Jennifer Weiner's Blog, page 2
June 30, 2012
Wow! Who knew that all you needed to do to get noticed by...
Wow! Who knew that all you needed to do to get noticed by The New York Times was wear a silly vest?
Don't forget, today's the last day to enter the win-a-book-club-visit contest (scroll down for details). We'll be picking the winner tomorrow night.
And! When one of my Twitter followers volunteered to wear a vest to my reading, I thought,"That's worth a prize! So! If you wear a vest to one of my readings -- the schedule's listed here -- you will get a cute tote bag or beach towel (also pictured below).
Have a wonderful weekend. Keep cool. And remember the point of all these funny ads and fun contests: THE NEXT BEST THING goes on sale on Tuesday. I'm really, really proud of it...and I'd be really, really grateful if you got yourself a copy.
Don't forget, today's the last day to enter the win-a-book-club-visit contest (scroll down for details). We'll be picking the winner tomorrow night.
And! When one of my Twitter followers volunteered to wear a vest to my reading, I thought,"That's worth a prize! So! If you wear a vest to one of my readings -- the schedule's listed here -- you will get a cute tote bag or beach towel (also pictured below).
Have a wonderful weekend. Keep cool. And remember the point of all these funny ads and fun contests: THE NEXT BEST THING goes on sale on Tuesday. I'm really, really proud of it...and I'd be really, really grateful if you got yourself a copy.
June 29, 2012
So, what if you were a novelist, hoping and praying for y...
So, what if you were a novelist, hoping and praying for your new book to take off?
Why, you'd don Jeffrey Eugenides' billboard-famous vest...
And then you'd make your own billboards....
You'd buy ads on literary websites....
And hope that people would notice! And that it would go viral -- or, as your mother says, "virile!"
By golly, it's The Next Vest Thing!
When a smart reader suggested showing up in a vest to one of my readings, I thought, well, that deserves a prize!
Like, perhaps, a cute tote bag!
Or an adorable beach towel!
My tour dates are all right here...and, of course, you can pre-order your copy of THE NEXT BEST THING!
Why, you'd don Jeffrey Eugenides' billboard-famous vest...
And then you'd make your own billboards....
You'd buy ads on literary websites....
And hope that people would notice! And that it would go viral -- or, as your mother says, "virile!"
By golly, it's The Next Vest Thing!
When a smart reader suggested showing up in a vest to one of my readings, I thought, well, that deserves a prize!
Like, perhaps, a cute tote bag!
Or an adorable beach towel!
My tour dates are all right here...and, of course, you can pre-order your copy of THE NEXT BEST THING!
June 27, 2012
The week before your book comes out is always equal parts...
The week before your book comes out is always equal parts excitement and stress…and this week’s been especially difficult.
On Monday, Tablet Magazine published a piece attacking my books and heroines for being insufficiently Jewish. Basically (and you have to understand, the article was so unkind -- it ended by comparing me to Alex Portnoy’s baton-twirling dim-bulb of a girlfriend -- that I kind of skimmed it with one eye open), the author’s assertion is that I’m whitewashing (goy-washing?) my characters to make them more palatable for a non-Jewish audience.
Well.
I don’t think that’s the case.
If I wanted to attract a mainstream, non-Jewish audience, why have Jewish characters and Jewish holidays and Jewish situations at all? Why include bat mitzvahs, Chanukah latkes and shiva calls? If I’m doing it on purpose, why not go all the way?
The characters I write are just as Jewish as I am. I was raised Reform, I consider myself observant, and I just cringe at the notion that I’m being a bad Jew by writing characters who aren’t Jewish enough for Tablet’s taste.
I can’t do anything but be true to myself, to my own experiences, and to the stories I want to tell and the women I want to talk about.
On Monday, I sulked. “Shiksa lit?” Seriously? (A shiksa, for the uninformed, is a more-than-slightly-derogatory term for a non-Jewish woman: as in, “Oy! Adam Sandler! I loved him, until he married that shiksa!”)
On Tuesday, I decided, in the grand Jewish tradition, to rap.
“I’m Jew-y as Bette Midler/Jew-ier than “Fiddler.”/ And if my books are “shiksa lit?”/Sandusky’s not a diddler.”
And
“’Shiksa lit/ What is that sh*t?/I’m a Jewish locavore, and when I make borscht/ My beets (and my beats) are all locally sourced.”
And now, I am offering you this deal.
Pre-order a copy of THE NEXT BEST THING. You can get it from Amazon! From Barnes & Noble! Indiebound will direct you to the independent bookseller of your choice.
Tell me you did so on Twitter or Facebook. (No receipts necessary; I’ll take your word for it).
Then, I will write you a Jewish rap, thus establishing my Tribe cred to the three people who were worried about it.
Deal?
On Monday, Tablet Magazine published a piece attacking my books and heroines for being insufficiently Jewish. Basically (and you have to understand, the article was so unkind -- it ended by comparing me to Alex Portnoy’s baton-twirling dim-bulb of a girlfriend -- that I kind of skimmed it with one eye open), the author’s assertion is that I’m whitewashing (goy-washing?) my characters to make them more palatable for a non-Jewish audience.
Well.
I don’t think that’s the case.
If I wanted to attract a mainstream, non-Jewish audience, why have Jewish characters and Jewish holidays and Jewish situations at all? Why include bat mitzvahs, Chanukah latkes and shiva calls? If I’m doing it on purpose, why not go all the way?
The characters I write are just as Jewish as I am. I was raised Reform, I consider myself observant, and I just cringe at the notion that I’m being a bad Jew by writing characters who aren’t Jewish enough for Tablet’s taste.
I can’t do anything but be true to myself, to my own experiences, and to the stories I want to tell and the women I want to talk about.
On Monday, I sulked. “Shiksa lit?” Seriously? (A shiksa, for the uninformed, is a more-than-slightly-derogatory term for a non-Jewish woman: as in, “Oy! Adam Sandler! I loved him, until he married that shiksa!”)
On Tuesday, I decided, in the grand Jewish tradition, to rap.
“I’m Jew-y as Bette Midler/Jew-ier than “Fiddler.”/ And if my books are “shiksa lit?”/Sandusky’s not a diddler.”
And
“’Shiksa lit/ What is that sh*t?/I’m a Jewish locavore, and when I make borscht/ My beets (and my beats) are all locally sourced.”
And now, I am offering you this deal.
Pre-order a copy of THE NEXT BEST THING. You can get it from Amazon! From Barnes & Noble! Indiebound will direct you to the independent bookseller of your choice.
Tell me you did so on Twitter or Facebook. (No receipts necessary; I’ll take your word for it).
Then, I will write you a Jewish rap, thus establishing my Tribe cred to the three people who were worried about it.
Deal?
June 26, 2012
First, can I kvell? There is an amazing billboard of my n...
First, can I kvell?
There is an amazing billboard of my new book!
My book! On billboards! Hold me!
Thanks to @AmayaWritesNYC for the picture. When I’m in New York, the week of the 9th, I’ll for sure pose in front of it…but meanwhile, if any of you New Yorkers want to send me a shot of you doing the same, I’d love to post them!
Also, a reminder-- you can still win me for your book club! Details and contest rules here.
THE NEXT BEST THING comes out a week from today. The tour starts a week after that. You know what it’s time for? Praying for no horrible breakouts between now and then, making sure my Spanx and my shoes and my Sharpies are in order, and loading my e-reader with enough books to keep me happy as I make my way from New York City to Pasadena (you can find my tour dates here).
1. BETWEEN YOU AND ME by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus
I picked this up (okay, snatched it off my editor’s shelf) expecting it to be delicious, dishy fun, a perfect poolside read. And it was…but it was so much deeper, so much darker, so much more than that. (It also has, hands-down, one of the best book trailers I’ve ever seen. I don’t normally believe that book trailers do squat for selling books, but this one? Is great.
Kelsey Wade is a child-star turned star-star, a singing, dancing, world-beating show-stopper of a girl. Logan is her cousin, struggling with the usual miseries of trying to make it in NYC (the bad first job, the guy who doesn’t call, then sends you thirty peonies. In January). She hasn’t seen cousin Kelsey in years, until she gets the call…and quickly gets sucked into the madhouse that is Kelsey’s world, standing by horrified and helpless as Kelsey slowly falls to pieces.
If you read the tabloids (and you bet I do), a lot of this will sound awfully familiar: the starlet who cheats on her former child-star boyfriend, marries one of her backup dancers, has (and loses custody) of a baby, and eventually ends up with her father as her conservator. But beyond the guess-who-don’t-sue element, there are the characters of Logan and Kelsey, who come alive on the page, existing as flesh-and-blood young women, each struggling with their own past, their own families, their own conflicted feelings about fame and love and what makes a good life.
2. YOU TAKE IT FROM HERE by Pamela Ribon
Ribon, better known to her fans as Pamie, was one of the flagship contributors to TELEVISION WITHOUT PITY, and a writer for Samantha Who? On July 3, she’ll publish her fourth novel, about two BFFs from a small Southern town. One of them escaped to Hollywood. The other stayed behind in Ogden, Louisiana. When they reunite for their annual girls’ vacation, Smidge tells Danielle a secret: her cancer’s come back. It’s terminal. And she wants Danielle to move back home and take over Smidge’s family after she dies.
This sounds like a book with all the elements I love: best friends, “found” families, Ribon’s trademark humor and vivid writing (the description of Smidge’s cancerous cough is heart-stopping). I can’t wait to dive in.
3. I COULDN’T LOVE YOU MORE by Jillian Medoff
You’ve heard me raving about this one for month, and with good reason: Medoff has assembled an unforgettable cast of characters, then thrown them an unwinnable dilemma, a Sophie’s Choice that no parent should ever have to face. Eliot is happily partnered, mother to one, stepmother to two, who starts questioning her choices when an old flame reappears, kicking off a chain of events that culminate in a gasp-out-loud twist. You can read more about it on Jillian’s website (www.jillianmedoff.com), but trust me: this book? Is that good.
4. OFF THE MENU by Stacey Ballis
Yes, another pub-mate! I loved Stacey’s last book, GOOD ENOUGH TO EAT, about a woman who loses half her body weight – and, in short order, her husband –and has to build a new life from the ground up. This book looks just as lovable. It’s the story of Alanna Ostermann, assistant to a celebrity chef, a woman with a demanding job, an adorable dog (named Dumpling!), and a busy life that only gets busier when she meets a hot Southern transplant named R.J..
5. THE MIDDLESTEINS by Jami Attenberg
One of the perks of being a writer is you get to go to Book Expo America, where, if you are patient and persistent, you can wait in line and get signed copies of early editions of books that won’t be out until the fall. THE MIDDLESTEINS, boasting a blurb by Jonathan Franzen (!) won’t be out until October, and I feel like a little bit of a tease telling you how good it is, so I’ll just say: come fall, remember this title.
6. Molly Ringwald: WHEN IT HAPPENS TO YOU
Okay, I’m a sucker for a celebrity memoir/novel/whatever (see: earlier confession about tabloids), and I cannot wait to dive into Ringwald’s first collection of stories, set in Hollywood, that deal with infertility, failing marriages, a former child star trying to make a comeback. After my own year in Hollywood, I expect I’ll find plenty that will feel familiar…and, come on, it’s Molly Ringwald! How am I not going to read it?
