The Literary World But With More Laughs "How I Became a Famous Novelist" by Steve Hely

I picked up this book having seen a plug at the end of the Kindle edition of the Pulitzer Prize winner "A Visit From the Good Squad" by Jennifer Egan. Described as a " blistering evisceration of culture and and literary fame, a roguish loser sets out to write the bestsellingest bestseller of all time... the horrifying tale of how Pete Tarslaw's "pile of garbage"... became the most talked about, blogged about, read, admired and reviled novel in America. It will change everything you think you know - about literature, appearance, truth, beauty, and those people who still care about books." 

I was sold at "bestsellingest".

Steve Hely is a comedy writer and has Letterman's Late Show, 30 Rock and The Office (US version) on his CV already. Thankfully I was not disappointed. This guy is funny and this book is for anyone who has ever stared in disbelief at shelves in a bookstore and wondered how many more times the same cover/plot/characters can be wheeled out. 

Hely's narrator and hero or anti-hero is Pete Tarslaw, a lazy, degenerate lay-about who is also smart and self-deprecating. I loved him immediately. His recollection of attending university was that "I could do whatever I wanted, which it turned out was not very much plus drinking". 

Pete's world is turned upside down when he received an invitation to the wedding of his ex-girlfriend. Driven by the familiar urge we all have to somehow defeat those who have broken our hearts, Pete decides to become a novelist. Other motivations include a general wish for riches and a writerly charisma powerful enough to seduce some college girls. 

Pete does his research in the local bookstore and lays out his rules of writing a bestseller. A highlight of this book for me, and one of the many moments that I cried with laughter was the fictional bestseller list at the end of chapter two. Here are a few samples of the titles on offer in Hely's world of bad books:

The Balthazaar Tablet by Tim Drew

The murder of a cardinal leads a Yale Professor and an underwear model to the Middle East, where they uncover clues to a conspiracy kept hidden by the Shriners.

A Whiff of Gingham and Pecorino by Jennifer Austin-Meyers

On a hilltop villa in Sicily, an American divorcee finds new love with a local cheesemaker involved in a blood feud.

Expense The Burberry by Eve Smoot

A young woman in Manhattan spends her days testing luxury goods and her nights partying and complaining.

Pete writes his novel in a prescription drug-fueled frenzy. The result is "The Tornado Ashes Club", a book that includes a murder, an innocent man accused, a road trip and flashbacks to the Great Depression, the Second World War and post-war Mediterranean and Peru, with a country singer thrown in for good luck.

The rest of the book is a delightful send-up of the publishing industry, book critics and the writer’s Mecca, Hollywood. Publishers are compared to frantic parents, desperately hurling toys at a the reader, a screaming toddler, praying that something stops the whining. Critics are derided as unspeakable beasts: “what monster chooses the job of telling people how bad different books are?” Film makers are different though, thinks Pete - “The literary con game is to write some bullshit and convince people it’s good. But the Hollywood game seemed to be to tell its customers “Here’s some bullshit. You’ll pay for it, and you’ll like it”.

Each chapter is opened by an extract from Pete’s book or one of the other delightful caricatures that inhabit Hely’s fictional literary world. It’s clear that Hely is a great writer to understand how to write so fantastically badly. The latter half of the book loses momentum after the “car crash” that is the ex’s wedding but the ending is brilliant and left me, a devoted book lover, with a glimmer of hope for the literary world. 

Having worked in publishing for twelve years, I often find myself sighing in frustration at the current state of the book world. This is a world where Katie Price outsells an entire Booker Prize list with one novel. And she didn’t even write it! Sure, everyone is reeling from the topple into digital but the move towards blind following of celebrity (no matter how irrelevant that celebrity might be) is something that makes me incredibly sad. 

This is one of the reasons why I think Steve Hely’s book is timely and important, as well as being a bloody good laugh. 

How I Became a Famous Novelist by Steve Hely is available from all good bookstore (although you may have to climb over a mountain of chick-lit to  get there) for £7.99 or for the bargain price of £1.99 on Amazon Kindle.