who you are and what you hope to accomplish maybe, but even more so, what you hope to communicate with your words. Pete eventually reads a book that moves him to understand what real writing is about and fails in his attempt to describe what it meant to him. I feel a slightly conflicted excerpting it (especially given its content), but I think it really shows the evolution of the character, but also think it speaks to how writing, especially true writing from the author who has a reason to tell a story, can change your outlook on any nearly any topic and has the ability to inspire.

“I can’t even describe it right. And I won’t bother excerpting it here. Go find it.

I Wish I'd written something that good.”

- Pete Tarslaw – How I became a Famous Novelist

Thoughts on Words

So I'm quickly finding myself unsure about how to best start writing here and I'm starting to think that may be a bad sign. I guess I can start by saying that I love books. No - seriously - it's kind of a problem. If I'm reading a good book then the day will basically become less of a work day and more of a reading day. I'll wake up and read a couple of pages before going into work, work for a couple hours (maybe) and then go home and read during lunch, go back to work only to realize that productivity is hopeless at that point, leave early, return home read late into the night and then wake up to repeat the process all over again until I finish the book. This may have something to do with my addictive personality (at least that is what my mom always blames it on). I enjoy the story so much that I can't get enough and each time I crack the spine and turn the page I feel like an addict who just got his fix but is already planning the next one. Reading at night is the worst - I will tell myself to only read one chapter then go to bed - I have to get up early and it's already late. Ok, finished the chapter but lets just see how the next one starts - Does it resolve the cliffhanger at the end of this one? Or does it change story lines to keep me hanging? At this point it doesn't matter what the answer is because now I need to bargain with myself to finish this new chapter since I've already started it. This will continue until I either (A) fall asleep with the lights on (I wish I could be kidding about how often this has happened) or (B) my arms get sore from propping myself up in bed and I need to stop simply because I can't hold the book anymore (again, this happens embarrassingly often - maybe I should take it as an indication that I should spend more time at the gym, but that's really neither here nor there). Needless to say this has been going on for a while. I'm going to go ahead and pass the buck, blaming this addiction completely on my parents Ok, sure - blame may be a strong word and maybe I should be thanking them but they're the ones who turned me on to books in the first place when I was too young and impressionable to say no! Too many readings of Where the Wild Things Are and Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs (this was way before they were being looked at as potential movie scripts) left me craving more stories with such rich storytelling. I'm unproductive on entirely different level than I would be were I not such an avid reader, so we're sticking with blame. I don't remember exactly when I realized that I was different. Maybe I should have gotten a clue when our household was the only one without an Nintendo/SNES/SEGA/N64/Playstation (I'm not convinced my parents have yet heard the end of my complaints about that parenting decision) - we hardly had a computer and it certainly was not good enough to play any games on besides Solitaire and Hearts. I never had the patience for Solitaire (what kind of a stupid game lets you lose through no fault of your own?) and I still don't understand the rules for Hearts. The lack of gaming consoles left me with few options. I could go outside and play (although in a neighborhood without any comparably aged kids, running around your backyard alone doesn't quite have the same draw that it might have possessed had there been others to join in) or I could hang out and read. Don't get me wrong, I did plenty of going outside and playing. I'm not one of those sheltered few who have somehow managed to reach the age of 18 without any broken bones, stitches or CAT scans - quite the contrary. I would estimate that I have had more ER visits than I have had birthdays (I'm now in graduate school - you do the math). The problem was that over the course of my childhood and adolescent development, we moved from house to house within the state twice and across the country 3 times. None of these new locations had a hidden wellspring of kids my age down the block waiting for me to join their gang (I'm using the term gang loosely here - I never imagined us all getting matching tattoos, at least not at age 12, but maybe having the same cool watch or something would have been pretty neat). Thus, somewhere during all of these transitions I began reading everything in the house. I think I skipped any hint of normal young adult reading and went straight from The Hardy Boys (that Joe was always such a jokester but Frank was a real wet blanket) to reading Jurassic Park (I had always had a thing for dinosaurs). For some reason, I have no idea when or how this tradition really started, my family exchanges books on Valentines day. One of my clearest memories was receiving The Lost World by Michael Crichton for valentines day when I was in 5th grade (again - I may or may not have still been wearing t-shirts with dinosaurs on them at this point - I've never claimed to be one of the cool kids). I remember sitting on the couch reading my new book and trying to figure out what the hell Ian