Stuart Appleton IS Rollo Hemphill

Stuart Appleton narrates the audiobook, which is available now from Amazon Audible and iTunes Store.

The Professor of Desire by Philip Roth

Boychik Lit Book Review - No. 34

Here’s my book review of The Professor of Desire by Philip Roth.

Philip Roth is best known for his classic boychik lit coming-of-age story, Portnoy’s Complaint. Remember boychik is Yiddish for a young man with more chutzpah than brains. And, all of Roth’s novels since then seem to be about self-centered males who are thinly disguised extensions of his own fragile ego.

The Professor of Desire is the first-person confession of David Kepesh, an English professor like Roth himself, who obsesses, not about finding love so much as gratifying his urges without feeling too guilty.

We meet him as overprotected young man working in his family’s business. When he wins a scholarship to attend university in London, he has his first adult relationships with a pair of Swedish girls, Elisabeth and Birgitta. Ideal as the situation might seem for a man of his age and lusts, he’s miserable. Elisabeth moves out because he’s inconsiderate. Birgitta stays and is more than willing to please, but her eagerness turns him off.

Flash forward, and David falls for gorgeous supermodel Helen, who led a shadowy past life in Southeast Asia. Ignoring the fact that she must have left her heart there, he worships her, and they marry. One day, she leaves him abruptly for Singapore to take up with her former lover. And not so much because of anything David did or didn’t do, but because she simply doesn’t care enough about him.

Now entering his forties, David takes up with Claire, a sweet shiksa from New England, a caring, sensible woman, and the relationship is too good to be true. Just when David is beginning to suspect he can’t go the distance, his widowed father shows up all excited that his son will finally make a happy marriage.

We don’t get to find out. That’s where the book ends. The Professor of Desire was published in 1977, about the time activists like Germaine Greer and Gloria Steinem were redefining feminism. They were mostly successful inspiring a new generation of young women. But Roth seems to be stumbling around, muttering to himself about what it means to be a man. He really doesn’t have a clue.

I didn't have a chance to include this comment in my radio podcast review, but revisiting this book decades later doesn't bring any surprises about gender roles in today's society. But what is striking is the ageism that becomes apparent in Roth's work. At the end of the novel, David is about forty and his father is past sixty. Roth describes the older man as doddering, forgetful, and foolish. And David's second-worst fear, after doubting his own worthiness as a companion for Claire, is that his father will die soon. If this book were written today, the portrait of the father would not be credible unless the man were in his eighties. Even then, many mature readers whose minds are still sharp would find the caricature of the senile dad distasteful.

For Boychik Lit, I’m Gerald Everett Jones. My series of humorous boychik lit novels is The Misadventures of Rollo Hemphill. And you can catch these podcasts at BoychikLit.com.

A Delicate Truth by John Le Carré

Boychik Lit Book Review - No. 22

No spoilers here. This is the behind-the-scenes story of a small anti-terrorist black op  - secretly sponsored by a Member of Parliament - that might or might not have happened. Problem is, its very existence - even as a plan - is so politically incorrect as to be a profound embarrassment if anyone involved decides to break silence and go public with the few facts they know. So the trendy topic of whistle-blowing is very much at issue.
I find two things remarkable about this novel.
First, the dialogue is almost entirely and deliberately off-point - more than in any other Le Carré book I've read. The words are about everything but the topic at hand. Everyone speaks, not just in trade jargon and code, but in hints and innuendos and metaphors. It's annoying. And real. And perhaps an angry commentary on a societal lack of not only frankness and honesty but also an unwillingness to face any real facts at all.
They might be discussing murder, but all you hear are acronyms.
Second, you won't have a clear idea of who the main character is until fairly far along. He will grow on you, as he will become bolder in his own estimation of himself. But he's a bureaucrat (as are most of the rest of them) and in many respects lackluster. Totally absent are the mythic proportions of James Bond. And he has nothing like the cunning wit or the cleverness of George Smiley.
He does, however, eventually realize he has a conscience and a loyalty to ideals that are both naive and reckless.
Master spy novelist Le Carré often refers to intelligence operatives as close observers. Of course, that’s just what a reader is. His narrative technique is to immerse you in detail, much of which may be irrelevant to the plot – just the way we experience reality every day, from one perception to the next.
In training you to think like a spy – like a close observer – Le Carré makes you a better reader and a more critical thinker.
A Delicate Truth is very much about today. And there is much to learn, if in those cryptic conversations you also learn to listen between the lines.
For Boychik Lit, I’m Gerald Everett Jones. My humorous novel Farnsworth’s Revenge merges the intrigue of Le Carré with the improbable logic of Woody Allen. You’ll learn how cold fusion works and international money laundering mostly doesn’t. And don’t forget to catch these podcasts on BoychikLit.com.

