How to be Literary

I've followed the hubbub over Marisha Pessl's Special Topics in Calamity Physics with vague interest; here is a book whose heroine is the "daughter of an itinerant academic," whose setting is "a series of picturesque college towns," and whose construction, according to Publisher's Weekly, is "modeled after the syllabus of a college literature course—36 chapters are named after everything from Othello to Paradise Lost to The Big Sleep—that culminates with a final exam." Despite the fact that this appears to be a campus novel--a genre I personally feel should be eliminated from the earth with extreme force--the meta-narrative-loving nerd in me found herself dialing up the local library to add it to my hold list.

Then I read the article in the New York Times about, among other things, whether or not Pessl's hotness was a factor in book sales/reviews/buzz/blahblahfishcakes. Then I saw this post at Gawker deeming Pessl only "book hot", (okay, it's kind of old, but who can keep up with reading Gawker regularly? That thing is like a full time job, in an industry I don't even work in), and then the followup, announcing her upgrade to "TV hot" (but only in black and white,) and then Gawker's link to New York/New Zealand's great new parlor game of "How Much Can You Doctor Your Author Photo."

Result? I'm thoroughly exhausted by both the existence of Marisha Pessl and her novel. Yet the original NY Times review gives me some hope. "[Pessl's] talent and originality would draw wolf whistles if she were an 86-year-old hunchback troll,” Liesl Schillinger wrote. As an 87-year-old clubfoot ogre, with a nearly-finished campus novel in hand, I'm thinking things are really looking up.