I apologize in advance for this, but I experienced a blast of schadenfreude yesterday when I read William T. Vollmann's NYT review of Exit A, the new novel by Jarhead author, Anthony Swofford. I trust Vollmann, and it's clear from his remarks that this unfortunate book is a sin committed as much by the publishing business as by the writer, who should have known better than to write a "romance" after the critical acclaim of his Gulf War memoir.
It all goes to show that publishing today is all about name recognition and parlaying success into, if possible, a franchise. Once a name becomes recognizable, it will be pimped until it's overcome by other more current names, but in the meantime the author will have whored himself up the ying yang trying to give his publisher what it wants. Swofford, who by all accounts wrote an engaging book about his Marine Corp experiences in the first Gulf War, is now going to have a piece of two-bit entertainment (Scribner, $25.00) attached to his name when he might have carved out a niche for himself as a military anecdotist with a flair for irony. Thanks to Scribner, he'll likely be going down the tubes now. Unless, that is, a major motion picture comes of Exit A, starring Clooney and Ziyi Zhang. (Chinese and Japanese are interchangeable in Hollywood).
As harsh as his review is, Vollmann is trying to help Swofford. Maybe a career can be salvaged. Or maybe, in the end, it's all about the money.
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