"The Mackerel Plaza" by Peter De Vries

Boychik Lit Book Review - No. 15

Here’s my book review of The Mackerel Plaza by Peter De Vries. I credit humorist and poet Peter De Vries as the godfather of boychik lit, or comedies about boys and men who are less than careful with their life choices, particularly their choices of romantic partners.

The Mackerel Plaza is one of the funniest books you will ever read. That is, provided you have a sense of humor about both religion and the lusts of the flesh. Rev. Mackerel, respected leader of the People’s Liberal Church in suburban Connecticut, has a problem. His saintly wife has recently passed away. But that’s not the problem. He suspects she’s enjoying a better life. But while he’s still on Earth, he’d like to remarry. And, conveniently enough, he’s been secretly dating the church secretary, Miss Calico. There’s a double irony here. First, his congregation is so respectful of his wife’s legacy that they wish to erect a new shopping mall named in her honor – the Mackerel Plaza. Secondly, the preacher rightly worries that, even if his flock were to eventually approve of his intention to marry Miss Calico, the couple would have to wait years to set the date – not until the plaza is built, the dedication is done, and the luster of his wife’s postmortem fame begins to fade.

A humorous novel must have an engine of comedy. That is, a situation that is both ridiculous and impossible to maintain, which generates conflict, embarrassment, and laughter. An outwardly righteous man who harbors secret lusts is just such a formula. Certainly, men and women of the cloth have the same urges and flaws as the rest of us, but in someone whose social position is exalted, discovering their hypocrisies gives them farther to fall. And we do love it when our comic characters go splat.

The Mackerel Plaza was published in 1958, back when making fun of straying fundamentalist preachers wasn’t politically incorrect. Author De Vries grew up in the Dutch Reformed church in Chicago and yea those strictures gave the guy a real cramp in the you-know-where, so painful it's hysterical.

For Boychik Lit, I’m Gerald Everett Jones. I think you’ll enjoy my new humorous novel Christmas Karma about the travails of a dysfunctional family around the holidays, narrated by an angel who has a wicked sense of humor. Main character Willa Nawicki is bewildered by a series of curious karmic events that literally ring her doorbell during the frantic season, awakening years-old resentments and stimulating ever-more-intense personal confrontations. These bizarre visitations include a grizzled old man claiming to be her father, who has been missing for some thirty years but now says the title to the family home is in his name – and now he wants the place back.

As the angel observes, “The surest way to invoke the laughter of the universe is to make plans, particularly devious ones.”.

Christmas Karma would make a great gift for yourself or anyone tends to get the blues this time of year.

And be sure to catch these podcasts on BoychikLit.com.

'The Sense of an Ending' by Julian Barnes

Boychik Lit Book Reviews - No. 3 - KRLA 870 AM Los Angeles

Three years ago, The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes won Britain’s top literary prize. You will either be fascinated by this book, or it just might infuriate you.
Main character Tony Webster is middle-aged and reflecting back on his life. Just when he thinks he has it all sorted, he has to cope with troublesome consequences from choices he made as a young man. He has to face the possibility that he may have been responsible for his best friend’s death, and he may be the father of an illegitimate child.
The two people who know the facts are gone. The third isn’t talking, and her diary, which could have revealed everything, is probably lost.
Barnes shows us how Tony rewrites history so as to make himself the hero of his own story. Or, at the very least, justify his actions. And, so do all of us. Families, communities, and nations continually adjust the favorable light on their actions over time.
Why might you be infuriated? Because, bravely I think for an author, Barnes provides only the sense of an ending.
For Boychik Lit, I’m Gerald Everett Jones. Read my hilarious new novel Mr.Ballpoint, and follow my rants at www.boychiklit.com.

Full Review (cross-posted on Goodreads.com)

Spoiler Alert!

