But I’ve never said I wouldn’t link to/write about Laura Albert. She (and her alter ego, JT Leroy) is, after all, my O.J. Caught the New York Times’ latest (”Her Journey, All True,” by Alan Feuer) first on Galleycat, who calls Feuer Albert’s “enabler.”

Honestly, her life feels like a reality show that I need to stop watching. Yet I can’t tear myself away. Can’t she go into seclusion or something? I have a life to lead, for crying out loud.

The journalistic mind gets a little nervous hearing sentiments like this. After all Ms. Albert has veracity issues. Can she be trusted? What, in short, should be discarded? What believed?

Take, for instance, the following encounter in Atascadero, a cheerless town of bedding stores a few miles north of San Luis Obispo. The party stopped for coffee at a Starbucks and fell into a conversation with some gutter punks, pierced and dreadlocked, who were headed for Seattle. Might they have a ride?

They might, although the party’s car was headed south. And anyhow, Ms. Albert said, the police were on their tail. Or more precisely, the "po-po," as she called them. The punks looked baffled and were clearly at a loss. After all, Ms. Albert, in her shades, might have been a late-day Bonnie Parker. Who could tell for sure? When they walked away, the film director, her longtime friend, shook his head and turned to hide a smile.

(On the night before the trip Ms. Albert, her son, her son’s friend and the reporter ducked into a taxi with the reporter’s luggage. The driver asked where they were from, and on the spot Ms. Albert told him she had just come in from New York City, fleeing a tornado that had ripped through town. She said the twister, which was real, had destroyed her home, which was not.)

The point is, what do you make of all of this? Pathology or provocation? Playful joke or a plain old-fashioned lie?

I did say I wouldn’t write about O.J. any more. But I plan to continue writing about lying. How to resolve this?

He’s got a point.

In the Telegraph, A. N. Wilson (Betjeman, 2006) wonders whether the end of smoking means the end of literature (”Is this the end of English literature?“):

This attack on basic liberty, which was allowed through without any significant protest, might mark the end not merely of smoking, but of literature.

Heroic Beryl Bainbridge keeps on smoking for England, but will there be any more writers in the years to come, following in her heroic steps?

Frankly, I think we’re all better off without emphysema and lung cancer, though I always enjoy a contrarian’s view. And nonsmokers are writing some terrific novels. What concerns me most about Wilson’s piece is his depiction of dying pub life. We’ve already lost the corner tavern in Chicago — must England lose its pubs, too?

Could this be the year that the Literary Establishment tries to understand Bestselling Authors?

First, USA Today (OK, not highbrow, but bear with me) documents the book-writing machine that is James Patterson ™.

Next, the Guardian profiles Jodi Picoult, calling her “one of those authors of whom literary editors have never heard, and readers can’t get enough.”

Then, this summer, the Atlantic shadows Harlan Coben (”Paperback Writer,” by Eric Konigsberg). The premise:

Harlan Coben’s work ethic, gift for plot twists, obsession with sales numbers, and careful brand management have made him a blockbuster novelist who earns millions of dollars per book. What it takes to succeed as a thriller writer - even when the literary establishment doesn’t acknowledge your existence

While Gawker took a shot at this piece, taking the angle that Konigsberg is envious of Coben’s success — I found it fascinating. It explores the realities of publishing success and raises some worthwhile discussion points for members of the Literary Establishment and Regular Old Book Reviewers, too.

First let me say that I disagree with Gawker about Konigsberg’s tone. I thought he came across as funny and self-deprecating, maybe a bit envious of Coben’s success but respectful of the hard work it took to achieve it.

Yes, he does paint Coben as a guy working with a wrench (as the illustrator, Richard Thompson, does literally), not listening for the muse — but that’s a fair assessment and one Coben isn’t likely to disagree with. He writes about the childlike simplicity with which bestselling authors are branded. He shows Coben as a guy who is possibly as interested in the marketing as the writing. He even appears to catch him (a la Patterson) drawing a blank about one of his own books:

A few days after I would finish one Coben book - and I continued to find them eminently readable - I couldn’t recall much about the story, or about the men and women who’d populated it.