7. THE UNDERSIDE OF JOY by Sere Prince Halverson
Another stepmother story that isn’t what you think. Take one happily-married wife, and her two stepdaughters, who’ve been essentially abandoned by their biological mother. Take her husband away from her. Then start unpeeling the layers, learning that things weren’t ever as simple as they seemed; that there are no monsters and no saints, just lots of flawed people and secrets. Kirkus called UNDERSIDE “a poignant debut about mothers, secrets and sacrifices…Halverson avoids sentimentality, aiming for higher ground in this lucid and graceful examination of the dangers and blessings of familiar bonds.”
8. THESE GIRLS by Sarah Pekkanen
Ever since Bridget Jones sailed to our shores, fretting about her extra lbs and whether handsome Mark Darcy liked her, someone in print or on the air has been declaring that quote-unquote chick lit is dead, dead, DEAD I TELL YOU DEAD!
Except, weirdly, even though the shelves aren’t as crammed with pink as they once were, there’s still an audience for stories about young women trying to make it in a big city – their jobs, their bosses, the men in their lives.
I’ve loved everything Sarah P has written (full disclosure –we share an editor. What can I say? My editor’s got great taste!) But this book took it to a new level. It’s about two women who work at a fashion magazine, and a third, a former nanny, running from a painful secret and an even worse family tragedy.
I loved this book. I especially loved the character Renee, who wants to be the beauty editor. She has to compete for the slot by running a blog full of helpful fashion tips…and ends up with anonymous commenters savaging her for her weight, and a problem with the black-market diet pills her model roommate left behind. As any woman who’s ever expressed an opinion on the Internet, only to be met with “how dare you tell anyone anything, fattie?” that part felt stingingly familiar (except for the model-roommate-illegal-diet-pill stuff). Engrossing characters, sharp writing, hot guys…what more could you want for the pool?
And finally…
9. Jeff Abbott, THE LAST MINUTE
My fourth 7/3 pub-mate, Jeff writes thrillers…and, because I love me some Robert Crais and Jonathan Kellerman, I can’t wait to give THE LAST MINUTE a try. It’s already getting raves, including a starred review from Publishers Weekly, which called the book “outstanding…genuinely moving…hits full stride early on and never lets up.” And Jeff’s website has a countdown ticker!
June 14, 2012
As long-time blog readers may remember, there was a day w...
As long-time blog readers may remember, there was a day when I would go to any book club, coffee klatch, mah-johng club or compulsive-gambling support group that invited me. I was a single lady, with one book and no kids, and if you wanted me, I was there.
Times have changed. Now, I have two little ones, plus a serious addiction to reality TV. If I said yes to one club, I reasoned, I'd have to say yes to them all...and so, reluctantly, I decided that, at least until the kids got bigger, I'd have to refuse all invitations.
However! In preparation for the new book, and to boost the all-important pre-sales figures (Stacey Ballis does a better job of explaining why they matter than I ever could), I am giving myself away to one lucky book club.
Here's the deal. You pre-order THE NEXT BEST THING.
You email your receipt to contest@jenniferweiner.com, along with your name and address and an email address where we can reach you.
On July 1, some random name-picking computer program chooses one lucky winner, and I will visit the winner's book club on a mutually agreed-upon date within the next 12 months.
The winner has to be in the continental US (I figure, if the winner was in Hawaii, people would figure I was cheating). In addition five runners-up (runner-ups?) will receive tote bags loaded with signed copies of my backlist and some extra, fun Philadelphia-centric treats. The full rules, complete with legal language that I barely understand, are right here.
Q: But I ordered the book weeks ago!
A: No worries! Just dig up your receipt and send it in! (And if you can't find it, the honor system applies -- I am prepared to take your word that you have, in fact, ordered THE NEXT BEST THING).
Q: Do e-books count?
A: But of course! Order a hardcover, order an e-book, order the audio version (do you know that
Q: But I don't belong to a book club!
A: No worries! Enter anyhow, and if you win,just round up five of your friends. We'll go out to dinner at a mutually agreed-upon restaurant and drink wine and talk about "The Bachelorette."
Q: But I'm broke!
A: I hear you. There is a "no purchase necessary" option, which means you can enter the sweepstakes by sending your name without a receipt to contest@jenniferweiner.com. You can also email me a copy of your name on your local library's waiting list, and not only will you be entered, I'll ship your library a few extra copies of THE NEXT BEST THING after it's published.
Q: Is there anything I can do to increase my chances of winning? (In other words, can you be bribed?)
A: It's the random-picking computer, not me, that you'd be bribing...so sending delicious baked goods or attaching flattering Amazon reviews won't help. However, if you want to send a picture of your book club with your entry, I'd love to see it, and I'll post all the shots on a Pinterest board. Fun!
Q: Is this book even any good?
A: I'm very proud of it. It's the story of Ruth Saunders, star of the short story "Swim" (you may remember it, and her, from "The Guy Not Taken.") Ruth is twenty-eight when the show she's written gets the green-light, and she gets to cast, shoot, and, eventually, run her own sit-com before It All Goes Horribly Wrong. Plus, Ruth has a crush on her boss to contend with, her grandmother's impending nuptials to consider, and a cute little dog named Pocket. I think it's a return to GOOD IN BED form -- in both cases, the heroines are bright, damaged, smart-mouthed young women, dealing with physical issues (weight in Canine's case, a badly-scarred face in Ruth's), cripplingly low self-esteem, dysfunctional families, professional success, romantic failure, and a lively, loving circle of friends and colleagues.
"Swim" is available for free wherever e-books are sold. You can find it at Simon & Schuster, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, the Sony e-bookstore, on iTunes and on Kobo.
You can also read the first chapter of THE NEXT BEST THING here.
So, once more, with feeling: pre-order the book from the retailer of your choice. Email your receipt to contest@jenniferweiner.com. Full rules are spelled out here. Then sit tight and wait for July 1!
And please stay tuned. In the next few days, I'll be posting my summer reading list, with some great new authors you might not have heard about yet, so your beach bag need never be empty!
Times have changed. Now, I have two little ones, plus a serious addiction to reality TV. If I said yes to one club, I reasoned, I'd have to say yes to them all...and so, reluctantly, I decided that, at least until the kids got bigger, I'd have to refuse all invitations.
However! In preparation for the new book, and to boost the all-important pre-sales figures (Stacey Ballis does a better job of explaining why they matter than I ever could), I am giving myself away to one lucky book club.
Here's the deal. You pre-order THE NEXT BEST THING.
You email your receipt to contest@jenniferweiner.com, along with your name and address and an email address where we can reach you.
On July 1, some random name-picking computer program chooses one lucky winner, and I will visit the winner's book club on a mutually agreed-upon date within the next 12 months.
The winner has to be in the continental US (I figure, if the winner was in Hawaii, people would figure I was cheating). In addition five runners-up (runner-ups?) will receive tote bags loaded with signed copies of my backlist and some extra, fun Philadelphia-centric treats. The full rules, complete with legal language that I barely understand, are right here.
Q: But I ordered the book weeks ago!
A: No worries! Just dig up your receipt and send it in! (And if you can't find it, the honor system applies -- I am prepared to take your word that you have, in fact, ordered THE NEXT BEST THING).
Q: Do e-books count?
A: But of course! Order a hardcover, order an e-book, order the audio version (do you know that
Q: But I don't belong to a book club!
A: No worries! Enter anyhow, and if you win,just round up five of your friends. We'll go out to dinner at a mutually agreed-upon restaurant and drink wine and talk about "The Bachelorette."
Q: But I'm broke!
A: I hear you. There is a "no purchase necessary" option, which means you can enter the sweepstakes by sending your name without a receipt to contest@jenniferweiner.com. You can also email me a copy of your name on your local library's waiting list, and not only will you be entered, I'll ship your library a few extra copies of THE NEXT BEST THING after it's published.
Q: Is there anything I can do to increase my chances of winning? (In other words, can you be bribed?)
A: It's the random-picking computer, not me, that you'd be bribing...so sending delicious baked goods or attaching flattering Amazon reviews won't help. However, if you want to send a picture of your book club with your entry, I'd love to see it, and I'll post all the shots on a Pinterest board. Fun!
Q: Is this book even any good?
A: I'm very proud of it. It's the story of Ruth Saunders, star of the short story "Swim" (you may remember it, and her, from "The Guy Not Taken.") Ruth is twenty-eight when the show she's written gets the green-light, and she gets to cast, shoot, and, eventually, run her own sit-com before It All Goes Horribly Wrong. Plus, Ruth has a crush on her boss to contend with, her grandmother's impending nuptials to consider, and a cute little dog named Pocket. I think it's a return to GOOD IN BED form -- in both cases, the heroines are bright, damaged, smart-mouthed young women, dealing with physical issues (weight in Canine's case, a badly-scarred face in Ruth's), cripplingly low self-esteem, dysfunctional families, professional success, romantic failure, and a lively, loving circle of friends and colleagues.
"Swim" is available for free wherever e-books are sold. You can find it at Simon & Schuster, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, the Sony e-bookstore, on iTunes and on Kobo.
You can also read the first chapter of THE NEXT BEST THING here.
So, once more, with feeling: pre-order the book from the retailer of your choice. Email your receipt to contest@jenniferweiner.com. Full rules are spelled out here. Then sit tight and wait for July 1!
And please stay tuned. In the next few days, I'll be posting my summer reading list, with some great new authors you might not have heard about yet, so your beach bag need never be empty!
June 4, 2012
MY BOOK EXPO AMERICA BLOGGER CONVENTION KEYNOTE ADDRESSLe...
MY BOOK EXPO AMERICA BLOGGER CONVENTION KEYNOTE ADDRESS
Let me start by saying that I know I’m kind of an odd choice to give this presentation.
While I’ve been happily published by Atria Books for twelve years and ten books, I’m not a publisher…although I’m happy to share whatever insights I can give you about that part of the world.
While I’ve been blogging since 2002, I’m not exactly a book blogger the way most of you are. My blog is as likely to talk about “The Bachelor” as it is the latest publishing news.
So…why me? Who am I, and why am I here?
I think what I bring to the table is my own success in the world social media. I think – I hope – that I’ve figured out a way to use my blog, and Facebook, and Twitter and Pinterest to have an ongoing conversation with my readers, not deliver a “buy my book” monologue.
When I sold my first book in 2000, there was no such thing as social media. Stephen King’s e-novella RIDING THE BULLET, which I remember downloading for 99 cents and reading on my desktop at work, was presumed to be future of e-books….and there were only the most primitive e-readers available.
Websites, weblogs, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Kindles, Nooks and iPads…all of these have emerged in the last decade, and publishers, authors and readers have all been scrambling to figure out how to use these new technologies to connect books with readers.
Let’s start with the good news: there has never been a more exciting time to be part of the conversation about books and reading than right now.
Once upon a time, when I was a young reader, there was no conversation at all. There was instead a series of occasionally overlapping monologues, with critics, authors and readers, each in their separate spheres.
The critics would issue their edicts from on high.
The readers would discuss them, in real life and usually in private.
(That’s my mom’s book club, by the way. Notice what book they're NOT reading.
