Come Join the Youth and Beauty Brigade

Every writer or writer-wannabe, everywhere, wrote about Kaavya Viswanathan, like, a month ago when it was relevant. I didn't. I figured I'd leave it to everyone else to cover all the dirty details about plagiarism. The fact that she copied some sentences from a few other authors isn't the part of it that pissed me off. She isn't the first shitty writer to make a ton of money off of someone else's idea. (Just ask Lewis Perdue, or the guys who wrote Holy Blood, Holy Grail.)

No, I've got very little in the way of fresh infuriation at the plagiarism itself. I'm more pissed off at the relative media attention the book got due to Viswanathan's young age, and the fact that she and her various mentors were so relentless about getting her a fat book deal before she finished high school.

If you ask me, about 90% of authors that young really don't have any business getting major publishing house deals. (I want to be clear: my pal Ned is in that remaining 10%...but I don't think I've known anybody else who had the maturity to pull off that kind of awesomeness that young.) Certainly Kaavya doesn't show any signs of having been able to do it on her own - if she HAD been ready to write a good book, she wouldn't have had to consult a book packager, and she certainly wouldn't be slinging together some melange of chick-lit tropes and other people's metaphors and trying to pass it off as literature. The fact that she had a much "darker" novel idea in mind, coupled with the fact that she's apparently done decent student journalism since arriving at Harvard, suggests she might have been legitimately good if she'd only given herself more time to develop her own voice.

So what's the big deal? Why NOW? Why sell yourself so young? Why do these people feel they have to sell a book so early? Why do you need to have a book out before you can buy a beer? Is the "young author" cachet something so valuable that these teenagers are willing to consult ghostwriters and even rip off other people to get that book out as fast as possible? It seems to me like all these kids want to do is have that gold star on their resume, and they don't much care about the book itself. Publishing a book is means to an end, be that end fame, money, or admission to Harvard. It boggles my mind that publishing the book isn't the end itself. It certainly is for me.

But with all the attention paid to young authors, I guess that's to be expected. If you're precocious, you can trade on what you might someday be capable of when you come of age, and you don't need to back up this promise all at once. It's true of all art that youth carries a premium. The sooner you get yourself out there, the greater the earning potential, and the more attention you can expect to get on the basis of merely having sold a book before anybody even looks at what you've written. I guess that's all good and well if all you care about is making a little money, or calling yourself a published author so that a college will let you in or the undiscerning masses can ooh and aah over how young and accomplished you are.

I'm not going to be suicidal if I get my first gray hairs before I finish my first novel. I know I'm going to write a book eventually, and I don't need a pat on the back just for that. I'd rather write a good book, and I'd rather write one good one that's all mine than have some team of marketers and ghostwriters crank out an entire franchise based on a germ of an idea, or spew out something totally formulaic for the sake of having people know who I am a few years sooner. Do I want to be a headline, or do I want to leave a legacy? That's the question I have to ask. And for that reason, it really doesn't bother me all that much that I spent my high school and college years having interesting things happen to me so that I can write about them later rather than writing about the same tired old crap that everyone does and shoving myself into a spotlight far too soon. Hey, my literary hero John Irving was my age before he sold his first book, and his first book sucked rancid duck butter. It was another ten years before he got remotely good, and didn't hit his stride until his 40s.

While extreme youth might get your name out there, it's not going to change the fact that your book is a trite, shallow, badly constructed piece of crap. Those of us who want to actually be good writers would do well to put our eyes on an entirely different prize, and not try to bank on our age.

I'm not saying I have the chops to back this up, understand, but it'd kill me if I wasted my chance to find out by trying to be precocious rather than objectively good.

Don't worry if it's not good enough for anyone else to hear

Last weekend was my friend Mitch's bachelor party. This meant that effectively all of our menfolk were out at the strip club on Saturday night, leaving us chicks, including Mitch's blushing bride-to-be, Lisa, without plans. So rather than mope at home by ourselves and worry about what they're all up to, we all decided to go out, just the girls, and do something fun, despite the fact that there is an actual bachelorette party on the calendar planned for this evening. So Lisa gathered up some of the girls and we went out karaoke-ing.

