We’re not much for the author as celebrity concept. Mostly because most authors we know are not well suited to public life. Our instinctive wariness of Bergdorf Blondes doesn’t come from the words on the page as much as the hoopla surrounding the author. She hasn’t done much to change our impression that the writing is shallow. We have nothing against shallow — we are more opposed to very large advances to celebrity authors — was there anything about this book that justified that much money (we posted last week on the likelihood of a certain range of advances not to earn; Sykes’s advance falls within this range)? Especially when midlist and new authors are shafted in the process….On an unrelated note, we’d like to point out that it is our impression that the so-called blondes in the book are largely women. Yet the New York Times persists in using the masculine blond in its story.
- Hazards of New Fortunes
- Questions for Plum Sykes
- Revenge of the NSW: Why we love to hate Plum Sykes
