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John Colapinto

About the Author Paperback – 6 Aug. 2001

by John Colapinto (Author)

252 ratings

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A wickedly funny psychological thriller about literary ambition, envy and the lengths an author will go to get on the bestsellers list.

Cal Cunningham dreams of writing an autobiographical novel that will help him escape from his life as a penniless bookstore stockboy in upper Manhattan. Yet, after two years of living together, it is Stewart, Cal’s studious flatmate who has finished writing a page-turning novel – based on Cal’s life.

When a timely, fatal bicycle accident removes Stewart from the scene, Cal appropriates the manuscript as his own and places it in the hands of the legendarily ferocious literary agent Blackie Yeager.

Soon Cal realises his most outlandish fantasies of literary success. That is, until he discovers that someone knows his secret. For Cal, this means plotting not just his second novel, but also his first murder.

Print length

272 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Fourth Estate
Publication date

6 Aug. 2001
ISBN-10

1841156396
ISBN-13

978-1841156392
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Product description

Amazon Review

John Colapinto's About the Author is a wicked thriller set in the ferocious world of publishing and a burning satire on what it takes to make a bestseller. Narrator, wannabe writer and stockboy Cal Cunningham has written nothing since he arrived in New York but he has relentlessly regaled his reclusive flatmate with his sexual conquests. When he discovers his roommate's finished manuscript, a virtual transcription of the monologues with which [he] had entertained Stewart during the two and a half years of [their] roommatehood. It was all there. All of it. Not just the "Dispatches from Downtown" with their ribald tales of romantic conquest and alcohol abuse, but the truly precious stuff, the irreplaceable personal lode of [his] childhood memories, with all their pain and yearning and loss, he justifies his subsequent plagiarism. By the end of Colapinto's novel, we are left with a dead flatmate, a half-murdered blackmailer, a deceased phoney cop, a drug deal on the Canadian border and a lot of close calls--all for the sake of Art.

About the Author starts off promisingly with its mellifluous, loquacious first-person narrative and its challenging moral premise, making this a real page-turner. Unfortunately, it loses steam halfway through as our narrator/anti-hero moves from the potentially explosive possibilities of New York City to the safe little hamlet of New Halcyon and the perfect life with the even more perfect wife. What could have been an inflammatory satire on the fiery world of publishing (Cal's agent Blackie Yaeger is a wonderfully drawn caricature but, disappointingly, never developed to his full Faustian potential) abruptly loses its sizzle. Nonetheless, it's worth reading Colapinto's assured first foray into Fiction, as he's sure to be a talent you'll hear from again, especially with the film rights to his novel already sold. An interesting case of life imitating art perhaps!

Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone Journalist Colapinto's first book was the bestselling non-fiction title As Nature Made Him. --Nicola Perry

Review

‘A Perfect novel…not only a devastatingly witty satire on American literary life but also a thriller of which Patricia Highsmith would have been proud.’ The Sunday Times

‘Blackly comic thriller and a sly, spot-on satire of Bookbiz hoopla.’ The Times

‘A thriller worthy of Hitchcock at his best. I wasn’t able to put it down. Splendid suspense.’ Stephen King

‘Gleaming, well written and exciting.’ Financial Times

‘It is enormously, compulsively readable…the book is difficult to stop reading.’ Spectator

‘Masterly’ Daily Mail

‘It will satisfy readers who want to know what’s new in literary fiction as well as those seeking the comforts of a well-told reader.’ Guardian

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Fourth Estate; First Edition (6 Aug. 2001)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Paperback ‏ : ‎ 272 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1841156396
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1841156392

Best Sellers Rank: 2,750,276 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- 40,598 in Crime, Thriller & Mystery Adventures
- 88,421 in Adventure Stories & Action
- 166,958 in Thrillers (Books)

Customer reviews:
252 ratings

About the author

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John Colapinto

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John Colapinto was born and raised in Toronto, and has a Master's in English literature from the University of Toronto. After freelancing for Canadian magazines for four years, he moved to New York in 1989 and wrote for many magazines, including The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, the New York Times magazine and New York. In 1995 he became a contributing editor at Rolling Stone where he won a National Magazine Award for a story about a medical scandal and expanded the story into a book, As Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl, which became a New York Times bestseller. In 2001, he published a novel, About the Author. Since 2006 he has been a staff writer at The New Yorker where he has written about subjects as diverse as medicinal leeches, shoplifting prevention, Karl Lagerfeld and Michelin food inspectors.

Customer reviews

4.2 out of 5

252 global ratings

5 star		47%
4 star		30%
3 star		19%
2 star		3%
1 star		1%

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Michael

Read this book three times over the years

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 8 August 2016

Verified Purchase

From the first sentence one realises that Jo can write. I love the immediate intimacy of the first person. Dry humour, I liked Cal from the start. You want to stay with him through his adventure. It is a thriller of course but there is something in the style of writing that is much more American Classic - shades of The Secret History. Wish he would do another. I keep checking like I did with Donna Tart (but I was sadly disappointed with her next). Maybe some people need to stick at one? Thanks Jo.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Metafiction at its finest

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 24 March 2022

I have always been a great fan of meta-fiction, especially if there is a strong crime-based plot wound into it. I don’t know why novels about writing novels should be so appealing, but they always are.