In terms of overt clues and Adrian's equation, Adrian had an affair (perhaps not so brief, near the end of his life) with Veronica's mother Sarah, who bore the child, also named Adrian, who was later sent (after Sarah's death?) to a caregiver facility.
I think what nags at Tony at the end is that there are other possibilities that could fit the evidence better. Unless Veronica spills it, or Adrian's diary is not burnt after all, Tony can never know for sure. In all scenarios he's guilty, in some achingly more than in others.
The child could have been Veronica's by Adrian or by Tony. The memory of the trip to the river seems to imply a night of unprotected, romantic sex. Sarah might have cared for the baby when Veronica couldn't, or wouldn't. Veronica's pregnancy would have been when she and Adrian were newlyweds. He might have died thinking the baby was his. Or sure that it wasn't. Or not sure at all and tormented by it.
Tony says the child (seen now as a young man) looks like the presumed father, his old friend Adrian. But did Tony look like Adrian? Is Tony looking into a mirror and denying the familiarity he sees? Is Tony's remarking on the resemblance a clue to throw us off the track?
The child could have been Sarah's by Tony. This strange possibility best explains: 1) Sarah's bequest, 2) Veronica's rage, and 3) Sarah's enigmatic parting gesture to Tony, implying a secret they shared (that she'd seduced him during the visit). The fact that Adrian has repressed the memory of the sex act (but not the washing up after) would seem totally implausible, except in the context of this book which is all about how our minds rewrite history to suit our opinion of ourselves.
It's a mind twister, and credit Barnes for giving plenty of clues but being brave enough to perplex his readers by providing only the sense of an ending. 

April Fool's Question: Would You Sooner Friend a Badboy or a Geek?

Space alien caught out: The tip-off is the pizza is just his excuse for eating the plate.

Today is the long-awaited, much-touted book release of Farnsworth's Revenge: A Rollo Hemphill Misadventure. Actually it's his third silly story. The first two were My Inflatable Friend (2007) and Rubber Babes (2008). And if you appreciate your books as electron flows, the Kindle editions of Revenge and Babes are both on sale for a week, starting today. (Paperbacks also shipping now because electrons make sucky gifts.)
My foolish thought for the day is inspired by all the talk-show patter I hear from intelligent young women complaining about how lame, underachieving, insensitive, and selfish are the male prospective partners in their lives. And just the other day, the father of one such bright girl complained that we must be in a declining era because all society can produce is losers as candidates for his hottie daughter's affections.
I submit that the root of all evil in this regard is the stereotype of badboy as male romantic hero. Charles Bronson as crazed and vengeful (but justified) killer is an old formula. But these days it seems the more corrupt the soul of the male protagonist, the more believable - and even the more lovable. Don Draper on Mad Men is a serial adulterer. Walter White on Breaking Bad has his reasons. And come to Momma, Dexter, because we know you just can't help yourself.
Badboys are more fun, the women seem to think, over and over again. Perhaps true, for a night or two, but why would you ever put one in the same category as your candidates for long-term relationships? Don't tell me you want to fix him. I don't believe you.
Now, Rollo is a geek. His confessional misadventures expose his obsessive thought processes. He's always getting into trouble and then devising some screwball scheme to get out of it. And, oddly enough, in his life circumstances, he continues to fail ever upward. He prospers in spite of himself. But as to his relationships, he's clueless most of the time.
I found out not that long ago that the audience for the Rollo books has at least as many women as men. This surprised me because I conceived the genre as boychik lit, the diametric opposite of chick lit, and deliberately aimed at men. Rollo is a young man continually on the make. And mature men, who buy more books, apparently like to fantasize about what it was like to be young and on the make.
The women of any age, and I'm guessing here, are just entertained by male foolishness.
So my advice. On this April Fool's Day, as the juices of spring stir, consider the clueless geek. Wouldn't you rather be tickled to death?

