Lit Life

Categories: Rediscoveries , Fiction

Okay, here's one you probably haven't read.  It's in a genre you may not have read in a while, either, the New York City satire of glittering literati and bright lights/big city excess.  It's Kurt Wenzel's punningly titled 2001 debut, Lit Life.

Seven years before, Kyle Clayton was the latest Bret Easton Ellis, a hip, young, party-going, literary superstar.  But he hasn't written a word to follow up his megabestseller, and he has just about hit bottom in drunken celebrity.

Richard Whitehurst is almost totally his opposite, a disciplined, prolific, literary writer who has achieved almost no recognition for his substantial oeuvre.

When the two meet at a disastrous PEN reception, Richard invites Kyle to stay at his house in the Hamptoms.  Richard hopes Kyle will be his literary heir and will write a scathing roman a clef to punish the New York literary establishment that has rejected them both.

Kyle, his imagination sparked by Richard's suggestion, hope to prove that he really does have what it takes.  But both pay a rather painful price for another go-round on the New York literary carousel.

This is a lot of fun as a satire of the New York publishing scene, but it's also a surprisingly affecting portrait of two men trapped in self-destructive lives.  The picture of Richard's failing marriage is drawn with great subtlety. 

Wenzel wrote a sequel, Gotham Tragic, in which his hero mended his ways (well, sort of) and converted to Islam (well, sort of) in a Donald Trump meets Salman Rushdie plot.  It was a little too over the top.  If that's a bad thing. 

Oddly enough, his newest book is a futuristic satire, Hollywood meets hologram, so to speak, Exposure.