Doesn't Anybody Write Fiction Anymore?
If you are or ever were a gossip columnist, you really need to publish your roman a clef this month. Deborah Schoeneman's 4% Famous and former Page Sixer Ian Spiegelman's Welcome to Yesterday are being released within weeks of one another; both feature gossip columnists as protagonists, and both are laden with thinly veiled portrayals of colleagues. Spiegelman's novel, for example, has the following description of a notoriously drunk, Australian gossip:
He smelled of 10,000 year-old desert plants, of too-wildly realized potential, of the furnace at the core of the earth. Like one of Lovecraft's ancient gods, only the outermost part of him was visible in this world, only his most ragged fringes.
[Main character touches drunkard's drink when he leaves the room]
"You will unhand her," he said before the steel door had opened wide enough to admit his silver pompadour. "You will unhand her unmolested, my young merdivore, or you will force me to educate."
"You can't unhand a thing unmolested, August."
"Oh just put the fucking glass down, you schmuck— there's still a drink in it."
August? Why not just name the character Stevie?
In his defense, Spiegelman at least relies on some sort of creativity: his plot revolves around a gossip writer who gets involved in a murder — as opposed to, say, a gossip writer who gets sacked after sending threatening emails. That would've been too easy.
