David Thayer

Wellington Leg: Exclusive to the Druidical & Literary: Marcel ‘Boom-Boom’ Proust reporting: Life has taken a new twist for the Earl; on the eve of establishing an unofficial world record for consecutive days in a chimney ( 27) reports are circulating that his memoir Drugs Sex Profiteroles contains fabrications. The yet to be published manuscript is in the possession of Wilfredo Tagesblatt, a shadowy figure thought to be involved in the illegal grouse hunting scandal that rocked the nation last fall. Certain sections of the manuscript have been delivered to these offices wrapped in the distinctive pink tissue paper so familiar at local crime scenes.

Consider this excerpt: when I saw her across the street I took my eyes off the road, although what they were doing on the road is beyond me, when all of a sudden I rear-ended Constable, the cop, not the painter, really smacking the fat ass slob with my Mini. Constable called for Backup, so I backed up striking the twelve cylinder Jag owned by Mrs. Constable, interrupting what I took to be a Constable family meeting about her dog Bass, up for grabs in a property settlement battle. I oughta know: I kidnapped Bass and fed him store bought dog food.

We’ve learned that Mrs. Constable owns neither a twelve cylinder Jag nor a dog. A spokesman for the earl declined comment.

Publishing folk are creeping around in their pajamas being extra quiet today. In the middle of the James Frey all nighter someone realized that the music was too loud, that the party had migrated outside, the cops were coming, and worst of all, they woke up Oprah. The loudest bunch were bloggers and no one invited them in the first place; their three a.m. rendition of Uncle John’s Band left all the cats and kittens hugging Budweiser cans and wishing for the good old days when no one cared what they did.

Oprah is not mad! This headline is column inches higher than Jonathan Franzen’s forehead. Sure someone barfed in the sink, left the cake out in the rain, kicked a visiting professor in the shins. As Larry King asked the caller in Fort Lee to speak up, everyone held their breath. Only five percent of the story is fabricated. That’s good, right? Some might wonder if that means that every chapter in the book is five percent untrue or if that’s a floating mean derived from the aggregate of all the stories, some true, some as low as fifty percent accurate. Five percent. Whew. That leaves 950,00 little pieces, which is plenty.

Gay Talese observed that ‘writers must be held accountable.’ Non-fiction takes no liberty with the facts and should not.’ Say it brother.

Indentity is not for faint of heart. Since we all have one, we are stunned when those among us emerge with more than one. So it was on a blustery Monday in book land that we learn that JT Leroy is not a man, but an apparent amalgam of people, one to appear in public, one to write novels, yet more assigned to the collection of royalties, so many that these various component parts formed a corporation.

Buried in an early draft of his Advice to Writers, the Earl wrote: “All writers should form a Nevada corporation before putting pen to paper. Remember to buy your sister in law a pair of designer sunglasses. Nevada corporation. Sister in law. Sunglasses. Go get em tiger.”

Pundits have suggested that the Earl is not a real person but an imaginary one created by blogger Wilfredo Tagesblatt. “The Earl is sometimes pictured in public hugging Ian Rankin, yet Mr. Rankin cannot recall the incident.” On the other hand why would he? retorts Lars Kierkegaard publicist and Volvo mechanic. “Ian Rankin is a busy man.”

Mr. Tagesblatt is vacationing in rural Bohemia and could not be reached for comment.

The JT Leroy story is pushing the James Frey story the way the breeze pushes toy sailboats on what used to be golden pond. Frey’s revelations or rather The Smoking Gun’s tell a more twisted tale than even the bizarre JT Leroy mishmash that frankly confuses the hell out of me. Part of my confusion is predicated on my inability to devote brain time to solving puzzles unless they are life threatening or occurring in real time with people who drink Big Gulps by candlelight. Okay, I might do that.

Let’s skip JT Leroy and focus on James Frey. The stakes are higher in the non-fiction moment for the confessional inspirational memoir now tainted by fabrication, prevarication, ordination from Oprah, massive sums of money, but at the heart of it all is this: we want to believe redemption stories. We want those stories to be true. In the background is the commercial aspect; this stuff sells, this stuff gets the book on Oprah and lights the fuse for mega bestseller. According to TSG, Frey’s manuscript was shopped as a novel, but seventeen publishers said no. Why, if it’s the same story? What does that tell us about the marketplace? Ask any literary agent about selling fiction. They can’t or won’t or find it too difficult to sell fiction; the leap to memoir is one of those evil twin ideas that occur to people when the Con Ed bill exceeds their net worth or when, like Ophelia ‘neath the window, they spend their time peeking into Desolation Row.

