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Product Description
Product Description
The famously false memoirs of James Frey may be yesterday’s news, but as this funny riff reminds us, literary fakes are as old as literature itself. Ian Minot is an aspiring writer who labors over short stories that seem destined to remain unread. His beautiful Romanian girlfriend, Anya Petrescu, finds success more easily—and leaves Ian for Blade Markham, a bloviating ex-gangbanger whose “so-called memoir” is a best-seller. When Ian is approached by ex-editor Jed Roth, who wants Ian to publish Jed’s pulpy tale of book theft and murder as a memoir, then renounce it, it’s a chance for both of them to get revenge: Jed on his former employer, and Ian on the world. Although Langer may be too cute for some (he employs made-up slang in which a penis is a portnoy), he does an engaging job with the hall-of-mirrors plot. And if readers can predict that the book they’re reading is the one that Ian ends up writing, they’ll never guess the ending. Just when you want a surprising twist, Langer delivers several.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
wrote this book. Adam Langer is the well-regarded author of three wonderfully sly novels set in Chicago and New York, and one interesting memoir about his father. I've read and enjoyed all four books. While he's not - as far as I can tell, anyway - a mega-bestselling author like Grisham or Brown - his writing seems to have been well received. The character in "Thieves", Ian Minot, is a never-succeeding writer in Manhattan - the one in New York state - who sees success all around him, but never manages to attain it for himself. He sees writers less talented than he is take advantage of - or are taken advantage by - the literary establishment in New York. He's particularly bitter about the authors who write "memoirs" that are fake but go on to literary glory. Ian sees this as a large system of fraud, from the writers to the reps to the publishing houses, who are making a lot off phony memoirs. Ian falls into on ongoing plot with several other failing writers and the plot of the book he writes turns real.
So I don't think Langer wrote this novel - which is very good and funny - as a bitter rejoinder to the literary world for not seeing his talent. He's clearly NOT the character "Ian Minot", but he's obviously distressed at the state of the literary society today where authors and agents and publishers play a game with literary output. I couldn't help but laugh at the number of "blurbs" from other well-known writers praising Langer's book.
I think I'll wait awhile to see what others say about "Thieves of Manhattan" and Langer's reason for writing it. I have a feeling that either the book will be ignored or will actually bring about some valid questioning of the literary establishment.
In any case, as always, Langer's novel is a great read. I also think its great that the book was published in trade paper instead of hard back.
So I don't think Langer wrote this novel - which is very good and funny - as a bitter rejoinder to the literary world for not seeing his talent. He's clearly NOT the character "Ian Minot", but he's obviously distressed at the state of the literary society today where authors and agents and publishers play a game with literary output. I couldn't help but laugh at the number of "blurbs" from other well-known writers praising Langer's book.
I think I'll wait awhile to see what others say about "Thieves of Manhattan" and Langer's reason for writing it. I have a feeling that either the book will be ignored or will actually bring about some valid questioning of the literary establishment.
In any case, as always, Langer's novel is a great read. I also think its great that the book was published in trade paper instead of hard back.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
38 reviews
17 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Great Fun
17 July 2010
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
"Thieves" is magically entertaining. I loved Langer's wonderfully inventive literary references. Famous author's names can become verbs or evocative nouns such as when Ian, the main character, gets fed up with his crazy life and wants to pull a salinger, meaning he wants to hide away for awhile a la JD Salinger. People at upscale literary readings and parties drink faulkners (whiskey) or fitzgeralds (gin rickys), they wear ecklebergs or franzens, both forms of eyeglasses.
In the beginning Ian, a failing writer, meets Jed, another failed author, or is he a scam artist? and they embark on an adventure as they rewrite Jed's memoir. Along the way they speculate about what literary talent is, who has it, who's a fake or real in the corporate literary world and among their fellow writers. I loved the inside look into book society as well as the adventure tale running throughout the story. There are also a few love stories along the way and some cloak and dagger adventure. Best were the humor and the sense of fun. I enjoyed Langer's book immensely.
In the beginning Ian, a failing writer, meets Jed, another failed author, or is he a scam artist? and they embark on an adventure as they rewrite Jed's memoir. Along the way they speculate about what literary talent is, who has it, who's a fake or real in the corporate literary world and among their fellow writers. I loved the inside look into book society as well as the adventure tale running throughout the story. There are also a few love stories along the way and some cloak and dagger adventure. Best were the humor and the sense of fun. I enjoyed Langer's book immensely.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Mr. Langer Lost Me On The Curve
3 Sep 2010
Format:Paperback
I loved "The Thieves of Manhattan" by Adam Langer. A well wrought premise, at first neatly told and with little literary conceits that are down right amusing: a golightly is a cocktail dress as in "Breakfast at Tiffany's" and a faulkner is a whiskey, and so on. There is even a glossary of terms. Imagined or not, it is an interesting glimpse into the publishing world that seems dimmer everyday; smug agents, posers, flash-in-the-pan best selling authors, clueless publishers. A book where most characters are not as they seem.
