Ms. Taken Identity

Mitch Samuel is twenty-eight, cocky, fond of his Guinness, and if there’s one thing he knows, it’s literature. Serious literature. That’s why he’s absolutely certain his novel—one part Steinbeck, one part Shakespeare, and all parts sweepingly lyrical epic—is a can’t-miss for publication. But when the novel meets with unanimous rejection (even by a friend in the business!), Mitch is outraged. How can he not be in print, when any number of chick-lit books blathering about heels, hunks, and handbags constantly light up the bestseller lists? So he cooks up a plan of his own: under a pseudonym, he’ll write a chick-lit novel, watch it become a huge hit, and laugh all the way to the bank. That's when things get...interesting.

Ms. Taken Identity is a fast-paced, literate look at the way head and heart speak languages of their own—often wholly incompatible ones. It’s High Fidelity meets Bridget Jones’s Diary, with the same quick-witted characters, real-life dating and romance scenarios, and abundance of pop-culture references (Madonna, McDreamy, and Milton mingle oh so freely on these pages).

How about an excerpt from the book? The story so far: Mitch's literary masterpiece has been rejected for the umpteenth time, this latest rejection sending him into a crazy madman rage that has him standing in his apartment foyer ripping up the returned manuscript--and his neighbor's mail (fashion magazines). Feeling contrite, he's off to the bookstore to buy replacements.

Here’s how ridiculous the parking lot is at Bookzilla: drivers are actually following departing shoppers to their cars, to get their spots. And it’s not Christmas Eve. It’s the bloody Friday night after Labor Day. But what do you expect when you squeeze a bookstore in with a Linens N Things and PetCo and Home Depot and Target?

The inside of Bookzilla is just as bloated as the parking lot. It’s women, mostly, and hordes of them, all ages and sizes and hair colors, squealing and heading upstairs. Oprah must’ve had a writer on her show today, someone who wrote a book about shopping or dieting or sex, or maybe she was talking about something like Love in the Time of Cholera, which everyone skipped twenty years ago when it was required reading in high school, but now that Oprah loves it, ‘Girl, I just gotta have it!’ My goal is to get in and out of this place without being trampled or lobotomized.

I find the magazines right away, since, thankfully, Bookzilla gives prominent placement to high-minded publications such as People and Vogue, and make haste to the checkout line. That’s where I’m standing, when the night-beat reporter for Channel Five breezes in with a cameraman in tow, and, like the panting women, they head upstairs.

“What’s all the commotion?” I ask the cashier when my turn comes. I’ve already broken my vow not to say more than hi, cash, and bye.

The woman actually clutches her chest. “Oh my god, you didn’t hear? Katharine Longwell is here! Tonight. In the store.”

It’s a name even I recognize. “The Katharine Longwell?”

“The one and only!”

Jesus. So the high priestess of chick-lit is here, the prima donna who’s been on Leno and Letterman and the cover of Entertainment Weekly, and has had a Showtime series and two movies made from her books, and has forty gazillion copies in ten thousand languages of her books in print and has yet to meet a cliché she wouldn’t take to bed. What, and no embossed invitation for me?

“She has a new book out,” the cashier gushes. If she were a dog, her tail would’ve already flown off from wagging too hard. “You should check it out for your wife or girlfriend. It’s so great!”

Here’s what I’d like to tell her: a.) I have no wife or girlfriend, thanks; b.) If I had a wife or girlfriend who read Katharine Longwell, she wouldn’t be my wife or girlfriend; c.) Give me my freaking change. But I don’t. I just glare.

Unfortunately, Tammy—that’s what the nametag says—is oblivious to glares. “There’s a display right there,” she says, pointing exuberantly over my shoulder.

“Super. Can I have my change?”

“Oh, sure.” She titters and gives me my change and slides the bag my way.

My plan is to beat it the hell out of there, before they run out of Katharine Longwell books and the riot starts. But my eye catches something in the middle of the store: it’s Demi Moore, standing next to a display of books, wearing a clingy white blouse that’s opened oh so low, and tight jeans, and her hair is windblown, and her mouth is opened in a way that’s not quite porn star, but not kindergarten teacher, either. But as I get closer I see it’s not Demi Moore in the flesh, only a cardboard cutout, then I see it’s not Demi Moore at all, it’s…her. Katharine Longwell. But she’s a blonde, or at least she was a blonde, last time I tried to avoid seeing her on some show. Now she’s a brunette? And from the way those buttons are busting on her blouse, the hair isn’t the only thing she’s had worked on.

By this time, I’m close enough to make out the title of her latest masterpiece—The Cappuccino Club—and it’s like being at the scene of a car wreck: you know you should look away before you see something horrifying that will give you nightmares, but you can’t help yourself. I pick up a copy. According to the jacket, Sasha and Gisella and Vanessa are best friends, and each is an American Princess—Jewish, Latina, and Black (or JAP, LAP, and BAP, as they would have you know)—and they’ve been through it all together—men, engagements, breakups, surgeries, broken heels, bad hairstyles—and discussed it all together, usually—you guessed it—over a cup of cappuccino. But lately things have been worse than usual, their men distant or disloyal, their jobs beating down on their self-worth, so they decide to take matters into their own hands: they’ll go into business, open up their own coffee shop. Sisters doing it for themselves. What follows, of course, in this ‘compelling and beautifully written valentine to dreamers’ is a year in their lives filled with more heartbreak and laughter, tears and romance, than any of them ever imagined, as they finally discover the true meaning of friendship, life, and love. In other words, another Pulitzer Prize-winning plot about women who just need a good lay.

It’s easy to make fun of her books, and fun to do it, and that’s what I’m doing, having a merry old time with myself, until a whole ugly parade of not-so-fun thoughts creep into my head. 1.) I’ve been rejected by Brandon, and everyone else. I can’t get my book into print. 2.) Katharine Longwell has her books in print. Dozens of them. Like The Cappuccino Club. 3.) Katharine Longwell’s novels are horsecrap. 4.) Katharine Longwell has sold millions of copies. 5.) Katharine Longwell is a millionaire. 6.) I’ve been rejected by Brandon, and everyone else. I can’t get my book into print.

And suddenly I don’t feel so much like making fun of Katharine’s book anymore. My hand is trembling and my breathing’s a little ragged, and I’m going rejected writer again, like I did in the vestibule of my apartment, having wild and desperate thoughts, but these are worse than before, because they’re so vivid, so tempting, so delicious, as in getting gasoline-soaked rags and a blow torch and burning down the whole goddamned display, turning it into a blazing inferno, like a scene from Fahrenheit 451, only now we’re not burning books with dangerous ideas, but books with no ideas at all, and everyone, Run! Run for your lives! because I’m not stopping here; I’m going through all the books, incinerating the garbage, and the flames are only going to get hotter and hungrier and higher, and you could be next, so Run! Run for your lives!

But I don’t do any of that. Instead, I dump the book in my bag and leave without paying.

danbegley.com