Famous Writers School: A Novel [Hardcover]

Steven Carter (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 12, 2006

Steven Carter, who has been called "madly inventive" (Kirkus) and "darkly comic" (Village Voice), has a genius for letting his characters speak for themselves, and here they do so quite literally. Famous Writers School is composed of the letters and stories of three authors who are taking a would-be correspondence course by that grandiose name, and the self-serving "lessons" that Wendell Newton, their endearingly obtuse instructor, doles out in response. Wendell's oddball collection of students include Rio, an alluring blues singer on whom he quickly develops a crush; Linda Trane, an unhinged housewife who seems to be stalking him; and Dan, a truly talented author of hard-boiled detective fiction. As Dan's gritty mystery arrives piece by piece, Wendell gets hooked on the story--and decides to dress it up in his own style in order to pass it off as his creation. Gradually the slender threads of connection between each character become apparent, even as Wendell's imagination careens out of control. Carter skillfully weaves these narratives into a genre-bending romp that is at once reminiscent of The Jane Austen Book Club and Get Shorty.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Wendell Newton, the protagonist in Carter's second novel (after I Was Howard Hughes), is a former editorial staffer at America's Farmer and author (or so he says) of more than 70 stories, essays and reviews, and a forthcoming novel. He's also the founder, director and writer-in-residence of the Famous Writers School, a correspondence course advertised in the back pages of literary quarterlies. His students include a John Deere sales rep who writes gritty crime fiction and two women—a Pittsburgh "blues and torch" singer and a housewife given to sentence fragments—whose ambitions are less well-defined. The tractor salesman's talent makes Wendell's attitude toward him initially adversarial and eventually predatory, while Wendell's relationships with the two women quickly devolve into psychological gamesmanship. Some of Wendell's writing advice is wryly humorous ("[E}very artist steals. However, when one steals, he must steal brilliantly"), but, as Wendell insists in Lesson Five, plot must always grow out of character, and it's here the novel stumbles. Though Wendell exerts a perverse charm on the reader as a lovable loser, his students, who exist entirely through their correspondence, are lightly sketched. The novel's rewards are nonetheless considerable. Carter has a terrific ear for the rumblings of the human ego and an intuitive sense of how fiction is often substituted for truth—and vice versa. (Oct.)
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About the Author

Steven Carter is an assistant professor of English at Georgetown College in Kentucky and is the author of I Was Howard Hughes. He lives in Georgetown, Kentucky.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Counterpoint (September 12, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1582433569
• ISBN-13: 978-1582433561
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 6 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,788,089 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Something Completely Different, March 10, 2007

By 

Kevin Joseph (McLean, VA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Famous Writers School: A Novel (Hardcover)

I picked up this book on a whim while browsing the new arrivals section at my local library. It had an unusual cover and a premise that intrigued me. Fortunately that was enough to make me take a chance on this unusual novel.

Wendell Newton runs a writing correspondence course. The novel is comprised entirely of the lessons Newton mails to his current crop of three students and the writing samples they mail back for his critique. The three students make colorful characters in their own right (a PhD flunkie/lounge singer, a desperate housewife/stalker, and a tractor salesman seeking editorial feedback on an offbeat mystery novel).

As the lessons progress, we learn that Newton is more charlatan than artist, dispensing half-baked writing advice while looking for angles to take advantage of his students. We also become engrossed by the tractor salesman's novel within the novel (entitled "Undress, My Lovely" if the cover art is to be believed), a bizarre caper written in a hard-boiled style and populated by small-town crooks and two-bit losers. And we're entertained by the tension between the tractor salesman's vision of suspenseful, plot-driven genre fiction and the instructor's preachings that good writing must be subtle and plotless, as well as devoid of blood-pumping action or sex.

I won't say more about how the instructor and his students' lives ultimately intersect. But I will say that this book offers a unique combination of suspenseful entertainment, interesting musings on what makes good (and bad) writing, and thoughtful riffs on how the art a writer creates is inevitably derived from what the writer has experienced or read elsewhere. If only some of this novel's loose threads had been tied together with a bit more care, I wouldn't have bumped this from five stars down to four.