True story – when my first book was published, I took my mom with me on part of my book tour. I’d be in the store, introducing myself to the manager and the sales staff, signing stock, being friendly, doing my thing, and I’d hear my mother talking to other bookstore patrons. “I just read the best book!” she’d gush…and I’d smile, proudly. “It had everything – amazing writing, great plot, and it was funny.” Here it comes, I would think…and I’d turn around just in time to hear my mother say, “Richard Russo! Empire Falls! Hang on, I’ll help you find it!” I finally had to tell my mother that, unless she discovered that Mrs. Russo was up in Maine, pimping GOOD IN BED, she had to at least try to hand-sell one copy of my book for every one of his).
So: critics talked to readers. Readers talked to each other. And authors – well, authors were largely silent and voiceless between books. Presumably, they were holed up in their garrets or their New Hampshire compounds, working on their next opus.
Aside from a letter to the editor, a book tour or reading, visit a book club, or, if you were Norman Mailer or Richard Ford, spitting on a critic at a party, authors really didn’t have an avenue for responding to criticism or interacting with readers. If an author had something to say, she said it in her next book.
We had three separate spheres – critics, authors, and readers. All of them were talking. None of them could talk to each other.
And then along came the Internet.
Suddenly, readers could talk to authors.
Authors could talk to critics.
Authors could talk to other authors.
The critical landscape had been looking bleak. Now, that landscape has been revitalized. Now, anyone with a laptop and an opinion can call him or herself a critic, and publish a review on the book of the moment, or the book of twenty years ago, and talk, online, to other readers and maybe even critics and the author herself, about her opinion.
The world has opened up.
While the world was expanding, so was readers’ access to authors’ lives. No more was our knowledge of our favorite writer confined to what we could glean from the book jacket. Now, we can go to their websites (because, of course, their publishers insisted they had websites, not to mention Facebook fan pages and Twitter accounts) and see pictures of their houses houses or their spouses; their vacation or their kids
Readers can email them our thoughts on their latest book. We can Tweet at Judy Blume.
Just…let’s just all sit with that a minute. We can tweet at Judy Blume. And sometimes, she tweets back!
Of course, this brave new world of overlapping conversation and unprecedented access was not without its complications and growing pains.
Consider the rise and fall of the women I consider to be the world’s first book blogger: Oprah Winfrey.
Yes, okay, technically Winfrey didn’t have a book blog – she had a televised book club, launched in 1996, and lasting until 2010.
But if Toni Morrison can call Bill Clinton the first black president, and Newsweek can call Barack Obama the first gay president, then I can call Oprah Winfrey the world’s first book blogger.
Even though Oprah did not, technically, begin with a blog, her televised book club had all of the hallmakrs that would come to characterize book blogs in the next decades: a fresh, enthusiastic voice, a tone that was worlds apart from the educated dispassion and cool remove of book critics, dispensing judgment from on high.
Oprah didn’t sound like a critic. She sounded like a friend, the woman next to you at the soccer game or the carpool lane who couldn’t wait to tell you about the amazing book she’d just discovered, and how much she loved it, and how much you were going to love it, too. She came at books as a reader….and the importance of that stance cannot be overstated.
PICTURE OF OPRAH HOLDING BOOK PICK
Every book she picked became an instant bestseller, ensuring that every writer unlucky enough to publish during the Age of Oprah had to deal with well-meaning relatives who’d pull you into a corner and whisper, in the tones of having just received a revelation from on high, “Have you thought about sending it to Oprah?” Yes. Yes, Nanna. I thought about sending it to Oprah.)
Traditional critics weren’t happy watching a chat-show hostess most famous for her yo-yo dieting commanding an army of readers.
Oprah didn’t care. At least, she never responded publicly to those who told her she was doing reading wrong, that she was picking bad books, that she was trespassing on territory better left to the better-educated.
And then along came Jonathan Franzen, whose interaction with Oprah (http://www.virginmedia.com/tvradio/fe...) would demonstrate the perils of the interactive world, where readers and critics and authors can talk TO each other instead of about each other.
In September of 2001, Oprah picked Franzen’s THE CORRECTIONS for her book club.
PICTURE OF O WITH CORRECTIONS
Franzen, a self-proclaimed writer in the high-literary tradition who took himself very, very seriously, went on a kind of foot-in-mouth cross-country tour.
While Franzen allowed that Oprah had “picked some good books,” he told an Oregon public radio station she’d also “picked enough schmaltzy, one-dimensional ones that I cringe.” Clumsily backpedaling in USA Today, he acknowledged that Oprah had done a lot of good, that she was a hero – “but not a hero of mine, per se.” (You sort of had to wonder where the publicist with the taser was).
Stung, Oprah rescinded her invitation, saying that Franzen was clearly uncomfortable about coming on her show, and that it was never her intention to make anyone uncomfortable…but it’s what happened to the book club in the wake of that kerfuffle that would foreshadow blogger/author/publisher interactions to come, and how they played out in public and in real time.
You know that old Eleanor Roosevelt chestnut about how no one can make you feel inferior without your consent?
It’s my belief that Oprah respected Jonathan Franzen – respected all writers – a lot. When he said, essentially, that her picks were unworthy, that cut deep.
Three books after FREEDOM, Oprah shuttered the club. When she started it up business again, she stuck to the classics…until her disastrous ’06 choice of James Frey.
After that egg-meet-face moment, where it was revealed that Frey's memoir was not what the kids call "true," and when Frey’s publisher, veteran Nan Talese proclaimed that readers didn’t deserve anything better than the appearance of truthiness, as opposed to actual truth, Oprah’s picks tapered off, becoming once or twice a year instead of monthly events.
In December of 2010, the club limped off into the sunset with the safest of safe choices – Charles Dickens’ A TALE OF TWO CITIES and GREAT EXPECTATIONS, which had the worst sales of any previous pick. Just lack week, she revived the club, delighting readers, and pissing off BEA keynote speakers who thought they were done with their speeches. Will book clubs bring viewers to her foundering network? Time will tell...but I'm happy for @cherylstrayed, who became the first living woman since Toni Morrison in 2002 who Oprah tapped.
By 2010, the book club had become irrelevant. Oprah had become just another critic, marching in lockstep with the Times and The New Yorker, playing it safe, adding a limp, belated “me, too,” when they heaped laurels on Cormac McCarthy or Jeffrey Eugenides.
If Oprah was one of the first book bloggers, than I was part of that first wave of novelists who used blogs to invite readers to step into our parlors, and our lives, to share intimate details of what went on behind the scenes and between the books. As an ex-newspaper reporter, the chance to talk to readers, to get my words out there, to say something in the yearlong silence between books was a thrilling opportunity.
I remember telling my publisher that I wanted a blog. Then I remember explaining what a blog was.
I launched my blog, then called SnarkSpot, in January of 2002, and, as bloggers did, I treated my life as material.
I wrote about my family, and my dog, and my seemingly-endless first pregnancy, about my Bradley-method birth classes, and bringing my mother on book tour, where we stayed in five-star hotels (my sister and I did Marlon Perkins, Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom-inspired voiceovers as Fran wandered around the lobby, staring at people and sneaking free bottled water into her totebag: the animal, out of is normal habitat is clearly uncomfortable as it struggles to adjust to its strange new environment. Let’s watch, as it approaches the minibar). Followed by, "You girls stay away from that minibar! Do you know you can by a whole package of Oreos for $5? Goddamnit, Jenny, are you tweeting this?"
I put it all out there…
Some of what I wrote came from the bad place. Did the world really need a sentence-by-sentence, sometimes word-by-word deconstruction of Curtis Sittenfeld’s NewYork Times takedown of Melissa Bank’s new novel, which she slammed for being insufficiently serious chick lit?
Maybe not. (And Curtis and I are friends now -- so at least some part of this story has a happy ending).
But remember, this was the early days of blogging, the day when you could, indeed, dance like no one was watching…and, for me, knowing full well that books like mine, with naked legs and cheesecake on a pink cover were unlikely to be hailed as the successor to Salinger or Updike or Joyce Carol Oates, blogging was a chance to defend myself, and my genre…to be a voice that said that, in spite of the cutesy covers, in spite of the breezy tone and bad boyfriends and bosses, in spite of the critics' scorn and, eventually, an entire anthology called THIS IS NOT CHICK LIT challenging my genre’s worth
some of those books had something to say.
I’d found my voice…in my books and on my blog…and then along came the New York Times.
In 2005, I got a call asking if I’d be interviewed for a story about mothers who blogged. I said, “Sure!” (Note to future Times subjects: beware the reporter who begins his interview by stating, “My wife loves your books.” Translation: he wouldn’t deign to read them).
Some of you will probably remember the story. As it turns out, the Times was not so much a fan of quote-unquote mommyblogs.
SHOT STORY
The headline of the story was Mommy –parenthesis --- and me – and, in the first few paragraphs, the reporter observed that, more often than not, such sites are “shrines to parental self-absorption.” (SHOW PULL QUOTE)
Narcissistic self-absorption? Seriously? I didn’t even know I was writing a mommyblog! I thought I was writing a blog about being a mother who wrote! That I was being funny and informative and helpful, to the rest of the struggling new moms trying to balance work and family and the inevitable loss of identity that goes with being Woman Pushing Stroller – or, these days, Woman Wearing Sling. I thought I was helpful and amusing -- an Erma Bomback for the e-age!
But I was wrong. The New York Times said so.
Then, in the summer of 2005, just before the film version of “In Her Shoes” was coming out,
the paper sent a reporter to my house in Philadelphia to do a profile of me for the Sunday magazine.
I cannot tell you how excited I was – even though the reporter they sent was far better known for her hit pieces than her valentines. This meant that they thought I was interesting! Maybe it would be one of those great pieces that would make everyone who read it want to read my books! They like me! They really, really like me!
Long story short – not so much. The Times didn’t think I was interesting as much as a symptom of what it saw as literature’s wrong turn – a turn toward social media and public connection, as opposed to dignified silence.
I can only recall bits and pieces of my day in the reporter’s company – my subconscious has helpfully blocked out most of it – but there are things I do remember.
Like the reporter wandering through my bedroom, picking up a picture of my sister, considering it with a sneer, and saying, “She’s not THAT pretty. I actually thought it was you!” (For those of your unfamiliar with IN HER SHOES, it's the story of a hot sister -- based on my sister Molly, who actually, objectively is much better looking than I am, and her smart-but-frumpy big sister).
Or her asking, over lunch, “Do you write your blog so that people will LIKE you?” (And oh, if I’d just been the tiniest bit quicker, I would have said, “No, silly, that’s what the blow jobs are for!”)
Bottom line: as the day went on, and the reporter asked me 10 questions about my blog for every one about my books, I began to get the distinct feeling that this piece wasn’t going to resemble the paper’s 4,000-word mash note to Jonathan Safran Foer… that it was, instead, going to be something I regretted, possibly for the rest of my life.
When I told the reporter that we were done, that I wouldn’t sit for the scheduled portrait, and that there wasn’t going to be a story, she was furious, complaining bitterly about the time she’d quote “wasted” reading my books (which erased any doubts I had about the slant of her story).
Nobody can hurt your feeling unless you give them permission. I gave the Times permission.
