Writer Porn

Granted, I watched only the first three minutes of this show, but in this time of delusional economic chickens coming home to roost and peck out our eyes with their silvery sharp beaks as we scream "Why can't I?", I thought the new show "Castle" seemed intriguing for the skewed reality it was trying to get out there (at least the first three minutes of it, before I got bored and went back to my usual evening of Internet porn and weeping).

The show started off with Castle, who is a very successful author, having a book launch party for his new book. Models and booze are everywhere, it's on a roof (in LA maybe), the scene was all quick-cut beautiful people who all wanted Castle (who was also handsome and beautiful), who was grinning like an idiot, his pockets lined with $100 bills and condoms and penicillin and whip-its, absolutely Godlike like in the adoration heaped upon him as he stepped into the klieg lights and said something either petulant or clever and then people threw more money and underwear at him.

Now, for all I know, Castle realized he'd never finish his magnum opus and killed himself with booze and a hot shot of heroin after the commercial break (although the show looks more like a blasphemous update of "Murder, She Wrote"--God bless you, insanely murderous Cabot Cove), but from the little I saw, I realized how much this was an image of "author" I think we all want to believe at times (even if we won't admit it). Now, clearly someone wrote this show (maybe several someones), with desks full of novels and short stories that will never see the light of day (just like us), and who maybe even have fancy writer degrees (just like us). That's when I realized this show was writer porn, and that it might be just as inflationary and destructive to the literary world as the guy who told me it was a good idea to buy General Motors stock at $20 is to the economic one.

Remember when The New Yorker was running stories with pictures of the authors, and it seemed like, while the stories were fine, the main impetus behind it all was to try to get some cute people out there, laying in silk, skin heaving, freckles Photoshopped, bulges realigned and readjusted, just like those models and rock stars? OR, I saw a website with the "Literary Lions of New York!" who were just a bunch of random schlumpy book editors and what not who probably get paid slave wages and sleep in twin-size murphy beds in an apartment with a view of Fresh Kills -- but, goddamn it, they were lions! I don't need company health insurance, Aslan, you pussy! (to paraphrase the White Witch).

All the "rock star" moments I have ever been involved with involving authors have usually been instances where the adored probably was hoping desperately to get away from the adoree (as when I made a t-shirt and told George Saunders, "I'm not crazy -- I went to the Workshop!" He had the same look in his eyes Jimmy gets when he has the night terrors). Usually, in my experience, such things occur at conventions where half the attendees have at least a working knowledge of Klingon.

So, why the myth? What do we need it for? Does it encourage writers, or knock the legs out of them when the reality sets in?