Our experiences that night have inspired me to create the following Rules of Karaoke(tm):

1. You do not talk about karaoke. Punch your weight. Unless you are a devoted fan of the artist or have been practicing at home, you are probably not going to be able to do any rap song other than "Ice Ice Baby". Same goes for that reggaeton stuff or Celine Dion, though why you would ever want to karaoke either is totally beyond me.

Okay, okay, there's one time Celine Dion is all right, and that's if you've just been dumped, you've cleaned out the bar's supply of Ketel One, and you want to do "All By Myself" in a weepy, slurry fashion. That's always okay. In fact, it's encouraged. It's almost enough to make me wish I'd get dumped just so I can do it myself. (Just kidding, honey! Don't make any sudden moves there! I'm not done with you yet!)

But even then, you might be better off with the Eric Carmen version, which I unapologetically love, mostly because it enables me to sing along with Rachmaninoff's Second Piano Concerto without having to make up my own words.

2. Practicing at home is lame. Though if you find yourself singing along to the radio and you think "hey, I could do that at karaoke" and then you fire up your ipod and sing along with it again just to be sure you can hit all the notes, that's not. Wait a minute, yes it is.

3. Don't take yourself seriously. You are not going to be discovered at karaoke. Although sometimes I think the best prank ever would be to show up to some crappy karaoke bar wearing a very stylish suit and carrying a clipboard. I'd then pretend to make notes while people sang, and then I'd go up to the singer who seems to be the most self-important and tell them I work in A&R for a big record company.

4. Do something the bar knows. People go to karaoke because they love to sing, not because they love to hear YOU sing. So truck out something that has a participatory chorus, because you will win over the audience by letting them help you out. Failing that, at least do something your friends know, so someone will have your back when you lose the beat.

(My personal favorite these days is "Downtown." Despite the fact that I really can't sing all that well even when it's not allergy season, the bar always loves it. I am merely the vessel that delivers it to them.)

5. You get extra added fun points if you do something completely anachronistic, e.g. you are a large black guy singing "One of Us" by Joan Osbourne or you are a hipster dude singing Britney Spears. I've seen both. Both rocked my socks.

6. If someone does a song you like and you don't feel they did it justice, it is not - I repeat, NOT - okay to then put that song in and sing it yourself ten minutes later. (Yes, some asshat actually did this at the bar we were at last weekend.) They got to it first. Find something else to sing.

7. If someone does a song you like, it is also really not okay to grab the other mic and sing along with them. Should the microphone get taken away from you when you do this, it is really not okay to insist that you "don't need to be amplified" and then stand in the back and scream out the words louder than the person who is supposed to be singing the song. (I'm looking at you, asshat who was referenced in rule number 6.)

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!

Hosting the Barbes Reading Series, at one point, seemed like this gigantic, insurmountable thing that someone with as nonexistent a literary reputation as mine has no business undertaking. But as I've gotten the hang of it, it's really come together, and I'm pleased to be the person behind it.

I'd venture to say that while I've brought in asses to fill seats and maybe given a break to an up-and-coming writer or two, nobody's gained more from this experience than I have. It's given me a newfound respect for the creative process and introduced me to work I might not otherwise have found.

This Sunday, I'm particularly excited to be bringing you Caren Lissner, Steven van Patten, and Adam P. Knave.

I've been familiar with Caren's work for quite a long time - I devoured Carrie Pilby in a matter of minutes when it came out. (Seriously, it took me two and a half subway rides, one of which took an extra stop or two so I could finish it.) She's a dynamic talent and a hell of an awesome person (as I've had the privilege to hang out with her socially on a number of occasions).

Steven came up to me after a reading earlier this year and asked if he could read sometime. He handed me a postcard advertising a novel with a fantastic premise - the protagonist is sort of a cross between Shaft and Lestat, only way cooler. I can't wait to hear him read.

And Adam is a Barbes veteran - he's a dynamic reader with a fantastic body of work, and I'm thrilled to have him back.

This is all going down this Sunday at 6:30. Admission, as always, is free, though I do recommend you buy drinks and generously tip the bartender.

Here's an idle question - what would you guys think about a homegrown Barbes anthology featuring readers from the past year? I'd probably self-publish it out of some print-on-demand CafePress-ish operation (though I understand CafePress themselves do not do this anymore), mark it up by a buck or two, and donate the proceeds to charity. (Total cost to you, the consumer: $12 or so for a paperback.) Is it something y'all would buy?