More thoughts on male-centric fiction

"My Childhood in One Picture" Credit: MuelleX on Imgur

I recently started a thread in the Books and Writers group at LinkedIn by asking the question "Is there a male-centered alternative to chick lit?" And I cross-posted some of my musings about boychik lit, my self-imposed genre for the Rollo Hemphill series of humorous misadventures. South African writer Dave Baker commented, "Of course, Gerald. Westerns!" At first, I thought Dave was way off the mark, and I told him so. He came back and apologized that perhaps he'd fired off his response without thinking. After all, chick lit is mostly about relationships. Westerns are about community. The hero of a western is defending the community or is on a mission to help build the community. In this way, a western is like ancient mythology in which the hero battles a succession of enemies on his quest for some prize that will save his world.
And chick lit is all about man-problems. Those might manifest as career problems, but men are usually at fault. (In the case of The Devil Wears Prada, it's a woman boss who in busting through the glass ceiling has learned to be as mean and ruthless as any man.)
Then I thought again about relationships in westerns, and I began to think Dave shouldn't have been so quick to take it back. In those stories, the hero seems to value  protection of the community - as well as his standing among his male comrades - above his personal relationship with a wife or sweetheart. That's a battlefield mentality, and it says a lot about the mindset of the hero as his leaves has family behind and sets off toward his rendezvous with destiny.
I was beginning to think Dave was onto something. Two other big fiction genres with men are spy thrillers and crime stories. In both of those, the hero is also acting on behalf of his community (country or metropolis). And even though some dame may slink in and set him on the path, he's not acting mainly out of romantic self-interest. His goal is not primarily to get the girl. In fact, James Bond's women are literally disposable. Travis McGee's relationships might incite the drama but never last, and often end badly. And poor Philip Marlowe retains a cynical fascination with women, even though he rarely gets close to one. As in the western, the spy or the detective must set his personal feelings aside while he's on the mission. Romantic relationships recede into the background. Think about it: James Bond orders every sumptuous meal as though it were his last. And in his more thoughtful moments, he guesses he won't live long enough to collect his pension.
Thinking back on chick lit, I wonder if the heroine's obsession with finding Mr. Right can be generalized as a preoccupation with family - nest building. And then the male's focus, however much he may want a family or cherish his family, is primarily on his responsibility for ensuring the welfare of his community.
In Farnsworth's Revenge (forthcoming April 1), Rollo has to flee the country because he fears he'll  be framed for an international fraud. Not only does he leave his wife Felicia behind, but he also deliberately hides details of his alleged misdeeds from her, on the presumption that the less she knows the more likely the Feds will see her as a victim rather than an accomplice. After that, it's all about saving his community (the world banking system), but I've said too much already. 

This line of speculation about gender and genre may seem sexist - but remember we're talking about traditional fictional role models, not individuals in contemporary society. Women read all these genres enthusiastically, and so do men. I know I do.

