Red Room Where the Writers Are

How I became a Famous Novelist By Steve Hely is a novel about what the title suggests. Pete Tarslaw is the protagonist, an underachieving young man who decides to become a famous novelist and narrates this story about his plans. His plans are not to write a literary masterpiece or craft his skill at writing. Writing is not his passion; his only writing gig is taking poorly written college essays and rewriting them for prospective college students. His motivation for wanting to become a successful writer is to impress an ex-girlfriend at her wedding. Successful is important as he doesn’t want to simply become published; he wants to receive a massive advance, immense royalties, a movie deal, young female book groupies, and professorship so he can live forever on being successful. To become a success, he wants to follow a formula: imitate the style of bestselling writers (the book presents and discusses a mock bestseller list) by writing a cheesy novel filled with grand descriptions and clichéd proverbs.

All in all, Pete Tarslaw wants to become the perfect con artist and con his way to success. Pete reveals that he believes the entire literary industry to be a con, filled with people who could care less about substance. As a lover of literature, I find Pete to be an arrogant know-it-all who feels the need to understate and underestimate the power of great writers and readers of great literature. But I liked this novel, not because I like Pete but because this novel makes you think about the industry. Is there a formula to becoming a bestselling writer? Does making the bestseller list correlate to being a good writer? (my answer is no, plenty of good pieces of literature make the list and plenty don’t) Are there some who are conning the industry and readers? These questions do not have clear-cut answers.

This novel is at best a satire, not to be consumed too seriously or else you will throw this book against a wall. This satire is not the most complex satirical story but it is fun to read and makes me ask questions. As Pete rises to the top, Hely does a great job of showing the problems which accompany a non-passionate con artist in the world of literature.