Book Fare: My Dirty Little Secret
“There is a marvelous peace in not publishing. It’s peaceful. Still. Publishing is a terrible invasion of my privacy.” – J.D. Salinger
Book cover of "Wild Bells to the Wild Sky" – not written by J.D. Salinger or the author of this column.
He can say that again.
Or not, because he died last month. But Jerome (whom, I should make clear, I never met) and I do have that in common. We both spared ourselves the haunting, humiliating spectacle of publication, although he had to learn the hard way and produce an American classic first.
I, on the other hand, wrote a romance novel so bad as to be unfit for print.
Let’s understand one thing. Everybody loves some kind of trash sometime. Tabloid gossip is, of course, the biggie. In a class I’m taking on probate law at Eastern Michigan University, the professor brought up Michael Jackson’s kids to illustrate how the rights of the surviving parent to custody are ironclad unless those rights have been terminated by a court. “The minute he died,” we were told, “she could have pulled up to Neverland and grabbed those kids. She – heck, I don’t even remember that woman’s na–”
“Debbie Rowe!!” volunteered way too many of my classmates.
Trash, trash, irresistible trash. [Full Story]