Fratire (Frat-boy Satire) Is So Yesterday

It's difficult to discuss this topic because so few people know the term fratire, and still fewer apparently think it deserves any attention at all. The term fratire, derived from "fraternity satire," was coined by New York Times book reviewer Warren St. John after his editor informed him that calling the as-yet unlabeled literary genre "dick lit" was not fit to print. St. John was working at the time on a piece that surveyed the landscape of male-audience relationship fiction. That literary vista seemed unaccountably barren in comparison with the highly populated shelves of the female-audience counterpart, chick lit.
Too bad for the sake of the publishing industry that this anonymous editor made that call. When you have to explain what's behind a brand name, it's not a brand at all. Fratire was a murky concept, and a too-narrow focus. Dick lit, on the other hand, might have gained some traction in popular culture, while also having legitimate roots in Freudian theory (phallic narcissism). And it would have a time-honored literary tradition, albeit with a new label. To explore phallic narcissism, read just about any book by Philip Roth. In this genre, Portnoy's Complaint is a, uh, seminal work.
By the way, it's no use discussing the lame terms guy lit and lad lit. No one knows what they mean. And geek lit is a much larger tent - basically populated with anyone who'd go willingly to Comic-Con.
The poster-boy author for the emergent fratire genre was Tucker Max, whose collection of short stories, I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, took his college-age readership by storm. The success of the book inspired a movie, which proved to have exactly zero appeal with general audiences. About the same time, Chuck Palahniuk's Choke was also rendered on film, and it, too, disappeared from theaters quickly. The wizards of Hollywood probably rightly concluded that fratire, or anything like it, would never grow legs. A few years before, Palahniuk's Fight Club had proved a remarkable exception. But that story was not so much about relationships as about the more traditional movie fare of watching reckless, desperate men duking it out. Oddly enough for the purpose of defining literary genres, Fight Club was also something of an exception to Palahniuk's recurring themes in his other books, which have more to do with the puzzles of heterosexual relationships. But that movie, more than any of his books, established his cult popularity. An image of him on his website shows him with a black eye and a bandage over the bridge of his nose, an obvious reference to the enduring popularity of his more belligerent material. And he's announced he'll do a Fight Club sequel.
Two recent articles report the retreat of Tucker Max from the literary stage, along with the predictable pronouncements of the demise of fratire: New York magazine announced "Notorious Frat Douche Tucker Max Is an Angel Investor Now," and ezine Jezebel continues the thread with "Tucker Max Is Now an Investor, Doesn't Care for Hookup Apps."
In my view, there was never anything all that interesting about fratire. I once called it "puke-on-your-shoes journalism." And when Max's stories weren't literally studying his vomit after binge drinking, they were about planning or attempting or succeeding at date rape - or passing out beforehand.
The theme of Max's stories, as well as the popular reception he received on campus-tour interviews, seemed to be that women just want to be dominated. His message to young men seemed to be, "Man up and get it done." And to women, "Cut the crap and admit you're all sluts at heart."
And it won't come as any surprise that this approach was deliberately and calculatingly offensive. After all, it takes a lot to shock audiences these days, and Max pulled it off, for awhile.
On the chick lit side of the ledger, the long-playing popularity of Bridget Jones's Diary, Sex and the City, and The Devil Wears Prada - all of which have been made into wildly successful movies - would seem to indicate that women, unlike men, are eager to analyze their relationship troubles. However, notably absent from the conversation is how sexist the chick-lit genre is. Helen Fielding has admitted that she modeled Bridget Jones's Diary on Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. The engine of that early 19th century plot is that an educated and refined - but disenfranchised - woman had only one hope of social success - to marry a wealthy nobleman. In Sex and the City, that engine is still purring right along. Carrie Bradshaw thinks she's liberated and self-actualizing. She's a self-supporting journalist and book author, after all. But the engine of her story is all about deciding on a role model for herself. She has three close female friends - each of which has coped with the plight of being single and female in a different way. One is a traditionalist, one a single-mom professional, and one a libertine. Carrie ends up landing and marrying Big, a macho wizard of Wall Street who can give her the social standing she craves. It seems that, despite the measure of success she has enjoyed on her own, she knows she will never go zinging about the globe on private jets and be invited to palatial estates unless she welds herself to such a benefactor.
Even more appalling in terms of its sexism and blatant misogyny is Fifty Shades of Grey. This story  retools The Story of O, a cult novel of the 1950s, which was itself a thinly disguised retelling of the exploits of the Marquis de Sade, whose name inspired the term sadism.
And what's the theme of Fifty Shades of Grey? Women just want to be dominated.
Perhaps it's that women at times like to fantasize about being dominated, about how their lives might be different if they'd found Mr. Big, or about what it might be like to have a new luxury of choice in life direction and relationships.
And perhaps also these urges are no more grounded in reality than my wanting to confront the guy next door and pound his face in. (Which I don't, Rock. Honest!)
I coined the term boychik lit to describe a male-oriented genre that, like chick lit, puzzles about relationships, but from the first-person point of view of a young man. I invented a main character, Rollo Hemphill, a geek who fails continually upward. He is puzzled not only by his success but also by how little that success has to do with the happiness of his relationships.
It may be that boychik lit is as unfortunate a choice of labels as fratire was. Some portion of my audience, not so used to Yiddishisms, might think a boychik is some kind of cross-dresser or transvestite. I really have nothing to say to them. I bet they don't read much.
Again, a brand name that has to be explained is probably no brand at all.
But I did make the effort. And I think an ongoing discussion about what type of satirical fiction might appeal to men should survive the justifiable demise of fratire.
Let's face it, young women - generally, but not always - seek relationships, and young men seek sex partners. So boychik lit is about a young man on the make. But in its audience are also mature men who want to remember what it was like to be in the marketplace, as well as women of any age who can't help being amused by how foolish all men are.
RIP, you authors of fratire. But I fear that, like the newly popular characters of zombie-lit, you won't stay buried. ~ ~ ~

Donna Tartt's Boychik

Main character Theodore Decker narrates Donna Tartt's novel The Goldfinch. He is very much the boychik, his story beginning when he is a naive but precocious early teen and then concluding when he is a world-weary young man in his mid twenties. This coming-of-age story is full of his personal introspection and psychological turmoil. It will be difficult to write about it without some spoilers, since the engine of the plot is his travails to overcome a life-changing traumatic event. So be warned.
Near the outset, Theo and his mother duck into a New York museum in the rain and are caught in a terrorist bomb blast. His mother is killed but he is one of the few survivors. Another fatality is a cultured old man named Welty, who was at the museum with his ward Pippa. The girl is close to Theo's age and also survives but with some debilitating injuries.
Before Welty expires next to Theo in the rubble of the blast, he gives him his signet ring and tells him to take the painting - The Goldfinch - with him to keep it safe. After Theo learns of his mother's death, he becomes a temporary ward of some rich friends, the Barbours of Park Avenue. He has no idea what to do with the painting, but decides to hide it and keep it a secret from everyone. The ring leads him eventually to Welty's antique-dealer business partner Hobie, who is now taking care of the wounded Pippa as she recovers from major surgery. For Theo, it was love at first sight with Pippa at the museum. Along with the painting, this love will become his obsession. Here is my first quibble with the book, and I have many, even though I think it is both masterful and well worth the reading. That is, as in some time-worn Jane Austen stiff-necked saga, Theo can never bring himself to tell Pippa he loves her. Years later, he will do it indirectly and not in person, and she will tell him he is dear to her but they are both too damaged to build a life together. It will take hundreds of pages to find that out, and sorry to be the bearer of bad news. Another troublesome issue is the first-person narration. As the book begins, it's difficult to believe that the teen narrator has such an extensive vocabulary, sophistication, and worldly experience. We find out later that the older version of Theo is telling the story, based on contemporaneous notes he made all along. The author's having to explain this point is cumbersome and awkward, and, as with other elements, disclosed much too late in the story to avoid some degree of aggravation in the reading. Another classic problem with first-person narration is, how do you resolve the plot? Especially if the narrator perishes, as it seems at various points he might, how will the reader get this information? Who will live to tell the tale? One method is to have one of the other characters step in late as narrator and say that he or she found the unfinished manuscript. This, too, can be a lame way to repair a structural mistake. Because I did suspect that Theo would survive his dark nights of the soul - and there are many, many of them - it all rings somewhat hollow that at no point did I fear he would actually die. My final complaint is that, after all kinds of momentous events and bumps and shocks along life's journey, Tartt devotes the last portion of the book to metaphysical agonizing. I thought I'd dropped into a lecture on Existentialism. This novel owes a lot to Proust's Remembrance of Things Past and Dostoyevsky's The Idiot, both of which it mentions. The underlying philosophical questions are worth investigating - Why is there evil in the world? What is the point of living? - but I could have wished they'd have been more organic to the narrative.

