I tweet. I am on Twitter. Yes, I admit it: I'm a twit. What's worse, I follow mostly celebrities. If you'd told a young Ryan that he would turn out to be something of a celebrity media hawk, he would have been highly incredulous - and then he would have asked what video games were going to be like in the future, since you seem to know everything. Shocking as it is to admit even now, with the truth staring me in the face and tweets fed to me in real time through my internet IV, I find myself in my 30s and fascinated with, of course, your Charlie Sheen, and your 50cent, and even your Lady Gaga. I follow the RiffTrax performers (formerly of MST3K), as well as celebrity beauties like Kristen Schaal, Olivia Munn, and Mary Lynn Rajskub. I sat rapt as James Franco tweeted live video from his hosting of the Oscars, and laughed for the sheer joy of Schadenfreude as funny people like James Urbaniak tore him - and the whole show - apart as they watched from home. My list of followers definitely makes me seem like a little bit of a hipster/gossip hound, which is quite embarrassing, but I would like to point out that I do have standards. I refuse to follow Kanye West, and I would sooner die than click "Follow" on Snooki's profile. There, she describes herself thusly:
"reality star . ny times best selling author . business woman . boss lady"
For good measure, I suppose, she adds:
"♡Keep Talkin ;)"
The juxtaposition of this horrible train wreck of a person and the title of one of my favorite Pink Floyd songs is disturbing enough, but the fact that she lists herself as a New York Times bestselling author is, like some Lovecraftian elder god skulking through the streets of Innsmouth, enough to drive a person to madness by the sheer thought of it, and
that is what this entry is about - not Twitter.
Nicole, "Snooki," Polizzi's book is a work of narrative fiction called
A Shore Thing, and it was number 24 on the extended New York Times Best Seller list for January 30 of this year. It was published by Simon and Schuster, a company that has also published Ursula K. Le Guin and two-time Pulitzer Prize winner David McCullough. When interviewed by Reuters, she had this to say about her novel:
"People would rather watch TV than sit down and actually read a book, so that's why I wrote this. It's just like my show, accept you're reading it, so I'm actually bringing back reading."
Now, if Snooki reignites your interest in literature, there is a good chance that you were never that interested in it to begin with. I am writing a book. I'm pretty far into it, trying to make 2000 words a day every morning. I plot even in my sleep. I dream of my characters, my setting. It's a work of fantasy, and I have agonized over the naming conventions of my fictional race. I re-read it constantly as I go along, excising needless exposition, adding scenes that help clarify the justification for the carefully plotted action sequences, and generally criticizing myself excessively. I don't know Ms. Polizzi, and I understand how much of a snob I sound like saying this, but I cannot imagine her sitting at her computer in anguish over character development and plot arcs. I can't see her rewriting scenes to better communicate her main character's motivation. I doubt she was thinking about "bringing back reading" when she wrote such lines as:
"Yum. Johnny Hulk tasted like fresh gorilla."
Or:
"Gia danced around a little, shaking her peaches for show. She shook it hard. Too hard. In the middle of a shimmy, her stomach cramped. A fart slipped out. A loud one. And stinky."
I know there is a line between criticism and ridicule. I don't want to cross it. I don't want to sound like I'm taking pot shots at a goof-ball 20-something because I have had no amount of success whatsoever as an artist. Perhaps Polizzi wasn't trying to write
The Great Gatsby. No, I think it entirely possible that she hasn't even heard of F. Scott Fitzgerald. Still, I must give her the benefit of the doubt and say that her artistic attempt is likely no less honest than mine have been. Nonetheless, pulp is pulp and crap is crap, and the fact that people have actually deliberately purchased Snooki's fictional autobiography is either an embarrassment to the august institute of literature itself or, from an optimistic standpoint, proof that I might actually have a shot at getting my silly novella published. I may, however, be forced to include descriptions on par with:
"He had an okay body. Not fat at all. And naturally toned abs. She could pour a shot of tequila down his belly and slurp it out of his navel without getting splashed in the face."
God help us all.
