I know next to nothing about Snooki.
I know there’s a show called Jersey Shore and that people watch it because it’s a supposed train wreck, full of ridiculous people being, well…ridiculous.
I’m not a fan of fame for the sake of fame, but the main reason I have never watched the show is — I’ll admit — while I have my moments of refined taste, I also have a love for tacky things.
I’m afraid, much like my life-long love of professional wrestling (which I admit is beyond ridiculous), I just might find myself eagerly awaiting the next exploits of those nutty, obnoxious people from Jersey.
Outside of Snooki’s book deal being part of a bigger problem we face as a country (more people can probably name every winner of American Idol than the Vice President), I could care less.
The Snooki Thing…It Writes
Last year, some writer friends were outraged when Snooki got her book deal.
Not a non-fiction, “This is how much fake tan you can use before being compared to an original Oompa Loompa,” deal, but a full-blown, “Even though I’ve only read two novels in my life, I’m gonna write one!” deal.
I’ve read excerpts of Snooki’s book and they are laughably bad (although if somebody like Junot Díaz wrote a line like, “Johnny Hulk tasted like fresh gorilla,” we’d probably not be as critical; of course, it would probably make more sense than I imagine it does in Snooki’s book). (I have no idea what the line’s about, but taken out of context, it’s a line I almost wish I had written!)
So Snooki, a person who has probably never hungered to be published like the rest of us, has a book out…
This Isn’t New
I’m not a fan of many blockbuster novelists. (And there are some blockbuster novelists I love.)
I’ve tried reading Nicolas Sparks, James Patterson, and even a Danielle Steele novel when I worked at a library and it was back behind the desk. When Bridges of Madison County came out, I picked it up to see what the hype was all about; within the first 1/8th of the tiny book, I put it back down.
But I’d never begrudge any of these authors of their successes.
Nicolas Sparks wrote a handful of novels before his million dollar sale that came with the agreement [paraphrased], “You’re not that good, but the story has something — make these changes to the manuscript and we can maybe work something out.” Granted, the goal is to get better with those first few novels nobody sees, but still — he wrote more than most of us before we ever saw one of his books on a shelf.
Publishing is a business, and if Stephenie Meyer has legions of fans willing to read her poorly-written stories about her emo vampires and buff werewolves, so be it. (To be fair, I put Twilight down, so maybe the writing got better.)
Traditionally, it’s been those very blockbusters that many of us dislike — even loathe in cases — that allow many of the writers we love the chance to be published.
“Crappy” writers making huge piles of cash make publishing houses a little more willing to take chances on writers who may not even break even on a $5,000 advance. Some big name writers cranking out trashy stories many scoff at, in a roundabout way, are responsible for the careers of more than a handful of writers who were eventually able to pay the bills exclusively through writing.
If a handful of crappy books brings in so much money that publishers can have breathing room for the books they truly love that barely break even, why complain?
Staying Power
Every year, I see publishing stories that infuriate writers. Sure, it can be discouraging when somebody like Snooki “makes it,” while the rest of us look ahead to another decade of busting our asses, striving to be better writers.
But do you really think Snooki’s made it?
Does anybody really think she’ll be anything more than a “where are they now,” spot on VH-1 in a decade, instead of a “star” on MTV right now?
We all have the right to be loud, pick our teeth in public, and desperately push our way into the spotlight, just like so many flash-in-the-pan celebrities who aren’t really celebrities.
But do you really want to do that?
Even more: do you really think this is the first step of Snooki’s long career as an established novelist? (I’ll say this, if there’s a day Haruki Murakami and Snooki are up for the Nobel Prize in Literature and Snooki wins, I’ll give up writing and start using spray on tan!)
I can name more than a few unsuccessful writers who were supposed to be big, like Snooki.
Okay, so I can’t…and that’s the point. They don’t last! Most writers given the kinds of deals that work the rest of us into a frenzy are one shots at best, never to be heard from again.
When everything you do relies on making a spectacle of yourself, the only people really following your career (if it can even be called a career), are fickle individuals looking for the next wreck.
Once the next wreck comes along, you’re looking at sitting in a nail salon in Jersey in 20 years, talking about the time “I once wrote one of them book thingies!”
