One theory about James Frey, who invented episodes in his memoir A Million Little Pieces, is that he is a victim of publishing fashion. He says that he submitted the Oprah-endorsed bestseller as fiction, but presented it to the public as autobiography at the instigation of his publisher, Doubleday. That’s another invention, according to his editor, Nan Talese, who told The New York Observer that the book “was never once discussed as fiction by me or anyone in my office”.
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Further evidence of the effect of child stardom from an advance review of Junior by Macaulay Culkin. Now 25, Culkin offers “a couple hundred pages of semi-coherent diary entries coupled with a handful of scrawled drawings”, Kirkus Reviews says. It adds that the book opens with a quiz, to weed out those who should not go further: “If you know what’s good for you, you will fail the quiz.”
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Publishers are finding ways of getting to you via your mobile phone. In the US, Simon & Schuster is promoting Stephen King’s forthcoming novel Cell by offering the author’s voice as a ringtone, alerting you to calls by announcing that “the next call you take may be your last”. Cheerier messages are on offer in Britain from Hodder, publisher of a series of books called Get a Life! Subscribers can get daily texts offering such inspirational thoughts as: “Smile warmly, be positive & men will be tripping over their jaws 2 speak 2 u.”
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Among the many unflattering portraits in the dsypeptic Journals of the late John Fowles is one of Tom Maschler, his publisher at Cape. On top of the harsh reception for Maschler’s own autobiography, Fowles’s words are another blow to the ego of a man once the most dashing figure in literary London. But Maschler is taking it well. He read the Journals before publication, and waved them through.