Normally, I don’t particularly like novels about writers. I think it’s taking the adage, “Write what you know,” to an extreme. Who would want to read about writers except other writers?

This novel is the exception. It is an excellent book about writers, all kinds of writers, and the community they build for themselves with their editors and their readers, and the imaginary worlds they inhabit so much of the time. The novel chronicles the events of one weekend: WordFest, a literary festival held at the small college where Grady – a disaffected, failing writer who yet cannot stop writing – teaches. Things quickly snowball out of control, one event leading to another inexorably but beyond Grady’s ability to slow down or steer. In fact, it’s all quite similar to the novel he’s currently working on, a 5,000-page monster he’s been writing for five years now, with no end in sight. Events become so outrageous that it’s impossible to distinguish reality from the feverish, pot-induced imaginings of Grady’s interior world, the one where all writers actually live most of the time. And we, the readers, don’t really care what’s real or not. It all works for us.

Liked C&K, Tales From Pittsburg, etc., so picked this one up…