Jealousy
I could care less about Snooki’s publishing deal beyond the reaction it’s caused. (I do understand where Jane Devin’s coming from in the linked blog; I just don’t think it does a person any good being jealous of others.)
If somebody has something I want, I don’t begrudge the person — I figure out what I need to do in order to attain whatever it is I’ve seen. If something prevents me from getting there, I still have plenty; to complain would be ridiculous.
In the case of Snooki, never in my life would I want to be what she is in order to get a publishing deal.
We all know she didn’t get the deal because she can write. Sure, it furthers stereotypes that anybody can write a book and all the other annoyances that come with what we’ve chosen to do with our lives. But nobody’s putting a gun to my head and telling me to write…and definitely, nobody’s putting a gun to my head and telling me to write like Snooki. (If that ever happens, I’ll meet Jane Devin on the rooftop of Walmart and jump head first to the pavement below with her.)
I write because I want to write, and nothing — not even if Snooki makes every bestseller list and stays there for a year until her next bestseller comes out — can stop me!
If she makes Simon and Schuster enough money to give a small advance to a new writer whose hard work eventually pays off in the form of eking out a living, great!
If Snooki makes it big and writes more books and it infuriates writers enough to leave the publishing industry wallowing in its own desperate waste one day while the rest of us have found different ways to spread our writing without them, great!
I’m that optimist many people want to slap, but it’s fine by me…’cause I wouldn’t want to be Snooki for anything, and it would be a real shame if I let jealousy of her success slow me down for even a moment…
* * *
Snooki image by Jeff Lewis.
Okay, I gotta admit: I planned to go back to three blog entries a week, but that means a big image of Snooki would be on the site until next Monday, so I just might have to write something else on Thursday so that by the time Friday rolls around, Snooki is just a 66 pixel thumbnail and not a 250 pixel thing glaring on the page…
Isn’t it overly optimistic to assume that publishers use the gains from craptastic books to publish ones that they and the public actually love? I think it’s more likely that if a Snooki book is successful, then they’ll just publish more Snooki-type books.
I glanced at Jane’s article, and it seems to me she’s not being jealous, but rightfully outraged. Unlike some other celebrities, Alec Baldwin or Rosie O’Donnell for example, it appears Snooki doesn’t even read. Two books in her life, according to the news, and I think this is what drives other authors mad. Not just that celebrities have an easy in, but that they don’t even have to have a shred of experience. They make a mockery not only of other writers, but of readers and the business of publishing.
Of course we write because we “love” it, but you do realize that if this were any other lauded profession the cry of unfair would be much greater, don’t you? If a baseball team hired a rock star to play ball even though he’d never played before, there would be a revolt.
Not so with the arts. We remain so without ethics or guidelines that we don’t care who gets to play on our team.
Rod,
Thanks for the reply; obviously, we don’t agree on everything, but we probably agree on more than it may seem.
I realize it’s optimistic to believe that publishers making money on books like Snooki’s will eventually trickle down to helping a no-name or newer writer. But…publishing has always existed quite heavily on this model, and while things have changed in so many ways, that’s still something that happens. If there weren’t bestselling novels (that do, indeed, result in more of the same kinds of novels being published), many writers really wouldn’t have been published.
The bestsellers that many loathe are the very sales that fill the coffers of many publishing houses, enabling writers who aren’t as commercial a chance at seeing their work published. It may not count as much as it once did, but it still enables publishing houses to take some chances that may not make them money right away.
It’s not quite as common as it once was, but the money raked in from bestsellers isn’t like conservative trickle down economics; it’s something that’s always allowed publishers to take chances on writers who aren’t as commercially viable. The sales of handfuls of huge blockbusters has always sustained those who aren’t as commercially viable. Not as much now that publishing overall isn’t making as much as it once did, but bestsellers still matter. (That, or we need to go to much smaller presses.)
I won’t argue that if Snooki actually sells books, she won’t sell more. (I don’t know enough about her and her fans to know beyond my own assumptions, but my assumption is her fans probably aren’t the biggest readers, and she won’t sell a pile of books. I may be wrong. If I am, here’s hoping some of those new readers move on to better things).