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars At the feet of Wendell Newton, November 19, 2006

By 

Lawrentius Verifer "widely-read reader" (NC) - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Famous Writers School: A Novel (Hardcover)

When one buys this novel one not only gets a great read but also gets to absorb the lessons that Wendell Newton (who describes himself as a "widely published fiction writer") sends to his subscribers. The quality of Wendell's students varies widely, but Dan Federman's work seems to rival that of the "widely published fiction writer" who is his teacher. In fact, as Dan submits succeeding chapters his teacher becomes more and more interested in fostering his work.
Not that Wendell can spend all his time on Dan. Wendell's postal relations with his students quickly become complex, and then events begin to leave the page and intrude into Wendell's own daily life. Formerly disembodied voices become all too real.
Steven Carter leads his readers deeper and deeper into his story by encouraging Wendell's students to speak candidly with their teacher, though their honesty becomes increasingly problematic. Indeed, Steven Carter demonstrates the possibility that teaching and learning can become a complex process of mutual manipulation between teacher and students.
Like one does with any good novel, one will read and reread it to trace the knots that are expertly tied by the author. Rereadings will also seek to parse the character of Wendell himself, who as the chief (and only) officer of Famous Writers School encounters many of the temptations that beseige other entrepreneurs in these (ethically-challenged?) times.
Whatever you do, don't miss the opportunity to amuse yourself with the ultimate irony expressed by the clever contruction of the front of the book's dust jacket.
In *Famous Writer's School* Steven Carter amply demonstrates why he himself is a widely published author!

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Truly Original, November 19, 2006

By 

David Phalen (Southern Maryland) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Famous Writers School: A Novel (Hardcover)

Of all the occupational hazards that we frequent readers find ourselves up against on a daily basis, the most serious has to be the curse of knowing too much. Having seen just about everything worth doing done by someone in the past, it becomes all too easy to start pigeon-holing what we're currently reading into the context of something that some other writer has already written (often better). We tend to hold back on descriptive words like "fresh" and "original" because the more we read, the more difficult it becomes to honestly say that what we're reading is completely unlike anything we've ever read in the past.

That's why it's always a great joy to come across a book like FAMOUS WRITERS SCHOOL. As other reviewers have noted, it's not hard to find some parallels between this novel and the works of others (along with Beckett, Nabokov, and Carver, I'd add folks like Mark Harris and Margaret Maron). But it's impossible to point to any of these writers (or any others that this book has reminded people of) and honestly say, "This book is a lot like...." Because this novel is NOT "a lot" like anything that anybody has ever done before. It certainly contains tiny riffs of folks like Dashiell Hammett in places, while echoes of Flannery O'Connor can be heard at other times. But it's not these "influences" that make this book such an enjoyable read. They merely serve as a sort of familiar grounding for us until we realize that what we're really holding in our hands is that holy grail we seek every time we pick up a new novel: a fresh, original work that expands our sense of what is possible in fiction.

Having spent so much time comparing this work to the work of others, I would be remiss if I neglected to point out what I find most incredible about THIS author's work. What Carter does best, it seems to me, is create two layers for each of his main characters. There is the self-idealized "public" persona that people project (both consciously and unconsciously) in their interactions with others, and there is the often less-assured "real" self that indirectly comes across through a gradual accrual of details that they let slip into those public interactions. The true joy of this novel for me was in finding those hints (some very obvious and humorous, but others almost heart-breakingly subtle) of what really makes the four main characters tick. None of them are as simple and direct as they might seem if looked at only through how they present themselves through the letters and writing assignments they send back and forth to each other.

I found myself thinking of this novel the other day while watching an episode of "The Office" on television. The moments I like best on that show are the ones where the characters realize that others (particularly the cameras there filming the documentary) might not be seeing them as they want to be seen. FAMOUS WRITERS SCHOOL is full of moments like that: moments that made me laugh out loud, because if I didn't laugh, I might feel like crying in sympathy for how much these people are just like me.