And I should maybe give you a little back story about this portion of the speech, which involves my agent and some of my loved ones saying, ‘Maybe you could just say ‘a big Northeastern paper.’” Because, if you piss off the Times, maybe they’ll take it out on your next book.
I thought about it…and, then, I thought, well, what else can the paper do? What other painful, embarrassing ting can happen?
Have Henry Alford say something bitchy about me? Been there.
Quote Jonathan Galassi – Franzen’s editor – making fun of my made-up German? Done that.
Misrepresent my sales on its bestseller list?
Well, this week my current paperback, THEN CAME YOU, the number eight bestselling book on Bookscan, which is said to account for 70 to 80 percent of sales.
For the same time period, it’s number 22 on the Times list.
This has happened with every book since LITTLE EARTHQUAKES. My publisher will go to the Times and say, “we think Jen’s book should be higher, and here are our numbers to support our claims.” The Times will say, “we think Jen’s book is right where it should be, and we’re not showing you our numbers. They’re proprietary.”
There’s just nothing to be done…and I shouldn’t expect any better.
As anyone who’s taken a women’s studies class will tell you, as long as there’s a woman writing about her own life, there’s someone – sometimes a man, sometimes another woman -- to tell her that what she’s written is unworthy, unimportant, beneath notice, that it’s not real literature and not worth taking seriously.
In the wake of this kind of treatment, though, it’s hard not to lose your social media mojo…and, in 2006 until 2009, I went through kind of a dark night of my bloggy soul.
I was still very happy writing my novels. The Times was still very happy ignoring them, except when I’d be lucky enough to be mentioned in the springtime vagina round-up, where Janet Maslin admitted that “Ms. Weiner’s characters are warmly and realistically drawn” in an article headline “The Girls of Summer: Surveying This Season’s Chick Lit.”
Sure, literary writers like Jane Smiley were still stepping up to tell me they were unworthy, that I should be turning my skills toward more serious matters.
But I felt solid about my novels. I was an English major, with enough women’s studies in my background to know what any woman can expect when she unleashes her female-based fiction on the world…but, in terms of blogging, I was second and third-guessing everything I wrote, losing sleep, fretting endlessly. Is this an overshare? Is it too personal? Is it silly? Stupid? Disreputable? Is the Times going to laugh at me again?
I had lost my social-media mojo...until "The Bachelor," and my fellow writters helped me get it back.
I was a Twitter resister. I’d been pulled onto MySpace, I liked Facebook just fine…did I really need a new microblogging site, one more item on the daily to-do list?
As it turns out, I think that the novels are fine and that blogging was fun, but Twitter might have been the thing I was born for.
Twitter’s taught me discipline, the skill of being funny or poignant in a pithy 140 characters.
It’s let me connect with readers, in a more intimate way than I ever could before.
It’s let me meet other authors, and hang out with them around the virtual water cooler and talk shop. It’s given me people.
Twitter’s like being at the biggest, best cocktail party in the world, where I can talk about anything to almost anyone, – big books, reality TV, how I embarrassed myself if in front of Jeffrey Eugenides or how, when your three-year-old says she “just wants to hold” the bottle of sparkly red nail polish, she is totally, totally lying.
Best of all, it’s given me a place to light a candle, instead of cursing the darkness – a place where I can not only point out instances of sexism and discrimination in the publishing world, I can also do something about it, supporting other authors in ways that weren’t available when my first book was published…and it’s something, I think, that all bloggers can do to celebrate the things they love.
Case in point: I loved Sarah Pekkanen’s debut novel, THE OPPOSITE OF ME
…and I remember the women who gave me blurbs even though they had no connection through agent or editor or publisher…they just liked my book.
When GOOD IN BED was published, I swore then that I would never be a non-blurbing writer…that I would always help debut novelists, as a way of paying forward the generosity my peers had shown to me.
Social media gave me – gives all of us – a chance to do this.
Sarah smartly recognized the importance of pre-orders in getting her book on people’s radar. She organized a contest and lined up some prizes for people who ordered her book the Tuesday before publication. I decided that, for one day only, I would offer a copy of one of my books to everyone who ordered Sarah’s.
The response was more than I think any of us imagined. I tweeted up a storm, linking to Sarah’s first chapter, and where you could buy the book, eventually mailing out more than four hundred copies of my books. THE OPPOSITE OF ME cracked the online bestseller lists at B&N and Amazon.
Sarah's excellent debut novel got written up on a bunch of blogs and even newspapers that might have just dismissed her book as another piece of disposable chick lit.
SHOT OF SARAH’S PW ARTICLE
…and my new path was clear.
I continued to do Q and A’s and interviews and giveaways with Emma Donoghue, whose book ROOM took the country by storm last year, and with Liz Moore, a fellow Philadelphian and a rising star in literary fiction, whose book HEFT, about lonely people and chosen families, broke my heart. I’ve been thrilled to help spread the word about writers from Buzz Bissinger to Jillian Medoff to Julie Buxbaum.
POST RE: BUZZ BISSINGER
I am so pleased to be in a position where, instead of just complaining about the Times’ bias, I can actually do something about it -- that I can now be part of someone else’s magic, that I can be the one sprinkling the fairy dust.
If you’ve got a blog, you can it, too.
I’m not saying never write bad reviews, or that there’s no place in the world for some well-deserved snark. I’m not saying not to be honest…or that even the projects with the absolute best and most politically-correct intensions can’t go down in flames.
But there’s something to be said for talking up the things you love instead of talking down the things you hate.
And so, in closing, Blogging Class of 2012,
GENERIC PICTURE OF GRADUATES
I would tell you this:
No matter what you blog about, there’s going to be someone there to try to slap you down, to tell you it’s unworthy, undignified, silly and girlie.
Ignore them.
In Oprah’s day, blogging existed as a corrective. It filled in the blanks that the mainsream critics ignored, considering the books and the genres that were beneath them, pointed out what the mainstream was covering badly, or missing entirely…and bloggers continue to serve this role, in different, sometimes dazzling ways.
Janice Harayda, aware that statistically women writers are underrepresented on review pages, pledged that 50 percent or more of her “One Minute Book Reviews” would go to women.
http://oneminutebookreviews.wordpress...
Carleen Brice launched “When White Readers meet Black Writers, a “sometimes serious, sometimes lighthearted plea for EVERYONE to give black authors a try.” (In a video, she demystified the choices, pointing out that the books are “made of paper….just like other books. It’s not too scary, is it?” she asked.
http://welcomewhitefolks.blogspot.com...
Twitter is a place where Jodi Picoult and I can tell the world that the New York Times doesn’t cover popular fiction by women with the same regularity or regard with which it considers popular books by men.
It’s where Slate’s website for women, Double X, can tweet the statistics that show that, indeed, women are less frequently reviewed….
It’s where any number of other tweeters can say that Jodi and I are just jealous, and that our books suck.
And the conversation rolls on…because, painful as it sometimes feels, social media is a conversation, and there’s always someone new to talk to, and something new to talk about.
As a writer, Twitter has been invaluable. It’s let me listen to my readers: why do your black people in your books have light eyes? When can we expect a gay character in one of your novels?
It’s let me ask for their help when deciding where to buy ads, or even which author photo to use.
http://pinterest.com/jenweinerbooks/a...
My favorite example: in THE NEXT BEST THING, coming in July, one of the main characters uses a wheelchair. I found Priscilla Hedlin, who blogs as Wheelchair Mommy, on Twitter, and she was kind enough to take an early look and tell me what I got right and what I got wrong.
As bloggers, you can help authors just by being there – by tweeting a “reading your book right now,” by answering our questions, by covering the books and the genres that the mainstream ignores, or covering popular books in a way the mainstream can’t.
Anyone could review Chad Harbach or do a Q and A with Kate Christensen, but how many people would think to bake protein bars with Harbach, or ask Christensen for her playlist?
Where the mainstream zigs, bloggers zag. Where dead-tree people are stuck with the demands of the form –500 words with a thumbs-up or thumbs-down at the end, with attention paid to the big releases from the big houses – bloggers are limited by nothing but their own imagination.
Bloggers can be passionate where their print peers had to be objective. They could be silly, enthusiasts, cheerleaders who’d shout the good news from the mountaintop when they found a book they loved or axe men who’d gleefully eviscerate something they couldn’t stand…and it’s been a pleasure to watch that passion make its way to the mainstream, as the Venn diagrams’s circles continue to overlap to the point where they’ve almost melted into nonexistence, where writers who got their start on blogs now review for NPR, and mainstream critics like the Washington Post's Ron Charles do video reviews draped in breakfast meat.
So: advice.
I would encourage you to be as transparent as possible, to remember that some of those old dead-tree rules about conflict of interest and full disclosure where in place for a reason – to ensure that the reader was getting a review untainted by money or personal loyalties, or rivalries. If your blog or Twitter feed has a moneymaking component that’s not as obvious as an ad or a tip cup at the bottom of the page, spell it out, as clearly and visibly and as often as possible.
Know the rules: the FTC says that bloggers or online endorsers must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service. Sticking an #ad or #promo hashtag at the end of a tweet isn’t sexy…but, if you’ve been paid to praise the book, it’s the law.
Speak in your own voice, with the courage of your convictions, about the books and authors and topics you love, no matter who tells you that you shouldn’t love them.
Dance like no one’s watching. Sing like no one can hear. Tweet like your mother’s not online.
Be brave, be smart, be creative, be kind, and, above all, be yourself…and I promise, the readers will find you.
Let me start by saying that I know I’m kind of an odd choice to give this presentation.
While I’ve been happily published by Atria Books for twelve years and ten books, I’m not a publisher…although I’m happy to share whatever insights I can give you about that part of the world.
While I’ve been blogging since 2002, I’m not exactly a book blogger the way most of you are. My blog is as likely to talk about “The Bachelor” as it is the latest publishing news.
So…why me? Who am I, and why am I here?
I think what I bring to the table is my own success in the world social media. I think – I hope – that I’ve figured out a way to use my blog, and Facebook, and Twitter and Pinterest to have an ongoing conversation with my readers, not deliver a “buy my book” monologue.
When I sold my first book in 2000, there was no such thing as social media. Stephen King’s e-novella RIDING THE BULLET, which I remember downloading for 99 cents and reading on my desktop at work, was presumed to be future of e-books….and there were only the most primitive e-readers available.
Websites, weblogs, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Kindles, Nooks and iPads…all of these have emerged in the last decade, and publishers, authors and readers have all been scrambling to figure out how to use these new technologies to connect books with readers.
Let’s start with the good news: there has never been a more exciting time to be part of the conversation about books and reading than right now.
Once upon a time, when I was a young reader, there was no conversation at all. There was instead a series of occasionally overlapping monologues, with critics, authors and readers, each in their separate spheres.
The critics would issue their edicts from on high.
The readers would discuss them, in real life and usually in private.
(That’s my mom’s book club, by the way. Notice what book they're NOT reading.
True story – when my first book was published, I took my mom with me on part of my book tour. I’d be in the store, introducing myself to the manager and the sales staff, signing stock, being friendly, doing my thing, and I’d hear my mother talking to other bookstore patrons. “I just read the best book!” she’d gush…and I’d smile, proudly. “It had everything – amazing writing, great plot, and it was funny.” Here it comes, I would think…and I’d turn around just in time to hear my mother say, “Richard Russo! Empire Falls! Hang on, I’ll help you find it!” I finally had to tell my mother that, unless she discovered that Mrs. Russo was up in Maine, pimping GOOD IN BED, she had to at least try to hand-sell one copy of my book for every one of his).