I didn’t just glance at Jane’s article like you said you did — I read every word. And I liked it. She admits right up front that she’s ranting, and I understand where she’s coming from. That rage is something we’ve all felt.
The jealousy I speak of comes from people I actually know — not Jane. Like Snooki, I know next to nothing about Jane, so I can only go by what she tells me: that she’s angry about Snooki getting a book deal. I don’t think she’s jealous.
At the same time, Jane segues into the whole suffering artist thing. And I feel for her. (Even though I find it interesting that somebody who can afford Starbucks coffee for the free wifi can’t break the coffee habit I can’t afford and pay for her own wifi.) Like Jane, I’ve worked many crap jobs.
I’ve worked outside in the Texas heat…a lot. I’ve made the parts for doll parts with a two-part resin that made the warehouse even hotter. I’ve cut catfish so it fried better in deep fryers. I’ve worked in group homes with mentally retarded adults. In short, I’ve worked a LOT of shitty jobs. And, like Jane and her many jobs, all the crap I endured makes me a MUCH better writer than some fake-tanned thing from New York or Jersey, desperately vying for attention.
Like Jane, I don’t vie for attention: I work every fuckin’ day to be a better writer.
I’m guessing that Snooki doesn’t.
I don’t know Snooki; I don’t know her hardships, but I imagine she’s had some. I don’t think she wrote her first book while the older sister who damn-near raised her died a horrible death from cancer over two years like my sister did. I don’t know if her father was addicted to drugs and alcohol and died when she was 22 like my father did.
I started hitting a loose stride as a writer when my father died; I wrote my first novel while my sister shit and pissed on me while I cared for her, before she became a husk in a bed, practically unaware of people around her. I wrote my second and most of my third novel while dealing with a friggin’ brain tumor! So if anybody has a right to be pissed and fume about Snooki, it’s me.
And yet I don’t. I’m not writing a blog post going on about how hard my life is because I have to drive over 10 miles to a Starbucks because you know what? I’m at least not living in a hole in Afghanistan covered by a tarp, in fear that the rest of my family will one day be killed.
I’m not denying that Jane has a hard life, but there are people who would kill for her position in the grand hierarchy of things.
And, like I said, I’ll be the first person to hold Jane’s hand and leap from the top of Walmart if Snooki gets literary credit for what I’m going to [somewhat] unfairly assume is a crappy book. (I haven’t read it, and I don’t make a habit of saying something sucks that I haven’t actually read. The day I do that, I lose the ability to complain when politicians call for banning things they haven’t read.)
If people are infuriated that celebrities get book deals and the rest of us busting our asses don’t, ya know what…we can strive to be celebrities.
Or…we can maintain our integrity and accept that we will never make as much as sooooooo many bestselling artists.
If more people like Dan Brown’s next schlocky page-turning thriller than the novel I finished last summer, so what? I at least wrote a novel that matters to me, and it’s a crappy assumption on my part to assume that the stories Dan Brown writes don’t matter to him. Just because I like to think I tried for something more doesn’t mean that I’m instantly more deserving of praise for my efforts.
To say celebrities make a mockery of writers is self-centered. If we’re going to play the “Who deserves it more?” game, there are celebrities who have paid their dues even more than me, you, and Jane put together. If we’re going to play the “Who deserves it more?” game, there are always people who have had it harder than us — even if we’ve had it hard. If you subscribe to that “who had it harder?” logic, many of us don’t deserve it.
I’m a nice guy; really I am, but your sports analogy is a huge pile of weakness. As a lifelong fan of the Chicago Bears, the Chicago Cubs, and the Chicago Blackhawks, I can see the beauty and art in sports. (At the same time, I can look at people like my grandfather on my father’s side, who put his worth as an individual on the backs of Chicago sports teams and was often let down…and think about how much of his life was wasted because he didn’t get off his lazy ass and do much more with his life than complain about things. Perhaps this is why things like Snooki with a book deal don’t bother me too much — I’m going to do my thing regardless of what others do, no matter what…and I’m not going to point fingers or gripe that I was given a shitty hand because some [assumingly] dim thing like Snooki writes a book.)