As said I loved it, as in past tense. Someone once wrote or said that in a novel an author can get away with one coincidence, and I suppose in a tolstoy (really hefty one) perhaps a couple. As this story unspools the coincidences, the accidents of improbable timing are simply staggering. It became almost impossible to suspend disbelief--as if one had been reading an amusing book that suddenly turned into a Indiana Jones adventure, and then into a cartoon.
In the first half there were a couple of plot distractions that caused hairline cracks in my suspension of disbelief, but they weren't fatal. All of a sudden something happens on page 174 that doesn't seem wrong until later in the story, but eventually it causes major cracks in the disbelief problem. (I don't want to make this a spoiler.) On page 194 a genuine deus ex machina appears in the form of an overweight café owner--unexpected and really inexplicable, although the author tries to explain it. In another scene the hero apparently reaches out for a glass of water but two pages later his hands are tied so that he has to indicate something with his chin as a pointer.
Lastly, I wished that I'd stopped reading at about page 190 and skipped to the last chapter. In the in between our hero becomes something of a human punching bag who should have been dead or hospitalized but manages with amazing resilience to bounce back like Wiley Coyote.
Hence the three stars.
As said I loved it, as in past tense. Someone once wrote or said that in a novel an author can get away with one coincidence, and I suppose in a tolstoy (really hefty one) perhaps a couple. As this story unspools the coincidences, the accidents of improbable timing are simply staggering. It became almost impossible to suspend disbelief--as if one had been reading an amusing book that suddenly turned into a Indiana Jones adventure, and then into a cartoon.
In the first half there were a couple of plot distractions that caused hairline cracks in my suspension of disbelief, but they weren't fatal. All of a sudden something happens on page 174 that doesn't seem wrong until later in the story, but eventually it causes major cracks in the disbelief problem. (I don't want to make this a spoiler.) On page 194 a genuine deus ex machina appears in the form of an overweight café owner--unexpected and really inexplicable, although the author tries to explain it. In another scene the hero apparently reaches out for a glass of water but two pages later his hands are tied so that he has to indicate something with his chin as a pointer.
Lastly, I wished that I'd stopped reading at about page 190 and skipped to the last chapter. In the in between our hero becomes something of a human punching bag who should have been dead or hospitalized but manages with amazing resilience to bounce back like Wiley Coyote.
Hence the three stars.
12 of 14 people found the following review helpful
I'm not sure why Langer...
15 July 2010
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
wrote this book. Adam Langer is the well-regarded author of three wonderfully sly novels set in Chicago and New York, and one interesting memoir about his father. I've read and enjoyed all four books. While he's not - as far as I can tell, anyway - a mega-bestselling author like Grisham or Brown - his writing seems to have been well received. The character in "Thieves", Ian Minot, is a never-succeeding writer in Manhattan - the one in New York state - who sees success all around him, but never manages to attain it for himself. He sees writers less talented than he is take advantage of - or are taken advantage by - the literary establishment in New York. He's particularly bitter about the authors who write "memoirs" that are fake but go on to literary glory. Ian sees this as a large system of fraud, from the writers to the reps to the publishing houses, who are making a lot off phony memoirs. Ian falls into on ongoing plot with several other failing writers and the plot of the book he writes turns real.
So I don't think Langer wrote this novel - which is very good and funny - as a bitter rejoinder to the literary world for not seeing his talent. He's clearly NOT the character "Ian Minot", but he's obviously distressed at the state of the literary society today where authors and agents and publishers play a game with literary output. I couldn't help but laugh at the number of "blurbs" from other well-known writers praising Langer's book.
I think I'll wait awhile to see what others say about "Thieves of Manhattan" and Langer's reason for writing it. I have a feeling that either the book will be ignored or will actually bring about some valid questioning of the literary establishment.
In any case, as always, Langer's novel is a great read, with his usual sly wit. I also think its great that the book was published in trade paper instead of hard back.
So I don't think Langer wrote this novel - which is very good and funny - as a bitter rejoinder to the literary world for not seeing his talent. He's clearly NOT the character "Ian Minot", but he's obviously distressed at the state of the literary society today where authors and agents and publishers play a game with literary output. I couldn't help but laugh at the number of "blurbs" from other well-known writers praising Langer's book.
I think I'll wait awhile to see what others say about "Thieves of Manhattan" and Langer's reason for writing it. I have a feeling that either the book will be ignored or will actually bring about some valid questioning of the literary establishment.
In any case, as always, Langer's novel is a great read, with his usual sly wit. I also think its great that the book was published in trade paper instead of hard back.
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