Everyone who writes and tries to sell fiction understands in a visceral way how random the walk is for unknowns. Cheesy memoirs have been at the end of the class for some time, devouring one another in a race for more shock value, more drugs, more sex, more degradation. The water level is rising and the Good Ship Lolly Pop won’t be rescued this time by the USS Oprah. It’s not nice to fool with a force of nature.

Your correspondent is suffering from a case of identity theft. The once and future David Thayer is now capable of being in two places at once with varying degrees of enjoyment derived by the two of us. The real me is filling out endless forms at the bank under the scrutiny of raised eyebrows and notary stamps. The new me, the unrealized bon vivante, is stealing shit and going to Vegas. That pisses me off because I know I wouldn’t go to Vegas, but if I did, I would at least like to be there with my new credit card probably sporting some new duds a modern hairpiece wolfing down a Porterhouse secure in the knowledge that when the bill comes due for the party the original version of me will have to fill out more forms of inadequate protest in the lobby of the bank under raised eyebrows and notarized squalls of protestation.

Tod Goldberg has a word for this, a word I might borrow depending on how all of this turns out. Meanwhile if the person with my identity would like to make themselves useful how about taking over the blog for a while? Blogging might slow you down some while the geniuses at Pay Pal issue more credit in your name just in case you haven’t done enough damage. Pay Pal doesn’t report any of this for thirty days and thirty nights. That’s their policy. I think if Napoleon Bonaparte applied for a Pay Pal account and listed his address as heaven he would be approved in no time. Then he could go to Vegas. Let’s all go.

Ripped from Publishers Marketplace and confirmed by Kevin via email: His novel For the Dogs has been optioned for film. For the Dogs came out in the US in 2004 published by Simon & Schuster. It’s a very unusual crime novel with more than passing literary traits and a terrific climax. Go to Simon & Schuster and ask for a copy; no, go ahead, it’s okay. Or, go to a bookstore.

Kevin reports that his latest book is being sent to publishers in the UK. He has one other novel available on these shores, People Die. If you’re the lady in New Zealand who reads my blog, thanks for reading, but I don’t know what to tell you about locating Kevin’s books.

My review of For the Dogs is somewhere in the archives at Collected Miscellany. Kevin Holtsberry wrote a review of People Die in the summer of 2004. On a normal blog there would be squiggly lines indicating live links, but, this is not a normal blog, or even a paranormal one. Sarah Weinman, whose blog Confessions of an Idiosyncratic Mind, covers the crime fiction beat far better than your reporter, is the place to go for news like this. Link is on the right.

I’m working on a manuscript that my agent wants to read. That sounds ordinary enough but it’s actually unusual. I like my agent and he enjoys my company enough to laugh at my jokes, something of a litmus test given the fact we’re both invested in a process that resembles the Catholic Church and its official fuzzy position on sex and procreation, a process that has many rules, written and unwritten, whose tenets and precepts are often contradictory, whose outcome is unknown. Like the Church we want to see bouncing new offspring to swell the ranks down the road; the simple fact is that to produce a baby a man and a woman must have sex. They do not, however, have to enjoy it. The rhythm method of birth control dictates a largely intuitive and frequently incorrect evaluation of lunar cycles, hormonal surges, moments of opportunity and the confluence of many external forces. I owe my existence to the rhythm method.

In business we prefer to drain the mystery from the transactional process, to work toward objectives that logically flow from planning and execution. That’s why Bert, the literary agent, wants me to write stuff he can sell, or that he thinks might sell. It’s a negotiation of subtle and delicate hints, nods, winks; he doesn’t say ‘write this or don’t write that.’ Bert muses about what is selling. Chick lit? Vampire novels? Cozy mysteries? Who knows? I use the rhythm method to decide what to write about; if offspring, in this case a book deal is born, a series of happy accidents must take place.

Getting read: this is not as easy as it sounds. In our enterprise together Bert and I have gotten read by the wrong people, the right people in the wrong house, editors whose lists are full, assistant editors who live with fourteen roommates and can’t afford to be wrong. So we continue to probe the outer defenses of the publishing world with a mix of fiction and non-fiction. I noticed the other day that an editor who passed on my novel last year recently took a job with another house where, according to Publishers Marketplace, he is now building a list. Maybe our timing was off or maybe the book sucks. Logically, though, books that suck seem to thrive like weeds in an untended garden, but how trustworthy can my observations be in the fog of war?

