Customer Reviews

Famous Writers School: A Novel

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

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.

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!

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.

Since a novel of this sort could easily be misunderstood, let me start by stressing what it is NOT. While the plot - like that of Carter's previous work, I WAS HOWARD HUGHES - does feature a writer as its main character, FAMOUS WRITERS SCHOOL is NOT an exercise in self-indulgence that glorifies the writing process and all-too-knowingly plays with the conventions of fiction. Carter is a storyteller first and an experimentalist second. Nor is this novel a cheap shot at mediocre writing. A shapeshifter in terms of voice and style, Carter manages the seemingly impossible task of mimicking "bad writing" through the voices of several characters without the slightest hint of condescension. In fact, he spins these voices into a complicated and intriguing narrative. Much of what "happens" in the book is unstaged. That is, we participate and piece together clues between the documents that Carter offers us. From one of the writers, a tractor salesman, we get a self-contained detective story, a thrilling marriage of James Crumley and William Faulkner.

To be sure, in contrast to Wendell plagiaristic borrowings from his own students, Carter's literary influences are on open display here, ranging from Flannery O'Connor to Raymond Carver to Raymond Chandler. His irony at the level of narration also seems to come from Vladimir Nabokov. Wendell, whose "lessons" to his students always hover at the inconspicuous threshold of insanity, seems cut from the same cloth as the narrator and pedantic scholar of Nabokov's PALE FIRE, Charles Kinbote, whose unsettled state doesn't come across to the reader until he says in mid-thought, "There is a very loud amusement park right in front of my present lodgings."

Famous Writers School continues Carter's innovative yet accessible and deeply enjoyable twists on the traditional novel. Unlike the intellectual postmodern guff that increases sales in corduroy each year, Carter has the reader in mind at each step. If he does invite us to think about the nuts and bolts of narrative, he also offers a love story, a mystery, and an incredibly sympathetic portrayal of his somewhat villainous protagonist, who is actually a better writer than most reviews of the book acknowledge. Carter is, without question, one of the most underrated voices (and he has several of them) in contemporary fiction - this should be more than apparent to anyone with an ear for language, a sense of intelligent drama, and an understanding of the crippling insecurities that make us human.

This is a charming and funny book by Steven Carter. I laughed as much as I did reading his first novel, I Was Howard Hughes! I felt drawn into the characters as if I knew them, which proves what a talented writer Carter is in his ability to create such interesting characters and plots. This was one of those books I could not put down. I was compelled to finish reading it!

glad to have had the opportunity to read such a great book. once i began to read i just couldnt put it down. a funny and upbeat read for all.

The concept, the humor, the characters, the plot(s)---fun to read from first page to last!

Steven Carter's second book accomplishes what Faulkner sat out to do with Sanctuary. By this, I mean that Famous Writers School is an accessible, plot-driven, page-turner while remaining a unique, literary work. This book will grab you instantly, and if you put it down, it will call to you during your busy day. You'll look for those minutes when you can squeeze in just the next ten pages. Simply stated, if you've never read anything by Steven Carter, get this book.

I found this book by accident while shelf-shopping at Borders. The cover caught my eye (a too familiar sight around my house.) I liked the way the book looked inside -- multiple typefaces, no chapters -- and bought it. I stayed up all nite until I finished it. The characters are memorable, especially those in the story that Dan was writing. I wish that Linda's scheme would have had more repercussions.

This is one of the funniest novels I've read in years. It's right up there with classics like Catcher in the Rye and Confederacy of Dunces. The book's just flat out funny, but Carter does it without ever making fun of his characters, and the detective novel-within-a-novel is great too, like reading something co-authored by Elmore Leonard and Raymond Chandler.