Looking For Free Publicity

So Salon (www.salon.com) has run not one but two articles in the last week in which a writer gets even with somebody who blogs about them. (http://www.salon.com/mwt/feature/2005/10/15/bug/index.html) and (http://www.salon.com/books/feature/2005/10/13/blog/index.html)

I have a novel coming out in January (Long Way Back, published by Villard, pre-order now and avoid the rush!) and I can use all the publicity I can get. At first I thought, well, I can just use my blog to start trashing high-profile writers, and eventually one of them will use Salon's bully pulpit to smack me down. I was busy composing a laundry list of insults (you know, something like "Oh, Amy Tan has a new book coming out--lemme guess: it's about a Chinese-American woman and her cruel, distant, but ultimately admirable mom!") (Or Gregory Maguire amazes by making the myths of our childhood something they've never been before: pretentious and dull!)

But then I thought, well, Gregory Maguire at least is local, and so he might just kick my ass in person, and that wouldn't really do, publicity-wise, unless we could get a headline in the Globe or something that said: "Literary Smackdown!" And anyway, I thought, I got an article published in the New York Freakin' Times! If I'm good enough for them, I oughta be good enough for Salon. But I suppose I could wait a long time for a blogger to really trash me--my auto-googling reveals that most people have generally nice things to say about me in their blogs. Maybe I could push this to Salon as a new angle.

But then I thought, why wait? Problem solved! I will simply trash myself in my blog, and then write an article for Salon about how haunting it was to read about myself in somebody's blog, and how my emotions teetered between flattery, resentment, and rage. Hopefully I can sneak at least two plugs for my new novel, Long Way Back, available January 3 in finer bookstores. Here goes:

I see where Brendan Halpin, whom I've previously described as "nasty, brutish, and short" has a new novel, Long Way Back, coming out in January. Oh, let me guess: some trite sentimentalism, some hackneyed plotting informed by his semi-literate, sitcom-drenched imagination, a couple of characters obsessed with popular culture. Lather, rinse, repeat. I can't believe this hack, with his workmanlike prose, gets to publish bloated short stories that would certainly be rejected from any literary journal not run by apes, and pass them off as novels. Oh, how I loathe Brendan Halpin. His first memoir, It Takes a Worried Man, revealed him to be simultaneously a simpering wuss who cried like a little bitch all the time just because his wife had a fatal illness, and an inveterate horndog who systematically denied women their personhood by objectifying them as "hot." Also, he doesn't understand the genius of Dan Fogelberg. His teaching memoir, Losing My Faculties, reveals all that is wrong with public education: it attracts mean-spirited burnouts like Halpin. His first novel, Donorboy, was given the Alex Award despite being a weak, gimmicky attempt to update the epistolary novel with cutesy emails and instant messaging. Donorboy's cardboard characters and sentimental plot would have embarrassed the writers from "The Facts of Life." Halpin is beneath my contempt, he is a dog turd on the shoe of the literary world. Stay tuned for more posts about how much I hate him.

Whew! That was strangely fun! Now if I can just craft the right Salon article: there I sat, surrounded by empty cans of seltzer and diet coke and the wreckage of a package of New Morning Graham-Wiches, googling myself, when I suddenly came across a blog entry full of such venom and bile that it took my breath away. What had I ever done to this "Brendan Halpin" to deserve such hatred? I knew I shouldn't, but I began checking his fine blog, "Girl in a Cage" every day just to see if my name was mentioned. And then, one day, I found out he was me. It was kind of like Fight Club.