World's Worst Novelist

Ah…it feels good to laugh out loud on a Friday afternoon (even if the link is from Sunday). And yes, it's a real book.

Comments

[Billy Oblivion]

Is this for real? I mean does that book really exist in that form?

[Kevin Carson]

So this edges out "Bridges of Madison County"?

[Tuning Spork]

I actually wrote something like that--a play--when I was in high school. The characters were just an excuse for me to debate myself on differant issues of the day. I had a very thin plot-line about planning for a weekend "up the lake" (that was the title). Yeah, my characters where all based on me and had no personality either.

[Charles]

That article was painfully delicious.

[Kevin Carson]

It just occurred to me...

Wooden characters who don't talk like human beings, in a novel about "ideas"--

All he's have to do is throw in a politically pirate, or a face-slapping female lead who's into cigarette holders, and give somebody an eighty-page speech on tax policy, and it might develop a cult following. This guy might be the greatest creative genius of human history, and we didn't even know it!

Somebody call Leonard Peikoff!

[Steve]

The guys a professor at my dear, departed mother's alma mater. My girlfriends niece is a frshman there. I should be surprised....but I'm not.

[Mark Draughn]

"...the worst novel ever published in the English language."

"Silence."

"'My review will reach 2 million people,' I said."

"'Okay,' he said."

What? And give up show business?

[Lefty]

"Me: As you know, I think Great American Parade is a wretchedly terrible product that shames the American publishing industry. Is it available in stores?

Burrows: People can buy it directly from me. I live in Whitewater, Wisconsin. I'm in the phone book. I appreciate this opportunity."

As they say in showbiz, no such thing as bad pub.

[Drakes]

Does anyone else feel like buying this book? I do.

[md]

Gene Weingarten gets props because he's hilarious. He's a humor writer (that is for the humor-impaired). The above is equivalent to the hundreds of outraged letters Weingarten received when he declared Battle Mountain, Nevada the Armpit of America. Talk about your easy targets!

[tim]

This is a lot of attention (and abuse) they're giving this poor schmuck for a vanity publication. From the description it doesn't even sound as bad as So Help Me Elmer!, a self-published bildungsroman by the head of a karate school in my hometown. I don't see how it's possible that any vanity book could "shame the American publishing industry." For that matter, what does it say of the American journalism industry that we give Gene Weingarten props for knocking such an easy target?

[Leigh Hanlon]

Gene Weingarten isn't hilarious here; he's a bully. The reason why Robert Burrows consented to the interview was that he assumed, like just about anybody else would have, that the worst he'd get from The Washington Post would be good-natured ribbing, not public humiliation.

The only thing really funny is a columnist who can't keep his verb tenses straight somehow feeling qualified to have "a professional opinion" on the writing craft.