Inside every no-longer-skinny man is a skinny novel trying to get out
Colin "Hairy Eyeball" Brayton and I had been discussing the idea of a blog-as-novel or novel-as-blog when I spilled the beans and revealed my own idle novelistic fantasy:
What I had in mind was an actual hardcopy book which would do for blogging what Nicholson Baker's Vox did for phone sex. Sometimes in the middle of the night when cartoon sheep jumping over cartoon fences fail me I start sketching out "my novel" as though I were getting ready for National Novel-Writing Month. (Which would only happen in an alternate universe in which I were simultaneously fired, divorced, and limited in my surf time to what the Public Library allows the smellier winos.)
My fevered midnight skeleton of a novel has the working title The Ghostblogger. Unemployed culturally and computer-literate dude gets a job paying a pittance to ghost-write a blog for a famous rock&roller friend who doesn't have the time or interest to write it himself nor quite enough money to hire a professional PR firm. What's more, the rock star wants a smokescreen behind which to build a private life: while the blog talks about clubbing in London he's vacationing in Maui, or vice-versa; while the blog drops broad hints about eager groupies, he's nest-building in Austin. Rather than terrorists or spies or such, I thought the tension might come in the form of friction between real and fictional life, both the ghostwriter's and his employer's. If that's not enough, throw in a love triangle (cf Cyrano de Bergerac?) Minor characters would be some Austin types (the lesbian cowgirl, the anarchist barista, the bobo soccer moms, the "death-to-the-automobile!" cycling advocate who secretly drives an SUV, you get the idea -- aging and updated slackers of various flavors). The minor characters populate the narrative sections and also comment in the blog. Color would derive from a bit of Austin cachet (is there any left?) and some art-imitates-life-cranked-to-11 wit regarding the links du jour scattered through the blog, a la Kurt Andersen's six-months-into-the-future Turn of the Century.
John Cusack for the lead, of course, and then when he turns it down get someone from director Richard Linklater's stable. Maybe McConnaughey for the rockstar, since he'll work cheaper in a Linklater project. Austin-heavy soundtrack. Your guess is as good as mine as to the starlets for the female roles.
That's my pitch. Who wants to ghost-write it for me?
Colin and his pals have been
chiming in, mostly by trying to figure out how
to turn it into a nuclear-terrorist thriller, that being where the bucks are.
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