‘The Plot’ Thickens

What I'm reading, and why

It is way too early in 2023 to be thinking about my favorite book of the year. But The Plot, by Jean Hanff Korelitz, is likely to be on the short list. 

The dazzling novel tells the story of author Jacob Finch Bonner. He had a strong debut novel, which got some good reviews in legit media outlets, sold a few copies, and elevated his name above the pile of no-name novelists scrapping for crumbs in the literary world. 

Then Bonner’s writing career hits something of a dead end. His follow-up novel doesn’t sell, and he’s at a loss in terms of unearthing a great story–a strong plot–to sustain any future literary endeavors. He’s without an agent, and they don’t acknowledge his increasingly desperate queries. 

Bonner has resorted to taking teaching positions at various not-so-prestigious universities, and it is in upstate New York, instructing aspiring writers, that he stumbles upon The Plot. 

Evan Parker is an obnoxious young man from Vermont. The student sits with Bonner, notes how the teacher used to be a bit of a literary hotshot, and talks a little about the novel he is writing. He doesn’t share much about the story, but is confident the book will be a smash. It’s a blockbuster plot, he says, and it will catapult him to the top of the bestseller list, to Oprah’s reading list. There will be a Hollywood movie with a big-name director, and enviable wealth. 

Bonner reads Parker’s short sample, and indeed–the plot is pure gold. 

It is years later. Bonner is still stuck with writer’s block, still taking meaningless jobs, and starts wondering whatever happened with the cocky young guy with the can’t-miss novel. Bonner realizes Evan Parker is not a name he’s seen on the bestseller list. Did he ever publish the book, or even finish writing the book?

A Google search reveals that he did not, and has not. In fact, Parker is dead, a victim of the opioid epidemic. 

Eager to resurrect his moribund literary career, Bonner borrows Parker’s million-dollar plot. His own characters, his own voice, and Parker’s killer story. 

Parker was correct–the bestseller list, Oprah’s show, the Spielberg movie, abundant wealth. 

For Bonner. 

For several chapters, Korelitz mentions the killer plot, but does not reveal it. I wondered if she would. If a writer mentions a stunning sunset or picturesque landscape, should they bother trying to describe it, or just let the reader use their imagination? What works better for the reader?

Korelitz does end up revealing the plot, sharing excerpts from Bonner’s borrowed bestseller, Crib. It’s a good one. Did I immediately think it would lead to the bestseller list and Oprah’s show? Maybe not. But in the right hands, the plot is enough to deliver a highly entertaining novel. 

Bonner is enjoying his breakout success. He’s on a nationwide book tour, in Seattle, scheduled on a radio show with an obnoxious host, Randy Johnson. (A different saturnine, Seattle-based Randy Johnson than the one who used to pitch for the Mariners.) Johnson’s producer, Anna, is a fan, and Jacob and Anna agree to meet for coffee after the show. They stay in touch. A relationship blossoms, and Anna moves across the country to live with Jacob in Manhattan. They marry. 

Life is good. Until messages start popping up on social media, calling Bonner a thief. 

He tries to put them out of his mind, but they continue. Bonner stole the idea for the book, they say. 

Korelitz writes, “Each morning he woke to Anna’s warm and tactile presence, and then, almost instantly, to that other presence: spectral and unwelcome, reminding him that today there might be a new message, entirely capable of destroying everything in his world. Then, all through the hours that followed, he waited for the terrible thing to happen, the one that would force him to explain himself to Anna, to [agent] Matilda, to [editor] Wendy, to sit in the James Frey-designated spot on Oprah Winfrey’s couch, to ‘hold for Steven Spielberg, please,’ to rescind his Writers’ Advisory Board position at PEN, to hang his head while he walked down the street, desperate not to be recognized. Each night he sank into the exhaustion of subterfuge: another day’s lies coiling around him, pulling him into sleeplessness.”

Bonner sets out to find out who is posting the messages, an investigative journey that takes him to Parker’s hometown in Vermont, and to Georgia, where Parker’s niece was set to go to college, until an accident happened en route to college. 

Bonner realizes that real people in Parker’s life lived out his million-dollar plot, and one of them is still alive. There’s a delicious twist at the end that I did not see coming. 

I received the book from an old writer friend. We were in a monthly writers’ group, The Pentameters, a few decades ago, reading and commenting on each other’s fiction for several years, and three of us get together each December for lunch and a book exchange that always yields good reads. 

Authors are frequently main characters in novels–hey, write what you know–and Korelitz offers an intriguing look at this life–an author whose self-worth is intimately connected to the public reaction to his latest work, and the exasperation one suffers when the next great idea does not come. 

It’s also a compelling morality play–to what degree is Bonner in the wrong for borrowing/stealing a dead man’s plot, which would otherwise never see the light of day? Indeed, the quote Korelitz uses to kick off the book is, “Good writers borrow, great writers steal,” credited to T. S. Eliot “(but possibly stolen from Oscar Wilde,)”, Korelitz notes. 

Stephen King called The Plot “one of the best novels I’ve ever read about writers and writing. It’s also insanely readable and the suspense quotient is through the roof. It’s remarkable.”

It is indeed all of that. 

Got a friend who still reads books here in 2023? Maybe share the column with them.