This is a particularly fine example, and one that reminded me of The Plot by Jean Hanff Korelitz which I picked up by chance fairly recently and thoroughly enjoyed. In that, without giving away too much of an intricate plot, a writer who has one successful book under his belt but has struggled to follow it with anything of consequence ends up delivering creative writing classes at a university summer school. One summer he encounters a particularly unpleasant student who boasts about having developed a marvellous plot that he is simply biding his time to write. On a drunken evening he describes the plot to the teacher who, basically, steals it.

In this book there is a slightly different twist in that Cal Cunningham, the protagonist, has his heart set upon being a writer but can’t overcome his procrastinatory nature sufficiently actually to sit down and write. In the meantime, he is living high on the hog in New York, and recounting his exploits to his rather tame and unassuming flatmate. Little does he realise that his flatmate is himself writing reams of text, in which he commits excerpts from Cal’s life to paper in what becomes an amazing novel. Cal discovers this by chance, on the same day that the flatmate dies.

Feeling that this was really his story anyway, Cal decides to steal the story, retyping it and passing it off as his own. It is published to stratospheric critical acclaim and secures immense commercial success, with the film rights being bought for a huge sum. This success does not bring the undiluted joy for which Cal had hoped. He is still unable to bring himself to start another book, and as his wealth and comfort accrue, he feels increasingly vulnerable to exposure. He feels he has done everything to cover his tracks, but he is wrong.

Colapinto handles the material excellently. I was sucked into the story right from the start, and bought into it entirely. Cal is a well-drawn character. Although he is a fraud and a rampant opportunist, the reader feels his frustration and outrage as various risks arise.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Grandad Bike

A gripping read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 6 January 2013

Verified Purchase

This is one of the best novels I have ever read - it really is a page turner from page 1. A wonderful book - I've bought several copies as presents for friends.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

A little bit meta, a little bit silly

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 16 June 2019

The concept of an author stealing and passing work off as his or her own is not a new one- from Nero Wolfe to kurt Vonnegut to Stephen King (on several occasions) it’s a well worn trope. Here, the narrator passes off his recently deceased flat mate’s work as his own and enjoys the benefits and later repercussions of doing so.
It starts well: a Chekhov’s gun of a burglary casually mentioning the theft of a laptop, before the discovery of a ‘brilliant’ novel. At times it feels a satirical piece on the literary world it discusses, dropping in Bret Easton Ellis and other names. And it’s well written.
Then there follows a series of stupid things being done which drop the narrator into more and more trouble. It almost feels, ironically that it’s written by multiple authors: the writing style suddenly seems to step back about 100 years as the narrator talks about his beating heart and fluttering emotions as he falls in love. He also acts differently- and it is the repeated knowledge of trope familiarity combined with actually doing the stupid sort of things he criticises those tropes for.
By the end the level of change of heart and resulting acts and actions brought the book down to a level of silliness I was glad it wrapped up (in a chapter of whirlwind exposition) as quickly as it did.
Overall, it had promise for me, but devolved into ‘stupid people doing stupid things’ for plot advancement

One person found this helpful

Helpful

The first half is outstanding....

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 3 June 2022

OK, it does go wobbly towards the end, but it's still exceptional. I cannot believe some have given this two stars. Heaven only knows what they rate five! I know many people that rate this with Engelbury.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 29 September 2015

Verified Purchase

Just couldn't put the book down..Until I finished it

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 25 January 2015

Verified Purchase

Very funny well written book. Haven't laughed this much in ages .

Helpful

Annali Koskinen

I'm missing something...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on 3 February 2009

Vine Customer Review of Free Product( What's this? )

About the Author is a book of 2 halves. Or, rather, 4 quarters. Both literally and figuratively. As I read the first part (called Part One) I found myself wondering why this was Colapinto's only book. Surely, I thought, an author this good would have been encouraged to write more?

I was talking about this book to some other people who have read it, and I made the observation that while I was reading the book it felt like a page-turner, but once I'd put it down, there was no desire to pick it up again. That was very true for the first quarter and a bit. Soon after I said that, it stopped being a page-turner, and there was still no desire to pick it up. So from about half way through, it became a bit of a chore.

It started off exceptionally, with beautifully crisp writing, and gradually changed, both in "voice" (good grief that sounds pretentious) and content. The writing style became increasingly mundane, and the plot devolved into the absurd, like a second rate farce. And it has a truly ridiculous ending. 50 pages from the end, my eyes were scanning the pages more than anything; doing the bare minimum to take in what was happening.

I read this on the strength of its being labelled a cutting satire, and incisive, and witty... and it is honestly none of those things. Colapinto is a magazine writer, and I expect his articles are extraordinarily good, as he's more sprint than long-distance author.

This really is not a great book, and I know am in the minority, so perhaps it's me that's lacking something. But this doesn't have the universal appeal its blurb would have you believe.

4 people found this helpful

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Follow the author

About the Author Paperback – 6 Aug. 2001

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