Malcolm was talking about with chaos theory and his new paradigms. Maybe things should have clicked at that point. I should have realized - you know what? Nobody else likes reading this much. Everybody else is figuring out how to get first place on rainbow road (what a stupid level - who builds roads in space without walls to keep you from falling off?) while you are trying to understand what the scientist means when he says that the dinosaurs have a lysine deficiency. But no. I was maybe not the most observant kid and was content (actually probably more than content) to simply read a chapter before bed instead of clearing the next level of GoldenEye (I was always the one who was nicknamed "Where's the Armor" anyway - sigh). I think that at that point I loved how the story could takes me somewhere else. I could pretend that that it was that new world that I existed in instead of the one where I was the short new kid in school with glasses and a bad haircut (I may jokingly blame my love of reading on my parents and it's all in jest - the haircut though, is another story entirely). I feel like I have covered the origin story for my love of reading well enough by this point. More likely, I've gone a little bit overboard. Fine, a lot overboard. The thing is that while the haircut has changed (thank God), the passion that I have for reading hasn't. I read every night before I go to bed no matter what time it is, no matter how tired I am. It is a habit that has come to give me comfort each evening. No matter how awful a day I have had (and believe me in grad school there are not a lot that end on a really cheery note) I can count on my book to be sitting on my bed side table. I can escape for a little bit right before I fall asleep and enjoy reading about the situations that the characters I'm following have found themselves in. This nightly ritual lets me relax and always helps me fall asleep. Now, I really don't have any big reason for starting a blog (wow...I just balked at the idea that I am in fact "blogging" now...I am not comfortable with this - lets just go ahead and outlaw that word entirely), but I kind of have a bunch of little ones - but I'll get to those in a minute. I was reading an article this afternoon in which the writer was complaining that nobody starts a blog these days without the agenda of getting a book deal. I think I need to go on record that there is no chance or hope for a book deal here. I enjoy books far too much to imagine the prospect of anyone creating one from the thoughts that I decided, for no particularly good reason, to one day post in public. Now, without the prospect of a book deal the reason for this blo...umm collection of thoughts is in question. Simply put - it's for my own benefit. I used to like writing. I think my love for reading inspired me to believe, albeit foolishly, that I could write with the same skill that left me turning the pages so fast they would rip. I used to write short stories, outlines for longer stories, first chapters, and even more. I found myself thinking that writing could be just as much fun as reading. I could instill the sense of wonder in others (maybe) that I felt about my characters and locations. This is how I used to feel. Slowly my time got filled up with other activities. Sports, friends, school, work, college - eventually I wrote very little (if at all). I'm currently in graduate school and writing has completely lost any allure that it once held. I blame this (yeah, I know, I'm shifting a lot of the blame all over the place but what can I say?) on my thesis. My thesis is a scientific paper which, as my advisor has consistently repeated to me, not like writing a normal paper. Tell me about it. I've worked on this thing for much longer than is necessary and find myself simply pounding my head on the desk with frustration. My thesis has robbed me of any desire to write anything at all - and I want to be able to enjoy writing again. I have thought about starting a bl...an online collection of entries about a million times before but I never could imagine anything that I thought was important enough to want to publish online and that anybody would be interested in reading. That is the best part of this - I couldn't care less if nobody ever reads this thing because I'm not writing it to entertain anybody else - I am writing it as a form of catharsis so that I can hopefully remember what it's like to write words and thoughts that I don't need to cite relevant literature for. I am going to write about each book that I read. Now, I don't want to come off as any type of a reviewer - these posts (I think that's safe) are not intended to serve as reviews. The book I am reading now actually has a full 7 pages devoted to describing how much the author hates book reviewers. Reviewing these books is not my intention at all. I certainly plan on talking about what I liked about them, maybe even things I had problems with, but overall I am approaching each post (actually I don't like that word on second thought - it's now outlawed as well) as an opportunity to discuss (as much as one can discuss in a monologue) what I was able to take away from the book and what having read the book has changed in me. I always try to take something away from each book that I read and I am taking this opportunity to try to express what it is that each book has accomplished. Hopefully I can do so in an at least slightly entertaining manner - but if not then at least I will have a nice record of the books I've read. I'm not convinced anyone other than me (and hell, maybe my Mom) will ever read this. If you are not my Mom, then I'm shocked you stumbled across this but I hope you find some small modicum of entertainment in what I think about the words of others.