My Inflatable Friend - The Real Truth

My Inflatable Friend is the first in the three-book series of Rollo Hemphill misadventures. Farnsworth's Revenge will be published this spring - perhaps with some sneak previews. That book is written such that you can follow the plot even if you didn't read the first two books. But if you're one of those folks who binge-watches TV series like House of Cards on Netflix, you will want to begin at the beginning so you are prepared. My Inflatable Friend is available as Kindle on special for the next few days. Trade paper is available, too, for you retro readers who still have space on your bookshelves.
My Inflatable Friend has to do with poor Rollo's swelling ego. But it does all start with his scheme to make his girlfriend jealous with an inflatable doll. Never mind that a real woman would not be threatened by any inflatable toy. That ruse simply doesn't work. But when he creates a realistic doll that looks like a famous soap star, look out. The tabloids apparently don't care what the truth is. The news that Rollo is having an affair with Monica LaMonica is just too good not to print.

The Women Won't Let Men Read

Photo: notable-quotes.com

 "Any man's life, told truly, is a novel." - Ernest Hemingway

Surely Papa didn't mean it: "Any man's life, told truly, is a novel." Certainly, he must have been speaking of mankind, individuals of the human race, and not deliberately or dismissively excluding the fairer sex from his huge generalization.
But maybe he meant it just exactly the way it comes across today. More than any author before him, and as stridently as any of his imitators since, Hemingway identified the profession of writing as man's work. And his entire life away from the typewriter seemed to be a celebration of masculinity - shooting wild animals on safari, fighting bulls in the ring, and habitually wearing that military-style safari jacket with the epaulets and all those pockets - which became the very badge of the latter-day cigarillo-chomping, proudly male novelist, including Norman Mailer, James Jones, and Hunter S. Thompson.
Is it any surprise that the women of the publishing world would retaliate against this unspeakable discrimination? In Hemingway's era, perhaps the most talented female novelist was Edith Wharton, whose baroque prose style rivaled Henry James, her longtime friend. While not singling out Wharton as the enemy, Hemingway railed against baroque style in any form. Clean and simple were his sentences, and the clarity of journalistic prose benefited greatly. But it impoverished artistic prose. To this day, agents, publishers, and the few editors who are left harp on the principles of Hemingway's plain-vanilla style. Frankly, I'm sick of it, but that's a topic for another blog.
Perhaps thanks to Papa Hemingway, the quest for the "great American novel" in the twentieth century was considered by the publishing industry and audiences alike to be a man's game: All those Johns - John O'Hara, John Steinbeck, John Cheever, John Updike. And then there's Philip Roth, who promoted the self-centered maleness of masturbation to high art and never wrote a novel that wasn't about his own dick.
During the reign of these male moguls in the literary sphere, there have been female giants like Joyce Carol Oates and Anne Tyler. Their novels are brilliant but they didn't get anywhere near seriously  comparable treatment. Someone should have told them to wear safari jackets.
Now, according to Jason Pinter's recent piece in Huffington Post, men can't get a place at the table. In its death throes, the publishing industry has favored lower-paid executives and editors - surprise, women! - and guess what? - they don't like male-centered fiction much at all, perhaps rationalizing that, these days, men don't bother to read. (More to the point, men don't buy as many books as women do, and that's a fact.)
Undeniably, chick lit is a hugely successful, commercial genre, and that's where female writers have blazed their widest inroads. But, sadly for the sake of feminist sexual politics, chick lit is modeled on an old sexist formula. Both Bridget Jones's Diary and Sex and the City are modeled shamelessly on Jane Austen. The plot engine is about finding Mr. Right in an economic world dominated entirely by men. Certainly Carrie Bradshaw is a talented free agent who can write her own books and host her own publicity events. But she will never have her own private plane unless Big, the guy with the big bank account and bigger heart, takes her to wife.
Even sorrier for the sake of equity between the sexes is the success of Fifty Shades of Grey. With a plot ripped off from the Story of O, this piece of puke-flavored pulp celebrates the degradation of women. And for reasons that escape me, guess who's buying it?
Okay, men grabbed the literary limelight in the last century. Today, you'd think we can't get a break, and perhaps we deserve it.