So: critics talked to readers. Readers talked to each other. And authors – well, authors were largely silent and voiceless between books. Presumably, they were holed up in their garrets or their New Hampshire compounds, working on their next opus.
Aside from a letter to the editor, a book tour or reading, visit a book club, or, if you were Norman Mailer or Richard Ford, spitting on a critic at a party, authors really didn’t have an avenue for responding to criticism or interacting with readers. If an author had something to say, she said it in her next book.
We had three separate spheres – critics, authors, and readers. All of them were talking. None of them could talk to each other.
And then along came the Internet.
Suddenly, readers could talk to authors.
Authors could talk to critics.
Authors could talk to other authors.
The critical landscape had been looking bleak. Now, that landscape has been revitalized. Now, anyone with a laptop and an opinion can call him or herself a critic, and publish a review on the book of the moment, or the book of twenty years ago, and talk, online, to other readers and maybe even critics and the author herself, about her opinion.
The world has opened up.
While the world was expanding, so was readers’ access to authors’ lives. No more was our knowledge of our favorite writer confined to what we could glean from the book jacket. Now, we can go to their websites (because, of course, their publishers insisted they had websites, not to mention Facebook fan pages and Twitter accounts) and see pictures of their houses houses or their spouses; their vacation or their kids
Readers can email them our thoughts on their latest book. We can Tweet at Judy Blume.
Just…let’s just all sit with that a minute. We can tweet at Judy Blume. And sometimes, she tweets back!
Of course, this brave new world of overlapping conversation and unprecedented access was not without its complications and growing pains.
Consider the rise and fall of the women I consider to be the world’s first book blogger: Oprah Winfrey.
Yes, okay, technically Winfrey didn’t have a book blog – she had a televised book club, launched in 1996, and lasting until 2010.
But if Toni Morrison can call Bill Clinton the first black president, and Newsweek can call Barack Obama the first gay president, then I can call Oprah Winfrey the world’s first book blogger.
Even though Oprah did not, technically, begin with a blog, her televised book club had all of the hallmakrs that would come to characterize book blogs in the next decades: a fresh, enthusiastic voice, a tone that was worlds apart from the educated dispassion and cool remove of book critics, dispensing judgment from on high.
Oprah didn’t sound like a critic. She sounded like a friend, the woman next to you at the soccer game or the carpool lane who couldn’t wait to tell you about the amazing book she’d just discovered, and how much she loved it, and how much you were going to love it, too. She came at books as a reader….and the importance of that stance cannot be overstated.
PICTURE OF OPRAH HOLDING BOOK PICK
Every book she picked became an instant bestseller, ensuring that every writer unlucky enough to publish during the Age of Oprah had to deal with well-meaning relatives who’d pull you into a corner and whisper, in the tones of having just received a revelation from on high, “Have you thought about sending it to Oprah?” Yes. Yes, Nanna. I thought about sending it to Oprah.)
Traditional critics weren’t happy watching a chat-show hostess most famous for her yo-yo dieting commanding an army of readers.
Oprah didn’t care. At least, she never responded publicly to those who told her she was doing reading wrong, that she was picking bad books, that she was trespassing on territory better left to the better-educated.
And then along came Jonathan Franzen, whose interaction with Oprah (http://www.virginmedia.com/tvradio/fe...) would demonstrate the perils of the interactive world, where readers and critics and authors can talk TO each other instead of about each other.
In September of 2001, Oprah picked Franzen’s THE CORRECTIONS for her book club.
PICTURE OF O WITH CORRECTIONS
Franzen, a self-proclaimed writer in the high-literary tradition who took himself very, very seriously, went on a kind of foot-in-mouth cross-country tour.
While Franzen allowed that Oprah had “picked some good books,” he told an Oregon public radio station she’d also “picked enough schmaltzy, one-dimensional ones that I cringe.” Clumsily backpedaling in USA Today, he acknowledged that Oprah had done a lot of good, that she was a hero – “but not a hero of mine, per se.” (You sort of had to wonder where the publicist with the taser was).
Stung, Oprah rescinded her invitation, saying that Franzen was clearly uncomfortable about coming on her show, and that it was never her intention to make anyone uncomfortable…but it’s what happened to the book club in the wake of that kerfuffle that would foreshadow blogger/author/publisher interactions to come, and how they played out in public and in real time.
You know that old Eleanor Roosevelt chestnut about how no one can make you feel inferior without your consent?
It’s my belief that Oprah respected Jonathan Franzen – respected all writers – a lot. When he said, essentially, that her picks were unworthy, that cut deep.
Three books after FREEDOM, Oprah shuttered the club. When she started it up business again, she stuck to the classics…until her disastrous ’06 choice of James Frey.
After that egg-meet-face moment, where it was revealed that Frey's memoir was not what the kids call "true," and when Frey’s publisher, veteran Nan Talese proclaimed that readers didn’t deserve anything better than the appearance of truthiness, as opposed to actual truth, Oprah’s picks tapered off, becoming once or twice a year instead of monthly events.
In December of 2010, the club limped off into the sunset with the safest of safe choices – Charles Dickens’ A TALE OF TWO CITIES and GREAT EXPECTATIONS, which had the worst sales of any previous pick. Just lack week, she revived the club, delighting readers, and pissing off BEA keynote speakers who thought they were done with their speeches. Will book clubs bring viewers to her foundering network? Time will tell...but I'm happy for @cherylstrayed, who became the first living woman since Toni Morrison in 2002 who Oprah tapped.
By 2010, the book club had become irrelevant. Oprah had become just another critic, marching in lockstep with the Times and The New Yorker, playing it safe, adding a limp, belated “me, too,” when they heaped laurels on Cormac McCarthy or Jeffrey Eugenides.
If Oprah was one of the first book bloggers, than I was part of that first wave of novelists who used blogs to invite readers to step into our parlors, and our lives, to share intimate details of what went on behind the scenes and between the books. As an ex-newspaper reporter, the chance to talk to readers, to get my words out there, to say something in the yearlong silence between books was a thrilling opportunity.
I remember telling my publisher that I wanted a blog. Then I remember explaining what a blog was.
I launched my blog, then called SnarkSpot, in January of 2002, and, as bloggers did, I treated my life as material.
I wrote about my family, and my dog, and my seemingly-endless first pregnancy, about my Bradley-method birth classes, and bringing my mother on book tour, where we stayed in five-star hotels (my sister and I did Marlon Perkins, Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom-inspired voiceovers as Fran wandered around the lobby, staring at people and sneaking free bottled water into her totebag: the animal, out of is normal habitat is clearly uncomfortable as it struggles to adjust to its strange new environment. Let’s watch, as it approaches the minibar). Followed by, "You girls stay away from that minibar! Do you know you can by a whole package of Oreos for $5? Goddamnit, Jenny, are you tweeting this?"
I put it all out there…
Some of what I wrote came from the bad place. Did the world really need a sentence-by-sentence, sometimes word-by-word deconstruction of Curtis Sittenfeld’s NewYork Times takedown of Melissa Bank’s new novel, which she slammed for being insufficiently serious chick lit?
Maybe not. (And Curtis and I are friends now -- so at least some part of this story has a happy ending).
But remember, this was the early days of blogging, the day when you could, indeed, dance like no one was watching…and, for me, knowing full well that books like mine, with naked legs and cheesecake on a pink cover were unlikely to be hailed as the successor to Salinger or Updike or Joyce Carol Oates, blogging was a chance to defend myself, and my genre…to be a voice that said that, in spite of the cutesy covers, in spite of the breezy tone and bad boyfriends and bosses, in spite of the critics' scorn and, eventually, an entire anthology called THIS IS NOT CHICK LIT challenging my genre’s worth
some of those books had something to say.
I’d found my voice…in my books and on my blog…and then along came the New York Times.
In 2005, I got a call asking if I’d be interviewed for a story about mothers who blogged. I said, “Sure!” (Note to future Times subjects: beware the reporter who begins his interview by stating, “My wife loves your books.” Translation: he wouldn’t deign to read them).
Some of you will probably remember the story. As it turns out, the Times was not so much a fan of quote-unquote mommyblogs.
SHOT STORY
The headline of the story was Mommy –parenthesis --- and me – and, in the first few paragraphs, the reporter observed that, more often than not, such sites are “shrines to parental self-absorption.” (SHOW PULL QUOTE)
Narcissistic self-absorption? Seriously? I didn’t even know I was writing a mommyblog! I thought I was writing a blog about being a mother who wrote! That I was being funny and informative and helpful, to the rest of the struggling new moms trying to balance work and family and the inevitable loss of identity that goes with being Woman Pushing Stroller – or, these days, Woman Wearing Sling. I thought I was helpful and amusing -- an Erma Bomback for the e-age!
But I was wrong. The New York Times said so.
Then, in the summer of 2005, just before the film version of “In Her Shoes” was coming out,
the paper sent a reporter to my house in Philadelphia to do a profile of me for the Sunday magazine.
I cannot tell you how excited I was – even though the reporter they sent was far better known for her hit pieces than her valentines. This meant that they thought I was interesting! Maybe it would be one of those great pieces that would make everyone who read it want to read my books! They like me! They really, really like me!
Long story short – not so much. The Times didn’t think I was interesting as much as a symptom of what it saw as literature’s wrong turn – a turn toward social media and public connection, as opposed to dignified silence.
I can only recall bits and pieces of my day in the reporter’s company – my subconscious has helpfully blocked out most of it – but there are things I do remember.
Like the reporter wandering through my bedroom, picking up a picture of my sister, considering it with a sneer, and saying, “She’s not THAT pretty. I actually thought it was you!” (For those of your unfamiliar with IN HER SHOES, it's the story of a hot sister -- based on my sister Molly, who actually, objectively is much better looking than I am, and her smart-but-frumpy big sister).
Or her asking, over lunch, “Do you write your blog so that people will LIKE you?” (And oh, if I’d just been the tiniest bit quicker, I would have said, “No, silly, that’s what the blow jobs are for!”)
Bottom line: as the day went on, and the reporter asked me 10 questions about my blog for every one about my books, I began to get the distinct feeling that this piece wasn’t going to resemble the paper’s 4,000-word mash note to Jonathan Safran Foer… that it was, instead, going to be something I regretted, possibly for the rest of my life.
When I told the reporter that we were done, that I wouldn’t sit for the scheduled portrait, and that there wasn’t going to be a story, she was furious, complaining bitterly about the time she’d quote “wasted” reading my books (which erased any doubts I had about the slant of her story).
Nobody can hurt your feeling unless you give them permission. I gave the Times permission.
And I should maybe give you a little back story about this portion of the speech, which involves my agent and some of my loved ones saying, ‘Maybe you could just say ‘a big Northeastern paper.’” Because, if you piss off the Times, maybe they’ll take it out on your next book.
I thought about it…and, then, I thought, well, what else can the paper do? What other painful, embarrassing ting can happen?
