“Jealous of a—? Oh, Stephen, don’t be so tiresome. It’s just that I understand women.”
“I thought you were a feminist. Aren’t women the same as men, obvious physical differences and child-bearing potential apart?”
Vanessa shook her head. “My concept of feminism has always been that a woman should be able to do whatever she wants to do and is capable of doing in life without society putting up artificial barriers of law and gender prejudice to stop her. But I never denied common sense and life experience to claim that men and women think the same or communicate the same or operate the same or always want the same things. And I also understand men a little bit.”
“We’re a lot simpler.”
“Granted. Anyway, be careful of Willy. Yes, she’s brilliant. Yes, she’s charming. Yes, she’s attractive.”
“The way she dresses, she’s doing her best to hide it.”
“If you noticed it, she’s not hiding it all that well, now is she? And that mousy pure student facade makes it all the more dramatic when she chooses to throw it off. Willy is all those things I said, but she’ll manipulate people to get what she wants. Just think over the conversation you had with her. What ploys did she use to try to gain an advantage?”
“She didn’t use any ploys—”
“Think about it. And if you weren’t already involved with a woman as fascinating as I, might you have acted differently in response? Think about that too.”
There once was a writer named Irving,
Whose loyalty to schlock was unswerving.
When a high-brow reviewer
Sent sales down the sewer,
Irving found praise quite unnerving.
Advertising quotes in general were a sore point with Stephen Fenbush, as they are with many critics. Since he tended not to write “selling quotes” in his film reviews, what he said rarely appeared in ads, but when it did, it was too often taken out of context to make him appear to like something he’d actually hated. The film world had so many quote whores — TV movie reviewers, talk-show hosts, starstruck bloggers — that there was always a ready source of hyperbolic raves, however awful the product in question. In perusing ads, the savvy filmgoer would look for quotes from print sources, preferably well-known newspapers and national magazines.
The quotes authors gave each other for jacket blurbs were a different matter: an act of friendship, payback, a calling in of literary markers, a big name’s gesture to help out a neophyte, or, very occasionally, a heartfelt message to the blurbing author’s readers that the book in hand was worth their attention.
That afternoon, Stephen felt himself drawn back to the campus bookstore and the current titles representing the bestselling conferees. He had no interest in the books themselves, only the jacket blurbs. He took out a pad and scribbled down McDougall’s quotes on the books by Jackson, Turnbow, and Bates. On the back jacket of McDougall’s own current offering the laudatory quotes came not from other popular novelists but from famous academics. Stephen recognized two professors of English and one of political science from Harvard, Stanford, and the University of Chicago, but the fourth name stood out for a couple of reasons: Malcolm Good, USC. Stephen had never heard of this particular professor, which in itself meant nothing, but why was his academic affiliation given with initials instead of being spelled out in full, as was the case with the other blurbers? He assumed Professor Good must be from the University of Southern California, but the initials could equally denote the University of South Carolina. Stephen wrote that one down as well. By now, the store manager was looking at him suspiciously, but after all, he was faculty, damn it.
Other matters claimed his attention — a lecture he needed to prepare on the early films of Alfred Hitchcock, plans for that silent-movie series — and it wasn’t until Saturday night and the murder that he put together a connection of three of the blurbs that he later thought should have been obvious, plus a joke in the fourth blurb that should have been even more obvious.
Six decades of Hollywood history come to vivid life as if on the biggest screen ever to give an audience of fans like me the real compelling truth about a magical industry that can either break your heart or win it.
I don’t mean to dis any of the fictional bar, but for courtroom savvy, this talented counselor is the guy. Buy his fifth book immediately.
Literary genius goes about its matchless business as four find love — erotic, romantic, steamy love — as the reader follows a luxurious cruise ship’s route through the Panama canal.
Just when you thought the political novel empty of fresh situations or innovations worthy of praise, along comes the one living writer who destroys the mold every time out. See how the master of Washington intrigue illuminates the very soul of American government.
A light snowfall on Saturday served only to outline the bare tree branches in white and augment the Worden University campus’s picture-postcard quality. And the weather certainly did nothing to inhibit the turnout at the main evening event of the Conference on Bestselling Fiction. Vanessa, though grumbling that she could be home grading papers, had agreed to attend with Stephen. The five principal attractions, who had already enjoyed a private dinner and (Stephen suspected) free-flowing libations with high-end donors to the library, took the stage of the Terhune Memorial Theatre to face a full house of students, faculty, journalists, members of local writing groups, and others from the town and gown communities.
The five authors would be doing individual lectures and small-group meetings with literary wannabes in the course of the weekend, but this was the only time they would appear on a platform together. In the six chairs, from left to right, were the panel discussion’s moderator, Librarian Gillian Godfrey, who successfully held at bay any professional stereotype with a calculatedly windswept hairdo and low-cut evening dress; Cosmo McDougall, chubby and dapper with a permanent expression of sharing a private joke with himself; Muriel Bates, a tiny grey-haired woman who, apart from her Bronx accent, would have been well cast as British TV’s next Miss Marple; Gresham Turnbow, huge and bearded, exuding courtroom presence without even opening his mouth; Callie Jackson, still a raven-haired stunner from the right angle but dressed decades too young and the recipient of more plastic surgery than one of her Hollywood characters; and Amos Bosworth, looking nervous, eager, excited, and uncomfortable in a suit rather than his customary lab coat.
Gillian told the assembled masses that her guests needed no introduction before spending about fifteen minutes introducing them. Then she beamed at her panelists and said, “You are five of the most successful authors in the Western world, and we are incredibly fortunate to be able to exploit your knowledge and experience this evening. Some of you are full-time writers, but others, amazingly enough, have day jobs, including two members of our own faculty. First, could you each tell us something about what your working schedule is like. We’ll start at the far end with Professor Bosworth.”
Bosworth appeared startled at being asked to speak first. “Well, I’m not really working on a book at the moment. And when I was, I guess my working methods were what you might call — what’s the word I want? — compulsive. Yeah, compulsive. For a solid three years, I was up at three in the morning every single day and banged on my computer till six. The rest of the day I spent on reading, teaching, and research, but even then I was thinking about what I was going to write the next morning. Good thing I can get along without a lot of sleep.”