Books |
The Plot
Jean Hanff Korelitz
By
Published: Jul 20, 2021
Category:
Fiction
Jimmy Fallon has an annual Summer Reads competition, with viewers voting for their favorites. The other night, he revealed the winner:
Butler readers knew “The Plot” was a winner on May 16. In case you missed it, consider this a friendly reminder. I, meanwhile, have moved on to read a novel completely against my religion: “The Paper Palace,” the 400 page #1 bestseller. Why? Because Carol Fitzgerald, my partner in bookreporter.com, not only made me promise to read it but ordered me to swear on a Bible that I wouldn’t cheat and read the ending. If you want to read along with me — and with the rest of literate America — click here to buy the hardcover from Amazon, click here for the Kindle.
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Netflix recently released “The Woman in the Window.” According to the Times review, it is dreadful:
It’s a high-end genre mediocrity, with many impressive names attached….The result is something that intermittently looks and sounds like a good movie without ever actually being one. This is not an uncommon phenomenon these days, as prestige television and studio filmmaking and the publishing industry converge to produce glossy commodities that are appealing partly because they resemble things that people remember liking at some point…. If you have exhausted the other available options, you can certainly pour yourself some merlot and mope around the living room while this movie plays in the background.
Forget the movie. Consider the novel that spawned the movie. Ian Parker profiled the author in A Suspense Novel’s Trail of Deceptions, a 2019 New Yorker piece that is a great detective story. This first novel sold for huge money. It opened at #1. But publishing can be a stunningly naïve enterprise, and although a number of people knew the author was a pathological fabulist, no one spoke up. And although it was obvious that he had appropriated much of the plot — not just the idea, but the plot — of Hitchcock’s “Rear Window,” that didn’t surface either. Much later, Parker would interview the author of another novel who noticed many… coincidences. The duplicitous writer? Unrepentent. Because in his case crime pays.
Now meet Jacob Finch Bonner, who is the main character of “The Plot,” the new literary thriller and certain best seller by Jean Hanff Korelitz. Her name may be familiar to you. She wrote You Should Have Known (on HBO as “The Undoing”) and The Devil and Webster. You may also know her as the creator of Book the Writer, a virtual conversation with well-known writers. I know her and her family as friends. (As I’ve said before, I don’t praise my friends’ books because they’re friends. I admire their books first, then I want to know them.)
Jacob Finch Bonner is “the once promising author of a ‘New & Noteworthy’ (New York Times Book Review) novel.” He followed that with a total flop. Now he’s starting a three-week teaching gig at a low-residency MFA program in Vermont, where is where dead careers go to collect small money and the admiration of students who don’t know better.
One student stands out: Evan Parker. He’s a braggart: “This story I’m writing, it’s like, a sure thing.” And it is. A few years later, Bonner learns that Parker has died. His novel seems to have died with him. But maybe not — he knows the plot. Can he use it? Of course! It’s “a great story… wanted to be told.” Is it theft? Maybe yes, maybe no. (I vote: no). Two million copies later, “Crib” is the hit of the year, and Jake Bonner is a household name.
If Bonner were to tell an interviewer, “I had this student with a great idea for a novel and he died and I decided to honor his memory by writing his book,” he’d be cheered. (Some would disagree, but some always do.) Of course he says nothing about the genesis of his book. Will he be found out? 100% certainty. Will he know who’s on to him? Ah, that’s the plot of “The Plot.” No spoilers here. Just a delicious excerpt, which efficiently nails every cliché about writers, publishing, writing retreats and a few other big targets.
“The Plot” is like the old Doublemint commercial: two books, two books in one. Intercut with Bonner’s story are chapters from “The Crib.” Impatient me, I skimmed “The Crib” — because I was that eager to know what — and who – happened to Bonner. I figured it out early, but not because of a flaw in the story; it’s something I’ve learned from decades of life experience. In case you also figure it out, there is still the considerable pleasure of watching the wheel of fate turn on Jake Bonner. [To buy the hardcover from Amazon, click here. For the Kindle, click here. For the audiobook, click here.]
Take it from the master, Stephen King: “‘The Plot’ is one of the best novels I’ve ever read about writers and writing. It’s also insanely readable and the suspense quotient is through the roof. It’s remarkable.”