When we sat down for lunch in the coffee shop of the Luxor, I began to wonder whether even Coben didn’t sometimes find his characters forgettable. I had offered the recollection that Olivia, one of the protagonists of The Innocent, had spent some time in Nevada - a component of her past on which the plot hinges - and he drew a blank. "Really?" he said.

Olivia, I said. From his last book.

"Oh, right. I thought maybe you were talking about somebody you knew."

Well, unlike Patterson, no one says that Coben doesn’t write his own books. And I’m sure even Philip Roth has spaced out on occasion. If Coben had written only one book, such a moment would carry more weight.

And there’s a priceless moment when Coben ruminates on the difference between himself and Dennis Lehane:

"No," Coben said slowly. "I’ve toured with Dennis, and we know each other well. But Dennis and I don’t do the same thing. He’s somebody who comes out with a book every two years or so."

But financially successful writers aren’t simply artists. They’re businessmen, too. That’s largely what the article is about. And there is a big difference in the creation of genre fiction vs. literary fiction — not least of which is the punishing timetable — just as there is a big difference in the way both are received.

Do the literary reviews marginalize and ignore genre fiction? Yes. Are they hypocrites for writing about literary novels that sell in four- and five-digit numbers while ignoring popular works that sell in six and seven digits? Not necessarily.

Fans of bestselling thrillers tend to take umbrage with critics who say the books are poorly written. Often they say something like, “You’re just jealous,” or “How dare you criticize a bestselling author when you aren’t a bestselling author yourself,” or “Neener neener neener.”

But (in addition to the fact that many of the world’s best critics are people who don’t write books, make movies, or design skyscrapers) people who end up getting paid to write about books usually study literature in college. They read classics, literary criticism, experimental fiction, and literary fiction. They even read poetry. They are trained to parse, critique, analyze, and theorize. In other words, it’s not a lot of reading for fun. When they get down to the job of reviewing and criticizing, they apply the same focus they did in school. And David Foster Wallace (who, presumably followed a similar course of study) is likely to fare a lot better than Harlan Coben (who did go to the same college as Wallace, but who presumably liked reading the footnotes less).

Elitist? Maybe. But space is limited, and a lot of these writers are interested in what art says about society. They’re looking for art that reflects and predicts cultural shifts, and works that will prove influential to other writers even if they don’t sell a lot. And you can’t argue that Harlan Coben isn’t finding his audience, even if he isn’t reviewed in the New York Times Book Review.

(On a related note, Booklist sometimes doesn’t review bestselling authors. Is it because we’re snobs? Not really. Publishers of some really big books don’t even send us review galleys. Either their feelings have been hurt by having been ignored by other journals, or they’re telling us that they don’t need us. [Also see chicken and egg, The.] But we do our best to review all high-demand books, even when we have to buy them at the bookstore.) 

I think it’s great when a writer like Konigsberg investigates the phenomenon of a hard-working, bestselling, roll-up-the-sleeves author like Coben. It may sound snobbish for him to admit that, before the article, he hadn’t read Coben — and indeed had barely heard of him – but I think he gets points for curiosity. There are a lot of books out there, and we all have big gaps in our reading knowledge. Konigsberg probably prefers to read books like those he prefers to write (see Blood Relation, 2005).

Full disclosure: I, too, sometimes walk by the bestseller racks and sometimes find myself saying, “Who?” My reading universe is often circumscribed by what is assigned to me, but my personal tastes are offbeat, too. No one in the book biz can cover all of the book biz — a lot of us nod and try to look knowledgeable when we should probably shrug our shoulders.

In a conversation about the bestselling authors cited by Konigsberg – Janet Evanovich, Michael Connelly, Daniel Silva, David Baldacci, Vince Flynn, Dennis Lehane, Tess Gerritsen, Brad Meltzer, and Lee Child — I’ll be standing in the corner where the crickets are chirping. And I consider myself a fan of both literary and genre fiction, too (although I think the labels should be abolished, especially now that Cormac McCarthy is writing SF and Michael Chabon is writing crime fiction).