That office romance

By Jillian Lucas for HowAboutWe

It's incredible and bewildering that now there are so many rules. I recently attended an all-day course given by the company attorney on sexual harassment. You can't say she has nice hair or she smells good. Go straight to jail! Here are some rules, and I didn't dream them up. It's the kind of thing the mass-media blogs do between hard-news stories. Make up rules. Rollo never thought of this when he said yes to Vivi when she so generously gave him an opening. http://shine.yahoo.com/love-sex/9-signs-handle-office-romance-182800693.html

Reading "Farnsworth's Revenge" Nov 4 in Venice

I'll be reading from Farnworth's Revenge: Rollo's End, the third book in the Rollo Hemphill series of comic misadventures. The event on Sunday, November 4 at 2pm is hosted by the Women's National Book Association at Mystic Journey Bookstore, 1319 Abbot Kinney Blvd., Venice, CA 90291 (phone 310 399-7070). This Reads Its Own event runs until 4pm and will include several WNBA member authors reading their material.

The story so far...

In the first two books, My Inflatable Friend and Rubber Babes, Rollo has masterminded a plot with a life-sized rubber doll made in the image of a famous soap star, Monica LaMonica. Rollo’s former boss, old crusty Hugo Farnsworth, has developed a passionate fascination for the doll. He is currently entertaining “her” as his sole guest aboard his private yacht Shameless Palms, currently anchored at St. Tropez. Meanwhile, Rollo has also fled to France to avoid being arrested for a money-laundering scam he didn’t do. As the book opens, Farnsworth secretly summons Rollo and pleads for his help because the doll has mysteriously disappeared from the boat.

Audio Clip from Farnsworth's Revenge (MP3)

Just Released on Kindle Select

Six short stories and an essay on this not-so-serious topic.

"Chemistry" expands on the self-evident premise that you can't tell teenagers anything. The narrator of "Not Quite After Lisette is a forty-something high-tech executive whose wife is divorcing him. "Johnny Halo and Rock, the Tyro Shock Jock" is the first of three episodes from the Rollo Hemphill series of comic novels. In this installment, he falls upward into a job as a shock-jock deejay. "In the Valley of the Happy People" is from the second book, Rubber Babes, and "Spin Cycle" is a chapter from the third book, Farnsworth's Revenge: Rollo's End. "In the Gallery of American Art" is a story about a woman who wakes up on her birthday thinking her life is perfect. And of course it's not. It is excerpted from the novel Bonfire of the Vanderbilts, a work in progress. The afterward essay "Boychik Lit" is a think piece on male-centered comic fiction.

It's available from Kindle Select for $2.99. Always free to Amazon Prime members.

MP3: Reading from Farnsworth's Revenge: Rollo's End

Gerald Everett Jones reads from Farnsworth's Revenge: Rollo's End. Courtesy Flo Selfman, IWOSC

March 11, 2012 - Barnes & Noble - Santa Monica Promenade

7min Audio Clip MP3

The author reads from the third comic novel of the Rollo Hemphill misadventures. The life-sized replica of soap-star Monica LaMonica has mysteriously disappeared from Hugo Farnsworth's yacht off St. Tropez. Rollo has set himself the task of conducting an investigation, as a favor to the old man. His inquiries lead him to the palace of Attaboy Pasha, an eccentric art connoisseur in Istanbul who has a passion for realistic dolls. Attaboy says he doesn't have the Monica doll but dearly covets it. And he says he has something to trade.

It's Read an E-Book Week and Rollo Bares All

March 4 - 11 on Smashwords - Rollo's Misadventures are Free!

