You should be on Oprah. Oprah would love your book. Maybe she would and maybe she wouldn't. But as a man with a book out I hear this about every other day. Strange dynamic. Publishing a book so the end result will be an endorsement by a single person. In the age of everyman fame, Oprah is certainly the lottery ticket to the sure milk of immortality if not wealth. But of course one has to get there. I received a call yesterday. Mr. Hazelgrove, we would like to publish your next book. Oh really. I can hear other voices in the background. Yes, this is blankety blank and we want to publish your book. I recognized the vanity press. Well my book has just come out I say and of course the call is terminated. No prospects here. Even self publishing is in a downturn. There is no shame in self publishing. Great writers have done it through time, but the wholesale Juggernaut of instafame is something new. All eyes on the prize we do whatever flips trained seals must to get to the top of the pyramid. I get it. I really do. The man who told Oprah he received food from a long lost lover in a concentration camp got it too. He just made it up. So did James Frey. Can you blame them? Morality says yes, but reality says they are just doing whatever they can to get to the final stop on Mount Rich and Famous. A lot of people talk about the American Dream, but of course the dirty little secret is that we are covetous old sinners who want that final branch, the one that says we are not just a blip on the radar screen of mortality but someone special, someone different, the star that flashes out of the night and we all sit in wonder. But there are only so many seats on that Oprah set, a couch that Tom Cruise destroyed his career on and another seat for Oprah. After that, it is every man and woman for themself.
