How I Became a Famous Novelist Paperback - 2009

This story of a slacker who sets out to take the book-publishing world by storm is "a hilarious send-up of literary pretensions and celebrity culture." (USA Today).

Pete Tarslaw wants some fame and fortune and, perhaps most importantly, the chance to get back at his ex-girlfriend at her upcoming wedding. After listening to a vapid author prattling on during an interview, while nubile young women watch adoringly, he figures becoming a literary icon must be the easiest con game going . . .

This "gleeful skewering of the publishing industry and every clich of the writing life" pinballs from the college town of Boston to the fear-drenched halls of Manhattan's publishing houses, from the gloomy purity of Montana's foremost writing workshop to the hedonistic hotel bars of the Sunset Strip (The New York Times Book Review). The tale of how Pete's "pile of garbage" titled The Tornado Ashes Club became the most talked about, blogged about, admired, and reviled novel in America will change everything you think you know about literature, truth, beauty, and those people out there who actually still care about books.

"Nothing is sacred and all is skewered: critics, Hollywood, MFA programs, students, literary journals, panels, conferences and resulting hook-ups . . . I rooted for Pete, a scheming underachiever whom the late great humorist Max Shulman would have been proud to call his own. I may have read a funnier book in the last 20 years, but at this moment I'm hard-pressed to name it." --Elinor Lipman, The Washington Post

"A pitch-perfect takeoff on the insipid conventions of the best-seller racks . . . caustic wit with an unexpected depth of emotional insight." --Austin American-Statesman

"How I Became a Famous Novelist has a laugh-out-loud quotient inappropriately high for reading in public." --St. Louis Post-Dispatch