I’ve never thought of myself as a member of the Literary Establishment, but I do work at one of the country’s premier prepub review journals, so maybe I am a member despite myself. So, in the spirit of inquiry, and breaking down the great wall of snobbery, I hereby acknowledge the existence of Harlan Coben and vow to read one of his novels, whether he notices or not.

I’ll keep you posted.

Maybe it’s the Rowling factor, but “More Britons dream about becoming an author than any other job,” reports a new survey reported in the Guardian (”Writing tops poll of ideal jobs,” by Michelle Pauli). I’d love to see whether the Stateside stats are similar.

Of course, as a sometime struggling author myself, I have to note that, for most of us, the financial compensations of authorship don’t rise to a level that most people would recognize as making it a “job” — there’s enough work to call it that, of course, but only the most gifted and the most fortunate can live by the word processor alone.

But as someone who loves to write, I can see why other people want to do it, too. (And the cocktail-party cred is tremendous.) But the cynic in me (I call him “Ranulph”) must note that, as previously footnoted, most Americans believe they could write a book despite the fact that they rarely read books — which is probably part of the reason why the pay is so bad. Hopefully the British score better on that one.

There are a lot of great things about working for Booklist. One of them is that I work down the hall from the Office for Intellectual Freedom. How cool is that? Not to rub it in, but I’ll bet you don’t have an Office for Intellectual Freedom at your workplace.

They have lots of good advice. For instance:

Q: Do I need to remove the book Alms for Jihad: Charity and Terrorism in the Islamic World from my library?

A: No.

For a less glib but more useful explanation, visit their blog:

Alms for Jihad is the subject of a British libel lawsuit brought by Saudi banker Khalid bin Mahfouz, who has filed several similar lawsuits to contest claims that the Saudi government has used Islamic charities to fund terrorism. Cambridge University Press chose to settle the suit rather than risk a large damage award at trial. Under the settlement, Cambridge University Press has agreed to pulp unsold copies and to ask libraries to return the book to the publisher or destroy the book.

Alert readers will spot a theme to today’s posts. In this one, self-published author (and director of Provincetown, MA’s tourism office) Bill Schneider learns a hard truth about lying: if you must lie, don’t make it a lie that anyone can fact-check with a quick visit to Oprah.com.

From the Weekly Dig (”It’s Story Time,” by Thomas Kilduff):

In March of this year, Schneider released his third book through self-publishers iUniverse. The book, a novelette called Crossed Paths, is described as a gay love story that takes place during “America’s Identity Crisis” of 1976. Schneider’s book has not necessarily been panned or praised by literary critics. They’ve barely touched it — which is odd, considering the book’s supposed fame.

On his website, the author writes, “I am very honored that my new novelette, Crossed Paths, has been selected as an edition [sic] to Oprah’s Book Club. This prestigious recognition paved the way to my appearance on ‘Oprah’ in May 2007. Click here to view a copy of the transcript from the show.”

After an excerpt from the transcript:

It seemed Oprah-ish enough: the wink toward Will and Grace, the heartfelt examination of the “stuff that makes us appear to be who we want others to believe we are.” Unfortunately, Oprah’s representatives say the conversation never took place.

His second mistake? Continuing the lie even while talking to a reporter investigating it.

When we talked, Schneider gushed to me about how “your whole life changes after Oprah.” James Frey would certainly agree with that sentiment.

Had he said he was just making a joke, that he figured no one would take him seriously – well, he would have lessened his chances of becoming a local punchline. At least James Frey apologized.

J. K. Rowling is not writing a crime novel. This isn’t a hoax, or even a prank, but simply a joke retold out of context. The culprit? Ian Rankin, sort of. From the Guardian (”Rowling’s ‘crime novel’ is a red herring,” by Richard Lea):

Speculation that the Edinburgh book festival may have resolved one of the burning questions of modern publishing - what JK Rowling will write next - have been dashed this afternoon, when the Scottish crime writer Ian Rankin diagnosed a case of festival fever.