Here’s where your analogy tanks into the ground in a smoldering hole: sports and writing are different. If a rock star were to lace up the skates and step onto the ice with the Chicago Blackhawks, they’d either have their ass handed to them in a huge way…or they’d deservedly succeed and be a professional hockey player. Most likely, their ass would be handed to him. Sports aren’t subjective: you win or you lose, and if a rock star were the reason a team didn’t make the playoffs, sad individuals would be calling for his or her death because the team failed.
Sports deals in much larger absolutes than the arts.
Writing has had decades of ethics and guidelines that kept many worthy writers out, while rewarding a chosen few. Things have changed, and in many ways, you and I would be shoulder to shoulder in a bar, drinking beer and complaining about how far the industry has fallen. But whether it’s writing, painting, music, or another art, it’s subjective. There’s no extra innings where we get to knock one over the wall and be remembered forever as the person who won the World Series.
It’s arrogant to say what is and what is not art. (To be fair, I’ve done it myself.) What I think is beautiful — what I think it art — is shit to others. And what others proclaim as brilliant is tired crap to me. There’s no definite score that proclaims a definite winner like in sports.
It’s not my place to say what I assume are the dim fans of Snooki should not be allowed to read her book. I shouldn’t be allowed to wave my hand and stop Snooki from working with [I’m assuming] a ghostwriter, and crank out a book.
In a weird, roundabout way, the assumed ghostwriter of Snooki’s book is an artist in my eyes, because he or she has written a book that — from the excerpts I’ve read — sounds every bit as stupid as the couple clips of Snooki I’ve seen. In a surreal way, that’s more artistic to me than Jonathan Franzen writing another book about suburbia that pales — to me — when compared to A.M. Homes and other writers out there willing to cut much deeper into middle America. To me, Franzen doesn’t have the balls to cut loose; to others, he cuts to the bone. What is crap to me is gold to others, and it’s not my place to shit on their ingot and call it mine!
It’s not my place to say, “This is art and this is not!” I think it’s an arrogant thing for you to believe it’s our place to say what’s good and what’s bad, because you may read Robert Olmstead’s A Trail of Heart’s Blood Wherever We Go and think it’s shit, while I think it’s a brilliant book. And…what you think is great literature may seem tired and stale to me. (I like to think we both strive for much more in whatever arts we pursue that the work we create carries with it something more than Snooki cranking out a book for cash.)
We may have similar tastes, including [I’m assuming] that Snooki’s book is a giant pile of shit needing to be scaled with ropes, caribiners, and other climbing gear. (Without a good view when we reach the top.) While your reply to my entry was pointed and my reply to your reply is pointed, I would hope we could find common ground and get along, even with our differences. I’m a liberal strict vegetarian and an atheist, but one of my good friends is a conservative Christian who thinks Obama’s middle name says it all.
I’m sure if the two of us sat down over coffee or a beer that we’d agree on a lot. I’m not saying that Snooki deserves it more than you, me, Jane Devin, or other writers who have spent years working to get better, while Snooki parties her money away and inches another step closer to being another has-been.
That’s the thing that publishing does well enough: it sorts out what’s good and bad, regardless of our opinions. There are many bestselling writers I think write crap, but if they have an audience, it’s not my place to shit on it.
If a celebrity writer is like your rock star-turned-athlete example and fails, the system weeds them out. But, again, winning the Lombardi Trophy is not like winning the Pulitzer or Nobel Prize in Literature — it’s more of an absolute. You either win, or lose.
Art (and entertainment, because I can’t bring myself to call what I’ve read of Snooki’s book art; I’m stretching to call it entertainment), is subjective. Sports — not so much.
As for Snooki, I don’t know much about her, but I’m assuming there will be a day she’s little more than a memory. She won’t win any literary awards — she won’t carry the Cubs to the World Series. She will be another has-been person starved for attention, who jumped on an opportunity and milked it for all it’s worth.
Meanwhile, knowing very little about Jane Devin, she may have a stack of books published that people remember when Snooki is long forgotten. I would have probably done well to do a Google search on your name before replying to you — you may be a successful writer in your own right (or another art entirely), or on the cusp of greatness. I hope that’s the case — seriously, I wish you all the best in everything you do.
