SOUR GRAPES DEPARTMENT

This “MY READING LIFE” column appeared in the Record Review in April, 2004

Works mentioned in this piece; P.S. I Love You, Devil Wears Prada,
Nanny Diaries, Maneater, Winning, To Have and To Hold, DaVinci Code


SOUR GRAPES DEPARTMENT


Don’t let anybody tell you writers aren’t seethingly competitive and envious of their colleagues’ success. Behind that thin wince of congratulation are clenched teeth. It’s tough enough to be gracious about a contemporary’s critical success, but it is a whole lot easier to be graceful about that than it is to hear about some kid’s huge advance.

The 22-year-old daughter of Bertie Ahern, the Irish Prime Minister, just got a one million dollar advance from a US publisher for her novel, “P.S., I Love You”, plus $100,000 for a US film deal. The novel, written in longhand in three months, got rotten reviews in Ireland. Oh well.

So what if “The Devil Wears Prada” gets a lousy review in the New York “Times” Book Review? “Devil” is now high on the NYT bestseller list with (as of May, 2004, and climbing) 323,000 copies in paperback and 478,000 in hardcover, and Plum Sykes, the author, is crying all the way to the bank.

The young co-authors of “The Nanny Diaries”, (St. Martin’s, 2003) recently got a $3 million advance from Random House for follow-up books that are yet to be produced. It didn’t hurt that “Nanny” sold two million copies since publication, but still… Gigi Levangie Grazer’s “Maneater”, (Simon&Schuster, 2003) had a movie option for more than $1 million six months before the book was ever even published. Jack Welch, the former GE executive, just sold world rights for $4 million to Harper Collins for a business how-to book called “Winning”.

Aside from being unbecomingly envious, how do these enormous stakes affect me as a reader? I ought not to be affected, directly. I can either read the book or ignore it. But when a publisher, usually one unit of a conglomerate, forks out huge advances, it means it somehow has to make the money back. This means promotion and media (which the conglomerate also owns) hype. More and more, it means the bottom line is going to decide what gets published and what doesn’t. This makes it a whole lot harder for what we think of as literature to edge into print.
Even if an insultingly tiny advance is secured for a literary work, the publisher usually won’t spend a cent on publicity or on such frills as author tours, and the book, even if it is critically well-received, lives a short little life and then sinks like a rock.

Look at this! A full-page, back-of-the-Arts section ad in a recent New York Times. This ad, in bright pink, announces an ‘irresistible” new novel, “To Have and To Hold” (Broadway, 2004), by Jane Green. It reminds us that Green has sold more than a million copies or her previous novels. Interested? Here is the blurb: “Five years ago Alice gave her hand in marriage to a man who can’t keep his hands to himself. And by now, the man of her dreams has turned into a full-on cheating nightmare. But true happiness is about to find her in ways she never dreamed of.” The jacket illustration shows a man embracing a svelte woman with one of his arms extended behind her and the hand at the end of that arm squarely on the butt of another svelte woman standing nearby.

Four other paperbacks by Green are shown in the ad and here is a really amazing thing: on no cover illustration is there a head. Each one shows legs –- long legs, very long female legs – and one shows a nude male torso, but nobody has a head or a face. Why is this? Could it be that faces might make the bodies less fantastic?

I don’t know what this ad cost or who paid for it: Broadway Books, Green’s publisher, or maybe Book-of-the-Month-Club, or possibly The Doubleday Book Club, or perhaps Random House who issued an Audio CD version of “To Have and To Hold”. In any case, we know it cost plenty. Grrrrrrrrrr.

You’ve probably read Dan Brown’s “DaVinci Code” (Doubleday, 2002), just about everybody has. Aside from the inaccurate theology and history and stupid ending, the writing is terrible. I confess to finishing the book but then I threw it at the wall. I don’t even want to think about the amount of money this book has made. Spinoffs have become a regular industry.

Sour grapes? You bet! A heaping dishful of big, fat, juicy sour grapes!



Elinore Standard is the co-editor, along with Laura Furman of “Bookworms: Great Writers and Readers Celebrate Reading” (Carroll&Graf,1997)