Pick your fave ebook format - They're all here.

My Inflatable Friend - FREE - Slacker car jockey Rollo Hemphill tries to make his girlfriend jealous by driving the life-sized lookalike doll of a famous soap star around Hollywood.

Rubber Babes - Use coupon code RE100 - Rollo gets the girl and a lot he didn't bargain for when he fails continually upward to head a charity that's laundering money for the Secret Government.

Farnsworth's Revenge -  Third in the series, forthcoming. Rollo gets his just desserts. I'll be reading from it on Sunday, March 11, at 2pm at Barnes & Noble on the Santa Monica Promenade.

Book Review: "From Russia with Love" by Ian Fleming

From Russia with Love was the fifth of Ian Fleming's 007 books, published in 1957. Apparently he wasn't sure whether he wanted the franchise to continue, and you have to read the sequel, Dr. No, to find out how some of the plot points in this one were resolved.

Interesting, I think, is that the movie Dr. No (based on the sixth book) was the first James Bond film, and From Russia with Love was the second. Swapping the order of the plots actually necessitated some changes to the stories. In the movie, Dr. No is part of an international crime syndicate, SPECTRE. However, the Russian coding machine (based on the German's WWII Enigma device) was called Spektor in the novel and apparently renamed Lektor in the movie. SPECTRE is nowhere mentioned in either of the novels. In the novel From Russia with Love, it is the Russian assassination bureau SMERSH that hatches the plot to kill Bond using the Spektor and a beautiful woman as bait. In the movie, the planner Kronsteen instead works for SPECTRE, which intends to steal the Lektor along with luring Bond, then kill him and return the machine in return for a big SMERSH ransom payment.

Bond is a somewhat anachronistic character now, a gentleman bad boy back when most heroes played nice. Now they're all bad boys, and worse. And he was an unabashed male chauvinist. I'll leave it for the reader to marvel at rather than explain too much, but Tatiana Romanova is a rake's pipe-dream of a character, like all of the Fleming babes. She lives to serve the fantasy image she's created of Bond in her mind, and she commits the spy's cardinal sin of starting to believe her own cover story.

This book starts very slowly, with much more expository heavy lifting than you'd expect from a spy thriller. The action only accelerates about two-thirds of the way through. Fleming's literary predecessors included Somerset Maugham and Graham Greene, and his slow storytelling pace seems like a throwback.

Also odd, it seemed to me, were his opinions of Istanbul. Fleming hates the Turkish food and finds the city dirty and under-lit at night. Contrast this image with today's Istanbul, which has a population of fifteen million and growing (larger than Los Angeles) and world-class amenities.

[Cross-posted on Goodreads.com] 

Meet Gerald Everett Jones at the Book Fair in LA

Where: Booth #76 Independent Writers of Southern California (IWOSC) www.iwosc.org

When: Saturday, April 30, 12 - 1pm

Topic: IWOSC membership, the writer's life, my straw hat

When: Later that day, 2 - 3pm

Topic: Book signing, My Inflatable Friend and Rubber Babes (first two comic novels in the Rollo Hemphill series) - and wide-ranging insightful discussion on "Boychik Lit is Hipper Fratire." 

E-Book Blowout Madness One Week Only!

Do you think Darwin was more of a Kindle or an iPad kinda guy?

Read an E-Book Week on Smashwords.com

It's that time again - basketball playoffs, baseball spring training, LA book fair anticipation, and best of all, the greatest annual electronic clearance sale while digital supplies last - Read an E-Book Week on Smashwords.com.

Just follow these links and enter coupon code RE100 to get free (while they last and our accountants don't find out) e-books in your choice of format, including HTML, LRF, EPUB, and others:

My Inflatable Friend: The Confessions of Rollo Hemphill

Rubber Babes: Further Misadventures of Rollo Hemphill

This streaming, screaming extravaganza runs one week only - from March 6 to 12 (or until the last electron is out the door!).

Gotta Yen for Dolls, Bud?

My longtime friend and colleague Gary Palmatier, the world-class book designer, got a bad case of fascination with my Rubber Babes book and started trolling the net for anything he could find on the topic (intellectual curiosity, I'm sure). Anyhow, he sent a link to this video. Apparently some guy in Japan is shacked up with a hundred or so life-sized dolls. Until now, I thought these things were a recent Hollywood special-effects-technology invention, but apparently the clever folks on the other side of the Pacific Rim have been refining their designs for decades. And, as if the concept itself isn't unreal enough, check out the models with Anime faces. Now you can really step into that Virtual Reality and get up close and personal with your favorite action heroines!