My list of happy accidents stops there. I think Miss Snark would agree that if you don’t get read by the right person at the right time birth will not occur. Bert is marketing a proposal while I work on the next thing. If the rhythm method seems random I can take consolation in the fact that if Catholic parents can overcome guilt, eternal damnation and contradictory encyclicals to produce children, anything is possible. Even a book deal.

Dateline: Schloss Stuermunddrang, Geraldo Riviera reporting: Frustration over the direction of the Roman invasion has resulted in decrees being issued, to wit: Graf von Bismarck announced that Monterey has fallen under seige. The land between Big Sur to the south and Mendocino to the north will be ceded to Gaius Septimus Troianus, commander of the XV Gemina Legion and Roman forces in the Californias.

“California is a blue state,” noted spokesperson Skippy. “We don’t have the resources to defend all the territory out there. Hollywood and Santa Barbara remain under our control.”

Ann Coulter noted that Skippy is probably the victim of liberal media witchhunt: “He doesn’t need California, Oregon, or Washington. I hope Graf Otto kicks some liberal ass before this is over.”

Rumours persist that Her Most Catholic Majesty will send her armada if Wellington Leg falls to the Romans. Her trust in the Earl may be misplaced; long time residents still recall how he cowered in a barn when Ms. Coulter came to town. “He’s totally afraid of her,” noted Heather DeMedici, honor student and intern at the Literary & Druidical. “We’re all scared of her.”

With the Earl unable to locate an extension ladder, and skirmishers from the Valeria Victrix riding in advance of the baggage train, local residents believe it is only a matter of time. “I’m brushing up on my Latin,” said Vicar Pilsen Hausingbubble. “First it was the inverted yield curve, now this. Monetary policy alone is not going to beat back the Romans.”

Confronting a probable ban on facial hair, this is Geraldo Riviera reporting.

Reporters from the Literary& Druidical including Managing Editor Olivia Eathwindandfire were involved in a literary hoax, reports Geraldo Riviera of the Vox Tironum: “They submitted portions of Voltaire’s Miasma to several ueberagents as well as publishers…when the manuscript arrived at WL Premier Publishers, it was referred to the Earl. He stamped it ‘rejected with extreme prejudice’ the worst level of rejection in the publishing world.”

Spokesperson Urquhart Depew had this to say: “It is difficult to read when stuck inside a chimney…the Earl was watching Sportscenter when the manuscript arrived.”

Ms. Earthwindandfire remained skeptical: “Distractions are no excuse. I covered the Roman invasion story even though flaming arrows were whistling over my head. I believe the Earl is incapable of judging the literary merits of submitted work.”

Elsewhere DCI Borchardt’s high powered crime novel was openly mocked by bloodstock agents who read the pages. Borchardt, who vowed to investigate, reported his manuscript was misdelivered by the Earl’s Own Package Delivery Service ( EOPDS.) “I don’t how literary agent could be confused with bloodstock agent,” he huffed. “I detest the monopoly of ideas here in town.”

Geraldo Riviera reporting.

The Piltdown Exchange: Financial reporter Ethelred Brudergrimm reporting: “The action at the Piltdown Exchange is focused on the Literary Futures set to expire against a basket of Euro zone commodities; traders in the literary pit report a frenzy as the market opened sharply higher on rumours that the Earl of Watership Down has located an extension ladder and may be freed from his chimney as early as this afternoon. Said one trader, “without the Earl, this year in literature looks grim indeed.’ ”

In the Young Lions pit, traders are soft on Zadie Smith and Benjamin Kunkel: “We’re seeing a fair amount of asset stripping in the Young Lions ETF,” said floor specialist Walter Towne-Withoutpity. “Of course, the overhang of the Earl’s captivity influences the triple witching session as futures contracts expire this Friday. All eyes are on Wellington Leg.”

Olivia Earthwindandfire reports from Wellington Leg: “Efforts to free the Earl, and save literature, are hampered by the continuing reports that after a two week hiatus, elements of the Valeria Victrix legion are once again maneuvering closer to Borchardt’s Wall, the line of pink tissue that forms the town’s outer defences…if that line is breached, officials say, police are prepared to hurl copies of The Historian from the parapets. “It really hurts,” reported Constable Cosgrove. Cosgrove, of course, was struck by the vampire tome during the High Street frenzy prior to Christmas. Olivia Earthwindandfire reporting.