New York Pitch Conference Makes Writers Into Authors

The folks at Algonkian have asked me to say a few words once more about the New York Pitch Conference held quarterly in New York City at Ripley-Greer Studios. I attended the workshops not long ago and found it a challenging and worthwhile adventure that improved my novel 100%. I'm still working on it, yes, but I'm a lightyear ahead of where I would have been without it.

They use the pitch as a means of examining the novel and focusing on the major fictional elements. As Michael Neff says, "If they're not in the pitch, they're not in the novel." It's a great way of making you realize that market and story are meshed together in ways you never realized.

I highly recommend the New York Pitch Conference to anyone serious about writing a novel for the commercial market.

Deleted Amazon Reviews of "Emperor's Children" Found - So Pallette-Cleansing!

Happy days. I know, I know, it seems obsessive to continue to rant about the horror of the Claire Messud novel, but I found the old customer reviews which had been flushed from Amazon, and I could not be more thrilled! It seems Messud was not able to purge the web altogether. Therefore, without further ado, I will share a representative sample. And btw, I want to reemphasize that this particular novel garnered overwhelmingly lavish praise from every source imaginable connected to the mainstream publishing industry. Despite this fact, it was not even nominated for a single important book award (Pulitzer, National Book Critics Circle Award, National Book Award, Man Booker Prize, PEN/Faulkner). It is truly the poster child for all that now troubles American commercial fiction. Of the 154 reviews, the publisher's puppet-reviews read similar to this one by "Matt Spruce" ... i.e., rather like a blurb than an honest comment by a genuine human being:

As well as being decidedly-incisive, witty, and often deprecating, THE EMPEROR'S CHILDREN is genuine, providing a glimpse (though it's sometimes quite tinted) into the lives of the New York Upper Crust. Amazingly, nothing in this book is superficial; somehow, miraculously, Messud connects the reader with the characters, taking them off their soapboxes and proving that they are, indeed, real people. Along the way, Messud provides rich language full of sensory details that only highten the pallette-cleansing quality of this novel. It's funny, insightful, powerful, has beautiful language, and is ultimately moving, when its characters are faced with tragedy. It's simply amazing.

Simply amazing and pallette-cleansing ... Honest evaluations--mostly focusing on the crappy prose, pathetic characters, and juvenile plot--read like this:

• I actually found myself highlighting sentences in the book and reading them to my husband at night -- for a good laugh! I can't recall ever reading so many clunky, tortured, obtuse sentences in a published book ... Some of the sentences have comically misplaced modifiers, some of them have multiple clauses offset by semicolons within clauses offset by hyphens, some of them are just plain weird.
  


• The characters are trite, their situations are pedestrian, and the story could have been set in any large American city (except, perhaps, LA), in spite of it being hailed as a great portrait of contemporary life (mostly at the top) in NYC ... I guess the only thing that can be said of the book is that none of the characters is all that likable or even sympathetic, which is about as close to "real life" as this book comes.
  


• I don't mind reading about characters that are unsympathetic and dull -- if the story has a point. Unfortunately, this book has no story. The author adequately illustrates the nature of narcissism, vanity, and wanton conceit; but her theme runs around in circles (tediously!) and never goes anywhere. She dangles plot lines that never ripen, and allows all the characters to remain static, essentially unchanged by the events that unfold.
  


• I agree with other reviewers [at Amazon]. It appears the author likes very long sentences; many paragraphs are absolutely incomprehensible. Are we to be impressed with the overuse of commas and dependent clauses so that it often takes two or three readings to render a sentence understandable? If this is the new era of grown-up writing, I'll stick to my mysteries and nonfiction.
  


• If the characters were people in or around my real life, I'd find a way to move to another country and become some real "Emporer's Child." These self-indulgent, pseudo intellectuals make me talk back to the book with bile in my mouth. "Please! Grow up! Get a life," are just a few of the comments that ran through my mind as I read this book. I am disappointed that the book reviewer from NPR gave it rave reviews, leading me to buy it, and I am disappointed that Amazon keeps suggesting that I would like it.
  


• Without a doubt, a favorite of the NY intellgentsia, as it reinforces their view of the importance of the pointlessness of their social structure. Named the NYT "Best Book of the Year", we can merely conclude that the editors of the NYT Book Review are young, shallow and poorly read.
  


• It isn't often that I will not finish a book. I can probably count on one hand how many times its happened. I actually wanted to throw this book across the room because it was so bad. I cannot figure out why it was so hyped. If the author was trying to impress me with all the big words she could throw in, she failed.

Gawker Skewers The Yiddish Cops

I just had to repost this from gawker.com about Chabon's latest. This is entertaining, yes, and what is wrong with him?

"Michael Chabon's new book has been troubled with a bad case of being crap. We've been trying to keep an open mind about The Yiddish Policemen's Union, but he's not making it easy. For starters, it's written in a "hard-boiled, Yiddish-inflected patois." Also, the only thing we've heard about Michael since The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay won a Pulitzer in 2001 has been his personal child-bearer Ayelet Waldman's irrepressible oversharing about his sexual prowess. Now we learn that HarperCollins pulled it from their publication schedule at the last minute! "While long gestation periods and multiple drafts aren't unusual in the publishing industry, the time and effort expended on behalf of Mr. Chabon's vision are illustrations of the book's importance to HarperCollins," the reporter claims. Exactly. Just switch the word "aren't" with the word "are," and the words "the book's importance" with the words "the book's terribleness," and that sentence becomes almost true."

He tries real hard to get this cliche detective thing going in the hook and it just flounders in an embarrassing way ... and so forth. Still, some good stylistic cinema, but not as top quality as Kavalier and Klay.