Random House Would Like You To Know: Those People Are Stupid

By Scott Smith in Arts & Entertainment on May 26, 2005 3:31PM

Chicagoist attended a reading Tuesday night of Colleen Curran's new novel Whores on the Hill and we would like to state for the record that we were duly impressed. But, hey, we kind of expected to be. We did our research. It now appears, though, that Curran's publisher (Vintage, an imprint of Random House) lacks faith that the book-reading public is capable of critically reading Amazon reviews. We received an email from this Vintage representative imploring us to defend Curran's honor against the idiots who are blindly smearing her provocative novel on Amazon. This guy is obviously very smart, but we don't quite share his indignance over the controversy. Of course idiots are smearing the book. As Curran plainly stated to attendees at her reading, it's a novel about teen sex. Like, oh em gee. Teens have sex!

And, uh, who but another immature idiot is going to judge a book based on a review that say "I just really didn't like it. I did not appreciate the title. I did not like the storlyine. [sic] ...I did not like the cover design" over the many thoughtful and detailed positive reviews?

The whole fiasco reminds us of something Curran said Tuesday night regarding her own experience as a student at the last all-girls' school in Milwaukee: "They callled us the whores on the hill and we thought it was funny. We didn't care." Because they weren't whores. They were teenage girls.

And Whores on the Hill is a book. A good book, from what we've read so far: an eloquent representation of something that is real, whether or not we would like that to be the case. So, let's--everyone together now--laugh at the people who call it porn and, like, can't seem to distinguish between an author and a narrator.

And, hey, read the book!

Image via ColleenCurran.com.

Thanks, Kristin!