A report that his wife, Miranda, had seen JK Rowling “scribbling away” in an Edinburgh café, supposedly hard at work on a detective novel set in the Scottish capital, was dismissed as a classic silly season story when the Guardian contacted him by telephone earlier today.

“This is a joke that got out of hand,” said Rankin, describing how the remark was made on stage during the course of a festival event.

“There were 600 people in the audience, and only one person didn’t laugh,” he added.

Well there he goes, depriving us of punny Harry Potter-related headlines for the next year or two.

From the Washington Post (”Poe Fan Takes Credit for Grave Legend,” by Wiley Hall):

BALTIMORE — The legend was almost too good to be true. For decades, a mysterious figure dressed in black, his features cloaked by a wide-brimmed hat and scarf, crept into a churchyard to lay three roses and a bottle of cognac at the grave of Edgar Allan Poe. Now, a 92-year-old man who led the fight to preserve the historic site says the visitor was his creation.

“We did it, myself and my tour guides,” said Sam Porpora. “It was a promotional idea. We made it up, never dreaming it would go worldwide.”

Further down in the story, however, it appears that Porpora may have fictionalized his autobiography — which is not my kind of literary hoax.

And this paragraph made me chuckle:

Porpora’s belief that he resurrected the international fame of Poe, that master of mystery and melancholia, is questioned by some Poe scholars. But they do credit Porpora, a former advertising executive, with rescuing the cemetery at Westminster Presbyterian Church where the writer is buried.

Hey, rescuing a cemetery is nothing to sneeze at.

Well, I’m back. I never thought I’d find myself desperate to get back to the clean air of Chicago, but it’s a fact: much of Western Montana is on fire. The air was so smoky that, half the time, we couldn’t see the mountains. Sometimes we couldn’t even see the sun. I stood on my grandparents’ back porch and watched ash — identifiable as pieces of leaves and moss — fall from the sky. I thought maybe I had been rereading The Road and fallen asleep.

After weeding my inbox (I really have no interest whatsoever in stock picks, C1@li$, or “pics”) and the much more enjoyable job of reading two weeks’ worth of Likely Stories (”Wow,” I thought, “my blog is good!”), I’m surprised to find the day already drawing to a close.

(I was relieved to learn that the stacks of books on my desk were not, in fact, for me to review. Apparently a certain editor was using my office as overflow storage space while I was gone.)

My grateful thanks to (in alphabetical order) Frank, Kaite, and Neal for keeping this space not just warm but piping hot. I was informed, entertained, and inspired by your posts. You made my fears of being upstaged come true, but fortunately, I retain Admin rights. (We’ll see how long I hold out when your new fans storm the cyber-gate.)

I managed to read two books on vacation, both of them terrific: Olen Steinhauer’s Bridge of Sighs and Kyril Bonfiglioli’s Don’t Point That Thing at Me. I already knew Steinhauer’s Eastern European series was great (I’m just reading it out of order, that’s all), but the Bonfiglioli was a rarity for me, a random pick off a bookstore shelf. Now I can’t believe I’d never heard of it. I read the first page and laughed out loud, then kept laughing all the way home — I read the last page as the plane touched down at O’Hare. I’ll try to write more about it when I have time, but, if it helps, Don’t Point made me think of P. G. Wodehouse, Hunter S. Thompson, Kingsley Amis, and Vladimir Nabokov. And once or twice of Pablo Tusset (and, for some reason, John Kennedy Toole).

I brought a few other books home, too. I don’t really need any books, but I couldn’t help myself:

• A River Runs Through It (a cool old paperback edition — yes, I am a native Montanan, and no, I’ve never read this; time to break the senseless embargo)
• Deadman, by Jon A. Jackson
• Winter Range, by Claire Davis
• The Right Madness, by James Crumley
• The Last Good Kiss, by James Crumley (a, ahem, first edition — although I’m not quite sure if it’s a first printing; I just had never even seen a hardcover before)

Spot a theme?