Snooki hasn’t made it, and I don’t think she ever will. From what little I know, the only reason people watch what she does is many people revel in spectacle; much like many writers revel in the antics of snotty writers throughout history.
If I had the power to wave my hand and give Jane Devin and other writers busting their asses the chance at making it vs. the guarantee of making it for people like Snooki, the bestseller lists would be filled with fiction that takes chances.
But, sadly, that’s not what most people read.
I’m not going to begrudge people who read Snooki’s [assumingly] stupid book, because if it gets people reading, at least they’re reading.
I would rather see so many other writers than a non-writer like Snooki in the news for a book she (or a ghostwriter) released this week. I’d love to see massive groups of writers who’ve busted ass and made it, than celebrities who fancy themselves writers when we know they’re not.
Still…even when the people making it are worthy writers, some of us love them; some of us hate them. It’s not my place to say what is good and what is bad. I think Catcher in the Rye is a steaming pile of shit in the night; others think it’s brilliant, and I’m glad they’ve found something they love.
If Snooki’s book touches somebody, as stupid as it may sound, I’m fine with that.
The best we can all do is find what we love and hype it; it does much more for us all than bitching about the injustice of some log-dumb girl form Jersey having a moment that will, I assume, soon be forgotten.
Thank you for the reply, Rod…you’ve made me spend more time on any reply on The Juggling Writer than any other.
All the best,
Christopher
Great topic.
Full disclosure: I haven’t seen Jersey Shore and I have no intention of seeing it. That pic and the reviews are enough for me.
Here is my reaction to Devin, Graham, and all other serious writers, and fans of serious writing who are indignant at the Snook-deal:
I understand your indignation about Snooki’s deal with S&S. You toil away for years developing and honing your writing, and Snookums poufs her extensions, snaps her bubblegum, and gets an S&S contract. But I don’t think it’s fair to blame Snooki, or S&S, or the dozen or several thousand Snook-fans who will buy her book. Snooki isn’t a serious writer. She’s a reality show celebriwreak, period. And whatever else she may do- “design” clothes, “formulate” perfume, “craft” jewelry- she won’t lay claim to any of those professions either. She makes money by being Snooki- an orange pouf-head in pancake make-up and a short, tight, ho-dress who is only good at one thing: making a fool of herself. She’s a laughing stock to most and an idol to those with her Snook-ability. Some people love her and will buy and maybe even read her book. So what? Snooki isn’t dangerous, and she’s not out to destroy the literary world. She’s bubblegum fun with a high-heeled kick, and that’s all she will ever be. If people throw money at her for being a clown, fine. If S&S throws money at her for Snooking a book, fine. She’s not infringing on your territory in any way, shape, or form. In fact, nobody is. Not even other serious writers. You are unique, and nobody is able to do exactly what you do with words. If S&S or any other publishing houses don’t appreciate your uniqueness, it’s not their fault, and it’s not Snooki’s fault, and it’s not even your fault. It’s just life. So let Snooki have her Snook-book, and let S&S make its money in our supply-and-demand society, just like everybody else. If you land a book deal, great. If your don’t, join the millions of other serious writers who will never land a book deal. And be glad you aren’t a serious writer who never even got the chance to write because you were too busy starving in a famine or being shot in a war.
OK, maybe a bit over the top, but that’s how I feel. At the end of the day, just remember that Snooki got a Snook-deal, not a book-deal.
CMS,
Thanks for the reply — you said what I was getting at without writing a novella 😉
You’re right: Snooki isn’t going to lay claim to any profession, because — at least right now — she doesn’t seem to have the interest in doing much more than being a spectacle. Writing, designing…all those things take time and effort.
While I understand how insulting it is to many that somebody who does something on a whim gets a deal that many who work hard for may never see, people like Snooki don’t have staying power.
Most writers start really hitting a stride several novels into their careers. Your average person lacks that kind of fortitude.
While some people may get to cut in line, the system still does a fairly good job weeding out those who aren’t serious from those who are.