Have Henry Alford say something bitchy about me? Been there.
Quote Jonathan Galassi – Franzen’s editor – making fun of my made-up German? Done that.
Misrepresent my sales on its bestseller list?
Well, this week my current paperback, THEN CAME YOU, the number eight bestselling book on Bookscan, which is said to account for 70 to 80 percent of sales.
For the same time period, it’s number 22 on the Times list.
This has happened with every book since LITTLE EARTHQUAKES. My publisher will go to the Times and say, “we think Jen’s book should be higher, and here are our numbers to support our claims.” The Times will say, “we think Jen’s book is right where it should be, and we’re not showing you our numbers. They’re proprietary.”
There’s just nothing to be done…and I shouldn’t expect any better.
As anyone who’s taken a women’s studies class will tell you, as long as there’s a woman writing about her own life, there’s someone – sometimes a man, sometimes another woman -- to tell her that what she’s written is unworthy, unimportant, beneath notice, that it’s not real literature and not worth taking seriously.
In the wake of this kind of treatment, though, it’s hard not to lose your social media mojo…and, in 2006 until 2009, I went through kind of a dark night of my bloggy soul.
I was still very happy writing my novels. The Times was still very happy ignoring them, except when I’d be lucky enough to be mentioned in the springtime vagina round-up, where Janet Maslin admitted that “Ms. Weiner’s characters are warmly and realistically drawn” in an article headline “The Girls of Summer: Surveying This Season’s Chick Lit.”
Sure, literary writers like Jane Smiley were still stepping up to tell me they were unworthy, that I should be turning my skills toward more serious matters.
But I felt solid about my novels. I was an English major, with enough women’s studies in my background to know what any woman can expect when she unleashes her female-based fiction on the world…but, in terms of blogging, I was second and third-guessing everything I wrote, losing sleep, fretting endlessly. Is this an overshare? Is it too personal? Is it silly? Stupid? Disreputable? Is the Times going to laugh at me again?
I had lost my social-media mojo...until "The Bachelor," and my fellow writters helped me get it back.
I was a Twitter resister. I’d been pulled onto MySpace, I liked Facebook just fine…did I really need a new microblogging site, one more item on the daily to-do list?
As it turns out, I think that the novels are fine and that blogging was fun, but Twitter might have been the thing I was born for.
Twitter’s taught me discipline, the skill of being funny or poignant in a pithy 140 characters.
It’s let me connect with readers, in a more intimate way than I ever could before.
It’s let me meet other authors, and hang out with them around the virtual water cooler and talk shop. It’s given me people.
Twitter’s like being at the biggest, best cocktail party in the world, where I can talk about anything to almost anyone, – big books, reality TV, how I embarrassed myself if in front of Jeffrey Eugenides or how, when your three-year-old says she “just wants to hold” the bottle of sparkly red nail polish, she is totally, totally lying.
Best of all, it’s given me a place to light a candle, instead of cursing the darkness – a place where I can not only point out instances of sexism and discrimination in the publishing world, I can also do something about it, supporting other authors in ways that weren’t available when my first book was published…and it’s something, I think, that all bloggers can do to celebrate the things they love.
Case in point: I loved Sarah Pekkanen’s debut novel, THE OPPOSITE OF ME
…and I remember the women who gave me blurbs even though they had no connection through agent or editor or publisher…they just liked my book.
When GOOD IN BED was published, I swore then that I would never be a non-blurbing writer…that I would always help debut novelists, as a way of paying forward the generosity my peers had shown to me.
Social media gave me – gives all of us – a chance to do this.
Sarah smartly recognized the importance of pre-orders in getting her book on people’s radar. She organized a contest and lined up some prizes for people who ordered her book the Tuesday before publication. I decided that, for one day only, I would offer a copy of one of my books to everyone who ordered Sarah’s.
The response was more than I think any of us imagined. I tweeted up a storm, linking to Sarah’s first chapter, and where you could buy the book, eventually mailing out more than four hundred copies of my books. THE OPPOSITE OF ME cracked the online bestseller lists at B&N and Amazon.
Sarah's excellent debut novel got written up on a bunch of blogs and even newspapers that might have just dismissed her book as another piece of disposable chick lit.
SHOT OF SARAH’S PW ARTICLE
…and my new path was clear.
I continued to do Q and A’s and interviews and giveaways with Emma Donoghue, whose book ROOM took the country by storm last year, and with Liz Moore, a fellow Philadelphian and a rising star in literary fiction, whose book HEFT, about lonely people and chosen families, broke my heart. I’ve been thrilled to help spread the word about writers from Buzz Bissinger to Jillian Medoff to Julie Buxbaum.
POST RE: BUZZ BISSINGER
I am so pleased to be in a position where, instead of just complaining about the Times’ bias, I can actually do something about it -- that I can now be part of someone else’s magic, that I can be the one sprinkling the fairy dust.
If you’ve got a blog, you can it, too.
I’m not saying never write bad reviews, or that there’s no place in the world for some well-deserved snark. I’m not saying not to be honest…or that even the projects with the absolute best and most politically-correct intensions can’t go down in flames.
But there’s something to be said for talking up the things you love instead of talking down the things you hate.
And so, in closing, Blogging Class of 2012,
GENERIC PICTURE OF GRADUATES
I would tell you this:
No matter what you blog about, there’s going to be someone there to try to slap you down, to tell you it’s unworthy, undignified, silly and girlie.
Ignore them.
In Oprah’s day, blogging existed as a corrective. It filled in the blanks that the mainsream critics ignored, considering the books and the genres that were beneath them, pointed out what the mainstream was covering badly, or missing entirely…and bloggers continue to serve this role, in different, sometimes dazzling ways.
Janice Harayda, aware that statistically women writers are underrepresented on review pages, pledged that 50 percent or more of her “One Minute Book Reviews” would go to women.
http://oneminutebookreviews.wordpress...
Carleen Brice launched “When White Readers meet Black Writers, a “sometimes serious, sometimes lighthearted plea for EVERYONE to give black authors a try.” (In a video, she demystified the choices, pointing out that the books are “made of paper….just like other books. It’s not too scary, is it?” she asked.
http://welcomewhitefolks.blogspot.com...
Twitter is a place where Jodi Picoult and I can tell the world that the New York Times doesn’t cover popular fiction by women with the same regularity or regard with which it considers popular books by men.
It’s where Slate’s website for women, Double X, can tweet the statistics that show that, indeed, women are less frequently reviewed….
It’s where any number of other tweeters can say that Jodi and I are just jealous, and that our books suck.
And the conversation rolls on…because, painful as it sometimes feels, social media is a conversation, and there’s always someone new to talk to, and something new to talk about.
As a writer, Twitter has been invaluable. It’s let me listen to my readers: why do your black people in your books have light eyes? When can we expect a gay character in one of your novels?
It’s let me ask for their help when deciding where to buy ads, or even which author photo to use.
http://pinterest.com/jenweinerbooks/a...
My favorite example: in THE NEXT BEST THING, coming in July, one of the main characters uses a wheelchair. I found Priscilla Hedlin, who blogs as Wheelchair Mommy, on Twitter, and she was kind enough to take an early look and tell me what I got right and what I got wrong.
As bloggers, you can help authors just by being there – by tweeting a “reading your book right now,” by answering our questions, by covering the books and the genres that the mainstream ignores, or covering popular books in a way the mainstream can’t.
Anyone could review Chad Harbach or do a Q and A with Kate Christensen, but how many people would think to bake protein bars with Harbach, or ask Christensen for her playlist?
Where the mainstream zigs, bloggers zag. Where dead-tree people are stuck with the demands of the form –500 words with a thumbs-up or thumbs-down at the end, with attention paid to the big releases from the big houses – bloggers are limited by nothing but their own imagination.
Bloggers can be passionate where their print peers had to be objective. They could be silly, enthusiasts, cheerleaders who’d shout the good news from the mountaintop when they found a book they loved or axe men who’d gleefully eviscerate something they couldn’t stand…and it’s been a pleasure to watch that passion make its way to the mainstream, as the Venn diagrams’s circles continue to overlap to the point where they’ve almost melted into nonexistence, where writers who got their start on blogs now review for NPR, and mainstream critics like the Washington Post's Ron Charles do video reviews draped in breakfast meat.
So: advice.
I would encourage you to be as transparent as possible, to remember that some of those old dead-tree rules about conflict of interest and full disclosure where in place for a reason – to ensure that the reader was getting a review untainted by money or personal loyalties, or rivalries. If your blog or Twitter feed has a moneymaking component that’s not as obvious as an ad or a tip cup at the bottom of the page, spell it out, as clearly and visibly and as often as possible.
Know the rules: the FTC says that bloggers or online endorsers must disclose the material connections they share with the seller of the product or service. Sticking an #ad or #promo hashtag at the end of a tweet isn’t sexy…but, if you’ve been paid to praise the book, it’s the law.
Speak in your own voice, with the courage of your convictions, about the books and authors and topics you love, no matter who tells you that you shouldn’t love them.
Dance like no one’s watching. Sing like no one can hear. Tweet like your mother’s not online.
Be brave, be smart, be creative, be kind, and, above all, be yourself…and I promise, the readers will find you.
May 14, 2012
First things first: it’s “Bachelorette” time!If you’ve fo...
First things first: it’s “Bachelorette” time!
If you’ve followed my live tweets of the show, I wanted to tell you that I’m moving my critique over to Entertainment Weekly’s live-blog site, where I will make new friends and not to blow up your timeline (although I will continue to tweet the occasional observation…).
Watch as a few dozen improbably handsome dudes with made-up sounding names and jobs profess that they’ve found a magical connection! Marvel as sweet blond Emily searches for true love, or at least a gig on “Dancing with the Stars!” Drink every time one of the suitors says “journey,” “fairy tale” or accuses another guy of “not being there for Emily!"
Will our girl find true love?
Will Bentley show up to ruin the fun?
Will we ever find out what a “luxury brand consultant” actually does to earn a paycheck?
I have no idea! But I hope you’ll join me tonight to find out.
Then, on Wednesday night, I’m going to be at the Free Library of Philadelphia, talking to Buzz Bissinger about his new memoir, Father’s Day.
Every once in a while, you read a book that’s so wrenching, so gorgeously written that you know that it will stay with you long after you turn the last page.
FATHER’S DAY is one of those.
On an August day in 1983, Bissinger, a former Philadelphia Inquirer reporter, author of A PRAYER FOR THE CITY and FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS, rushed to the hospital where his wife, who'd been on bed rest for two months, had just given birth to premature twins, born just three minutes apart.
Gerry, the oldest, was premature but fine, and is now a fourth-grade teacher with a degree from Penn, working toward a PhD.
Zach, oxygen-deprived and brain-damaged, is not fine.
“He will never drive a car, or kiss a girl, or live by himself,” Bissinger writes, with characteristic candor. While Gerry studies for his degree, Zach bags groceries. He is, in short, not the kid Bissinger, himself a hard-charging, success-oriented Ivy League graduate, signed up for…and he’s ashamed of his own shame. “The promise of a new Brooks Brothers wardrobe is just an illusion,” Bissinger writes, of a post-Christmas shopping trip. “What I experienced with my father I will not experience as a father with my son. He is not a hedge fund trader. I should have known that by now. I will never know that by now. I can’t.”
