And the Most Famous American Novel About a Call Girl Is …

The answer to this morning’s pop quiz …

Were all of your English teachers squeamish about assigning books about prostitutes? Or were you just distracted by Eliot Spitzer’s resignation?

It took more than 12 hours to get the answer to this morning’s pop quiz, “What’s the most famous American novel about a call girl?” But Impreader nailed it: It’s Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s (Modern Library, 176 pp., $14.95).

Yes, Holly Golightly (Audrey Hepburn) is a party girl instead of a call girl in Blake Edwards’s 1961 movie. But the Hollywood standards of the pre-Klute era required the sanitizing. Holly’s life has a sadder, if no less interesting, cast in Capote’s short novel. As the filmmaker and short story writer Garth Twa puts it in 101 Books You Must Read Before You Die (Rizzioli/Universe, $34.95):

“Pushing the boundaries and paving the way for the revolution to come, Holly is a gamine — sexually free, hedonistic, a prostitute. She lives for the moment, damns the consequences, and makes up her morality as she goes along. Like her cat without a name, she is unfettered, untameable.”

(c) 2008 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.

Pop Quiz: What’s the Most Famous American Novel About a Call Girl?

[Update at 12:15 p.m.: What! This post has been up for more than eight hours and nobody has figured out the answer? I'm taking this as a sign that the East Coast people, who log on first, are stumped. West Coast visitors: Can you help? Jan ]

Suppose Eliot Spitzer had done the smart thing and read a great novel about a call girl instead of consorting with one. What book would he have read? Hint: You know the title. I’m not dredging up a neglected masterwork known only to people who have just defended disserations in American Lit. And the book has a call girl as a main character, not a bit player. I’ll post the answer by the end of the day. If you know it and want to show the world what a genius you are, please leave a comment.

(c) 2008 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.

Who Wrote Worse in 2007 – Alice Sebold or Holly Peterson? Should Either Novelist Win a Delete Key Award on Friday?

Critics have not been kind to Alice Sebold’s The Almost Moon (Little, Brown), which Entertainment Weekly and New York magazine ranked among the worst books of 2007.

But is its prose worse than that of Holly Peterson’s The Manny? Both novels have made the shortlist for the 2008 Delete Key Awards for the year’s worst writing in books. Which – if any – of the lines below deserves to become one of the winners?

From Alice Sebold’s The Almost Moon:

“And there it was, the hole that had given birth to me.… This was not the first time I’d been face-to-face with my mother’s genitalia.”

From Holly Peterson’s The Manny:

“We’re in the modern era, baby, you spoiled, Jurassic, archaic, Waspy piece of petrified wood!”

“He was munching furiously on his prey, like an African lion with a freshly caught zebra.”

(Guess which part of the body the “prey” is.)

One-Minute Book Reviews welcomes — and may be influenced by — brilliant arguments for either book. The winners will be announced starting at 10 a.m. Eastern Time on Friday. To avoid missing these posts, please bookmark this site or subscribe to the RSS feed. Thanks for visiting One-Minute Book Reviews, a site for people who like to read but dislike hype and review inflation.

To read the complete list of finalists, click here www.oneminutebookreviews.wordpress.com/2008/02/29/.

© 2008 Janice Harayda. All rights reserved.