The Plot

The writing style is engaging and witty. I was engrossed from the start.

Jacob Finch Bonner is not the greatest guy but easy to understand. He's a struggling writer who has had some modest success but can't get publishers interested in his subsequent work. He's working as a creative writing teacher to get by. He teaches students of varying levels of talent and ambitions but at this point he's pessimistic about the process and it affects his attitude as an instructor.

Then he meets the student who tells him “the plot.” At first it's not life changing for him; he just keeps a casual eye out to see if the arrogant kid will ever get around to publishing the book based on this brilliant idea. It gets complicated when the student dies without publishing and Bonner decides to take the plot and run with it.

We get glimpses of the book Bonner wrote based on this so-called, can't-miss plot. There could have been some potential in the idea that we never knew what the plot actually was. While what we see of Bonner's book is not bad, it can't live up to the hype created by Parker's brag and the runaway success of Bonner's book.

(I was half expecting the writer to employ a device like Monty Python's “Funniest Joke in the World” sketch, which features a joke so funny it kills anyone who hears it. Naturally the audience never finds out what that joke actually is. I'm making this analogy because there is no way the joke could live up to the myth.)

Bonner goes from enjoying life as a successful writer to frantically searching for the source of a series of anonymous threats to expose him. Once this part of the story gets under way, it slowly devolves into an average thriller. It is an important plot point that the book Bonner wrote reflects the discoveries in the investigation Bonner embarks upon when he starts getting harassed.
The final twist is predictable, made more disappointing by the fact that the premise of the entire book is about the idea of an “original plot.” Or maybe that's the point, that there's no way to be surprising and original with just a plot as your weapon. Either way, I wasn't really blown away by the revelation. Also, we get the fallacy of the talking killer.

Maybe this book was a lot funnier than I thought and the final joke on the reader was just too subtle for me. My view is the ending falls into the cheesy category.

I'm a bit ambivalent after finishing. A good one for book clubs though, as it can lead to discussion about plots, intellectual property, writers, and so on. I did enjoy the writing style and would read something else by Korelitz.