In telling the story of his son’s life, and the two-week road trip they took together, pinballing across America to revisit the places they’d lived, Bissinger turns his reportorial gaze on himself – his ambition and disappointments, his hopes and insecurities.
Nothing is sugar-coated. There are no platitudes about God never giving you more than you can handle, no suggestion that Zach was a kind of ennobling care package sent to teach his driven dad a lesson, to grant him the gift of perspective.
But, along the way, as Buzz loses his camera and his temper, as he clings to his son on amusement-park bungee cords, confesses that the New York Times best-seller list sends him into a day-long sulk, and takes stock of his own life, and how he defines success, that is what happens.
FATHER’s DAY is a searingly honest account about what it’s like to be the parent of a special-needs child, a story that doesn’t gloss over the disappointments – however petty – that go along with knowing that the trajectory of achievement you’d mapped out and hoped for is going to end not with a college degree and a shiny future but a job in a grocery store where Zach learns, with the help of a job coach, that eggs need to be bagged separately.
If you’ve seen Buzz fulminating on Twitter or on TV, or if you know him as the chronicler of athletes and politicians, this book might surprise you. The writing is spare and elegant, what you’d expect from a master craftsman who wrote FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS and A PRAYER FOR THE CITY. Here’s Zach at an amusement park, riding the Teacups: “It is a kids’ ride, far too demeaning for crusty souls of the Boss and Mr. Freeze. They would never be caught dead here, too much to live down. But Zach doesn’t care. I can hear the gentle whir as the red and yellow teacups undulate up and down. A few screams scatter in the distance like a faraway car alarm. Zach’s arms are spread out behind him. His eyes are closed, his head bent back slightly. The warm air encircles him.”
Beyond that elegant prose, it’s the heart of the story, the tangled strands of self-pity and love, frustration and respect, that make FATHER’S DAY such a heartbreaking revelation of a read.
On Wednesday night at 7:30, I’m going to introduce Buzz. He'll read from the book, and he and I will have a conversation about FATHER’S DAY before turning it over to the audience.
Because I know that people who like the stories I tell will like this one – a lot -- I’m bringing 50 copies of my short-story collection with me. The first fifty people to buy a copy of FATHER’S DAY will get a signed copy of THE GUY NOT TAKEN for free.
I hope you’ll join me there.
If you’ve followed my live tweets of the show, I wanted to tell you that I’m moving my critique over to Entertainment Weekly’s live-blog site, where I will make new friends and not to blow up your timeline (although I will continue to tweet the occasional observation…).
Watch as a few dozen improbably handsome dudes with made-up sounding names and jobs profess that they’ve found a magical connection! Marvel as sweet blond Emily searches for true love, or at least a gig on “Dancing with the Stars!” Drink every time one of the suitors says “journey,” “fairy tale” or accuses another guy of “not being there for Emily!"
Will our girl find true love?
Will Bentley show up to ruin the fun?
Will we ever find out what a “luxury brand consultant” actually does to earn a paycheck?
I have no idea! But I hope you’ll join me tonight to find out.
Then, on Wednesday night, I’m going to be at the Free Library of Philadelphia, talking to Buzz Bissinger about his new memoir, Father’s Day.
Every once in a while, you read a book that’s so wrenching, so gorgeously written that you know that it will stay with you long after you turn the last page.
FATHER’S DAY is one of those.
On an August day in 1983, Bissinger, a former Philadelphia Inquirer reporter, author of A PRAYER FOR THE CITY and FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS, rushed to the hospital where his wife, who'd been on bed rest for two months, had just given birth to premature twins, born just three minutes apart.
Gerry, the oldest, was premature but fine, and is now a fourth-grade teacher with a degree from Penn, working toward a PhD.
Zach, oxygen-deprived and brain-damaged, is not fine.
“He will never drive a car, or kiss a girl, or live by himself,” Bissinger writes, with characteristic candor. While Gerry studies for his degree, Zach bags groceries. He is, in short, not the kid Bissinger, himself a hard-charging, success-oriented Ivy League graduate, signed up for…and he’s ashamed of his own shame. “The promise of a new Brooks Brothers wardrobe is just an illusion,” Bissinger writes, of a post-Christmas shopping trip. “What I experienced with my father I will not experience as a father with my son. He is not a hedge fund trader. I should have known that by now. I will never know that by now. I can’t.”
In telling the story of his son’s life, and the two-week road trip they took together, pinballing across America to revisit the places they’d lived, Bissinger turns his reportorial gaze on himself – his ambition and disappointments, his hopes and insecurities.
Nothing is sugar-coated. There are no platitudes about God never giving you more than you can handle, no suggestion that Zach was a kind of ennobling care package sent to teach his driven dad a lesson, to grant him the gift of perspective.
But, along the way, as Buzz loses his camera and his temper, as he clings to his son on amusement-park bungee cords, confesses that the New York Times best-seller list sends him into a day-long sulk, and takes stock of his own life, and how he defines success, that is what happens.
FATHER’s DAY is a searingly honest account about what it’s like to be the parent of a special-needs child, a story that doesn’t gloss over the disappointments – however petty – that go along with knowing that the trajectory of achievement you’d mapped out and hoped for is going to end not with a college degree and a shiny future but a job in a grocery store where Zach learns, with the help of a job coach, that eggs need to be bagged separately.
If you’ve seen Buzz fulminating on Twitter or on TV, or if you know him as the chronicler of athletes and politicians, this book might surprise you. The writing is spare and elegant, what you’d expect from a master craftsman who wrote FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS and A PRAYER FOR THE CITY. Here’s Zach at an amusement park, riding the Teacups: “It is a kids’ ride, far too demeaning for crusty souls of the Boss and Mr. Freeze. They would never be caught dead here, too much to live down. But Zach doesn’t care. I can hear the gentle whir as the red and yellow teacups undulate up and down. A few screams scatter in the distance like a faraway car alarm. Zach’s arms are spread out behind him. His eyes are closed, his head bent back slightly. The warm air encircles him.”
Beyond that elegant prose, it’s the heart of the story, the tangled strands of self-pity and love, frustration and respect, that make FATHER’S DAY such a heartbreaking revelation of a read.
On Wednesday night at 7:30, I’m going to introduce Buzz. He'll read from the book, and he and I will have a conversation about FATHER’S DAY before turning it over to the audience.
Because I know that people who like the stories I tell will like this one – a lot -- I’m bringing 50 copies of my short-story collection with me. The first fifty people to buy a copy of FATHER’S DAY will get a signed copy of THE GUY NOT TAKEN for free.
I hope you’ll join me there.
May 2, 2012
Oh, happy day! "The Bachelorette" premiere is still a lit...
Oh, happy day! "The Bachelorette" premiere is still a little ways off (May 14!), but ABC has "released" the men who will be vying for Emily's hand and heart (I see the word 'release' and picture the men milling around in a cattle holding pen while producers watch over them, with whips and cattle prods).
I'll be live-blogging the fun for the good folks at Entertainment Weekly, but let's warm up with a look at the contenders.
First impressions: the producers have presented us with a delectable assortment of the good, the bad, and the intriguingly coiffed, a fine crop of guys who want to find true love, or at least the guarantee of being on a few tabloid covers and maybe – just maybe – “Dancing with the Stars.” There’s a heavy emphasis on the International Male (hey, who else is old enough to remember that catalogue?) – and guys with jobs we’ve never heard of. (Hello, Brazilian grain merchant!)
Bonus points for whoever's running the show for not bothering/offering to proofread any of the bachelors’ responses. If the eyes are the windows to the soul, then bad grammar, iffy spelling, and odd capitalization are a window into…something else.
So who’ve we got?
Arie is a race-car driver. Hey, just like poor Emily’s late fiancée, and father of her child! Oh, producers, you wonderful, lovable sadists.
Alejandro is a mushroom farmer from Medellin. First reaction: sure he is. Second reaction: I’d keep him around for a while, just because I enjoy saying “mushroom farmer from Medellin.”
Here’s Michael. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: never date a guy you’re going to have to fight for the flat-iron.
Kyle’s favorite movies are “Zoolander,” “Point Break” and “The Notebook.” Translation: I’m funny, I’m hip, and if we start dating, our schedules will sync!
The most outrageous thing Jean-Paul has ever done is “quitting my job, selling everything I own, and jumping on a plane to travel the world for six months – all within three weeks.” Hey, rambling boy, you want to know what’s impetuous for a single mom? Ordering extra pepperoni at Chuck E. Cheese.
Charlie is cute, seems down to earth, and has an English bulldog. I’d declare him the winner right now, except he was dumb enough to take the bait and give an honest answer about his biggest fear: “RATS!!!” Prediction: Charlie and Emily’s first date will be a ride-along with a local exterminator. Note to future contestants: if producers ask you your biggest fear, the answer is "naps" and "hot-stone massages." You're welcome.
Chris is twenty-five. Does he consider himself a romantic? Indeed he does! “I’m always trying to find the net best way to romanticize a woman.” Hubba-whah?
Here’s Kalon. He is a luxury brand consultant. Both his name and his job sound made up. My guess? His name is Steve. He pumps gas.
I respect Randy’s fashion choice, even though I dozed off briefly while reading his answers.
Ryan’s favorite artist is a basketball player. “I believe athleticism is the “Art” of movement. Michael Jordan was an incredible Artist.” Somewhere, Ryan’s English and art teachers are huddled in small balls of shame, weeping. Or should that be Weeping?
Of course, we have Lerone, the obligatory Man of Color. He seems nice and down to earth, but, given the history of interracial couples on this show, I’m dubious about his chances.
Then there's Tony. He ripped his pants trying to hop a fence in Vegas. He, and bulldog Charlie, are at the top of my list...
along with the guy whose forehead's so enormous I'm thinking about taking out ad space for my new book.
I'll be live-blogging the fun for the good folks at Entertainment Weekly, but let's warm up with a look at the contenders.
First impressions: the producers have presented us with a delectable assortment of the good, the bad, and the intriguingly coiffed, a fine crop of guys who want to find true love, or at least the guarantee of being on a few tabloid covers and maybe – just maybe – “Dancing with the Stars.” There’s a heavy emphasis on the International Male (hey, who else is old enough to remember that catalogue?) – and guys with jobs we’ve never heard of. (Hello, Brazilian grain merchant!)
Bonus points for whoever's running the show for not bothering/offering to proofread any of the bachelors’ responses. If the eyes are the windows to the soul, then bad grammar, iffy spelling, and odd capitalization are a window into…something else.
So who’ve we got?
Arie is a race-car driver. Hey, just like poor Emily’s late fiancée, and father of her child! Oh, producers, you wonderful, lovable sadists.
Alejandro is a mushroom farmer from Medellin. First reaction: sure he is. Second reaction: I’d keep him around for a while, just because I enjoy saying “mushroom farmer from Medellin.”
Here’s Michael. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: never date a guy you’re going to have to fight for the flat-iron.
Kyle’s favorite movies are “Zoolander,” “Point Break” and “The Notebook.” Translation: I’m funny, I’m hip, and if we start dating, our schedules will sync!
The most outrageous thing Jean-Paul has ever done is “quitting my job, selling everything I own, and jumping on a plane to travel the world for six months – all within three weeks.” Hey, rambling boy, you want to know what’s impetuous for a single mom? Ordering extra pepperoni at Chuck E. Cheese.
Charlie is cute, seems down to earth, and has an English bulldog. I’d declare him the winner right now, except he was dumb enough to take the bait and give an honest answer about his biggest fear: “RATS!!!” Prediction: Charlie and Emily’s first date will be a ride-along with a local exterminator. Note to future contestants: if producers ask you your biggest fear, the answer is "naps" and "hot-stone massages." You're welcome.
Chris is twenty-five. Does he consider himself a romantic? Indeed he does! “I’m always trying to find the net best way to romanticize a woman.” Hubba-whah?
Here’s Kalon. He is a luxury brand consultant. Both his name and his job sound made up. My guess? His name is Steve. He pumps gas.
I respect Randy’s fashion choice, even though I dozed off briefly while reading his answers.
Ryan’s favorite artist is a basketball player. “I believe athleticism is the “Art” of movement. Michael Jordan was an incredible Artist.” Somewhere, Ryan’s English and art teachers are huddled in small balls of shame, weeping. Or should that be Weeping?
Of course, we have Lerone, the obligatory Man of Color. He seems nice and down to earth, but, given the history of interracial couples on this show, I’m dubious about his chances.
Then there's Tony. He ripped his pants trying to hop a fence in Vegas. He, and bulldog Charlie, are at the top of my list...
along with the guy whose forehead's so enormous I'm thinking about taking out ad space for my new book.
April 20, 2012
I turned in the final draft of THE NEXT BEST THING on Wed...
I turned in the final draft of THE NEXT BEST THING on Wednesday, and planned a girlie "treat yo'self" day on Thursday -- a trip to New York, lunch with my editor, shopping for some pretty new dresses for my spring tour dates, and Ricki Lake's reading on the Upper East Side.
So there I was, happily ensconced in the quiet car (aka "heaven" to moms of small children), clicking through my Twitter feed, when I came across an interview with Lena Dunham, creator of the film "Tiny Furniture," and the new HBO show "Girls."
The interview was all about Dunham’s reading habits. In it, she in which she praised the movie "Clueless" and the adventures of Eloise, admitted to never having finished THE GREAT GATSBY…and, sigh, took a shot at chick lit.
Asked "Have you ever read a book about girls or women that made you angry or disappointed or just extremely annoyed?" (a looking-for-trouble question if I've ever heard one), Dunham replied, "I don’t have a taste for airport chick-lit, even in a guilty-pleasure way. Any book that is motored by the search for a husband and/or a good pair of heels makes me want to move to the outback. If there is a cartoon woman’s torso on the front or a stroller with a diamond on it, I just can’t."
Cue my sigh.
Here’s the thing: those books Dunham is railing against? They're pretty hard, if not impossible, to find. They’re not for sale in airports, they’re not available in bookstores; they’re not around any more now they were last summer, when Brooklynite-of-the-moment Thessaly La Salle bitched about "mind-numbing titles boast(ing) pink covers with stick figure women swinging purses and walking little dogs; in The Paris Review.
You can read all about it in whatever gloating “Chick Lit: She is Dead! And We're All Pissing On Her Grave!” story’s been published in the ten minutes since I started writing this blog post. Start with this one, or this one here!
Here is what happened: back in the day, Bridget Jones and her sisters were a huge success. Publishers, like the let's-make-some-money business-runners that they are, saw those books selling and began demanding more, more, more! More funny stories of single girls fretting over their hips! More tales of twentysomethings with meddling moms and gay BFFs trying to make it in the big city!
New imprints were born. Shelves overflowed with tomes with pink covers decorated with handbags and high heels. Business was booming. For a while, it felt like any young woman with a laptop and a bad breakup had a book deal.
Then, the marketplace got saturated with those single-in-the-city stories, some of which were fantastic, some of which were not great. Readers demonstrated that they could discern between the good and the copycats. Publishers pulled back. The strong survived. Candace Bushnell, Jane Green, Emily Giffin, along with newer voices like Sarah Pekkanen and Amy Hatvany and Liza Palmer and Caprice Crane, continue to have their work printed. Meanwhile, publishers started screaming for more sparkly vampires and dystopian YA, because that’s what’s selling right now.
So those shoes ‘n’ husband-hunting books Dunham’s railing against? They are a straw (wo)man.
Maybe Dunham took a glance at the cover of Shopaholic book, or, eek, the circa-2002 cover of IN HER SHOES, thought, “Ugh,” and then, when the Times reporter asked her “what books don’t you read,” instead of demurring with a ladylike (and infinitely kinder), “I’d rather talk about the books I DO like,” she went after the tired target of chick lit – specifically, a brand of chick lit that isn’t even around to bug her any more.
When I tweeted my disappointment with what Dunham had to say, a few ladies (including some magazine critics) tweeted back with the argument familiar to anyone who followed the hoo-hah last spring when Jennifer Egan used the occasion of her Pulitzer win to….bash chick-lit writers (is anyone sensing a theme here?)
People are allowed to not like things! Just having a vagina does not mean cheering for anything another vagina-haver does! That way lies madness, and votes for Sarah Palin, and “likes” on Katie Roiphe’s Facebook page! (I am assuming that Katie Roiphe has a Facebook page).
I agree. Of course Dunham’s entitled to her opinion. Of course we’re all allowed to not like things. Of course being female does not involve supporting every single thing that any other woman does.
But. But. But but but.
We know that it’s harder for women to get their books published and reviewed. We know it’s harder for them to get their shows on the air, their voices in the op-ed sections, their work in the pages of important magazines.
No matter how much we wish it were otherwise, in terms of prestige, and prizes, and who gets on the shelves and on the air and reviewed in the New York Times, it is – still -- a man’s world.
Given all of that – given the struggles that women writers face to get published, to get watched, to be heard – isn’t it better for the ladies who've made it to celebrate the women they can support, instead of slamming those they do not?
I’m not saying critics need to go easy on female writers or show-runners in the name of sisterhood. There is such a thing as the soft bigotry of low expectations. I don't want female critics to hold back because they happen to share the same chromosomes as the author/comedian/show-runner. That’s not helping anyone.
But for me, personally, there’s a third path, one that involves neither handing out meaningless blandishments for all things female nor cheerily chucking women whose work I don’t like under the bus, and it is this: saying nothing.
Years ago, Amy Bloom, a writer I adore (seriously, if you haven’t read A BLIND MAN CAN SEE HOW MUCH I LOVE YOU, go treat yourself right this minute), did an interview in which she said she was no longer writing negative reviews. If she was given a book she didn’t like, she’d just say, “Thanks, but no thanks. Find someone else.” Being a writer, putting her work out into the world, she knew how much a bad review could sting, and decided she'd rather not be the one causing another writer pain.
That’s kind of where I am right now. Get me alone, give me some wine (or, better yet, come to one of my readings this spring), pull me into a corner and I’ll gladly tell you what I really think about whatever you want to discuss. But in print? In public? If I don’t have anything nice to say about another woman’s work, I’m not saying anything at all.
Lena Dunham is only twenty-five. Nobody was interviewing me when I was that young, and I shudder to think what might have come out of my mouth if anyone had.
Maybe by the time Dunham's my age, and maybe seen her work dismissed as being too girlie or too frivolous for daring to deal with things like dating and roommates and sex and clothes, she’ll think twice before trashing other ladies’ work in public.
Maybe she’ll learn not to judge books by their covers…because some of those books with shoes and purses, arrayed so prettily on the airport bookstore tables, were not as silly or frivolous as they looked (seriously, even Joyce Carol Oates has had her paperbacks repackaged with bridesmaids’ dresses and flowers on the cover).
Maybe the New York Times, which snarkily dismissed Jodi Kantor’s book on the Obamas’ marriage as “chick non-fiction,” where a Q and A with Whitney Cummings began with the question “people say you slept your way to the top. So, did you?” and which reviews many more men than women, will quit asking questions that seem designed to provoke girl-on-girl violence.
Maybe it’ll all get better…and we can go back to talking about “The Bachelorette” again.
A girl -- a woman -- can dream.
April 15, 2012
Years ago, I was invited back to Princeton to give a read...
Years ago, I was invited back to Princeton to give a reading at the creative writing department. (Yes, for those who don’t know, I graduated from Princeton, which I imagine is a subject of great shame among its stellar writing facility. I like to imagine Joyce Carol Oates and Toni Morrison and John McPhee standing around, leafing dubiously through a copy of GOOD IN BED, saying, “Jennifer Weiner?....nope, don’t remember her at all!")
So I came, I read, I fielded questions, and then I went out to dinner at a beautiful restaurant near campus along with other current members of the creative-writing staff, whose numbers currently include Jeffrey Eugenides.
I love Jeffrey Eugenides…especially MIDDLESEX. I thought it was everything a novel should be – big, and sprawling and smart and engaging, with an immediately relatable hero/ine, a book that took on family and romance history and love and did it all in a way that made you say, “No, no, you go ahead, I’m just going to read a few more pages.
I also get extremely shy and tongue-tied around big-deal literary authors I respect. This comes in part from my personality, in part from being told for ten years that I’m not a real writer and I don’t write real books, just entertaining girlie fluff (and if you think it’s easy to write “just” entertaining girlie fluff, I urge you to give it a try. It’s actually harder than you’d think.
So there we were, a party of ten or so, sharing a delicious post-reading feast. Jeffrey Eugenides was seated a few spots down the table. I had to talk to him. I had to. There was no way I was going back to Philadelphia without telling this man how much his book had meant to me. But I couldn’t work up the courage to say anything besides “please pass the salt.”
Wine, I decided, would help.
I had a glass. Then another. Then a third, putting me two and a half glasses over my limit (I’m not much of a drinker). Finally, I touched his forearm and said (or possibly slurred) “I loooooved MIDDLESEX.”
He smiled politely. “Thank you.”
I bared my purplish-stained teeth at him in a grin that was meant to be friendly but probably looked feral.
“I read it right after it came out. Right after my first daughter was born.”
This factoid was greeted with another polite smile. Please, said the look on his face, please let the poet start talking to me again. But I was undeterred. (Also, possibly, drunk).
“And, you know, even though I’d had amnio, and I knew she was a girl, I made the doctor look extra-close to be sure.” (MIDDLESEX readers will remember that much of the book’s plot hinges on an aged pediatrician’s failure to properly recognize male genitalia when presented with it. “Because,” I concluded triumphantly, in a whisper that could probably be heard in West Windsor, “nobody wants to be the mom who missed the penis!”
At that point, Jeffrey Eugenides was looking at me with an expression on his face that could only be characterized as unmitigated horror, with a soupçon of disgust. I took another gulp from my wineglass.
“Oh, c’mon,” I said. “I can’t be the only mom who’s ever done that!”
Yes, said the look on Jeffrey Eugenides’ face. Yes, you can.
So there you have it: my evening with Jeffrey Eugenides. Which, if I’m remembering right, ended with a cordial conversation about Princeton’s best cupcake shop.
And I’ll be back in Princeton, at the Public Library, this summer when THE NEXT BEST THING is released, and there may – or may not – be talk of penises. Stay tuned for tour dates...
