“Reads Like A Novel”

Jeff Sharlet considers that claim in David Sedaris’ blurb for Katherine Boo’s Behind the Beautiful Forevers, a portrait of the slums of Mumbai:

“It might surprise you how completely enjoyable this book is, as rich and beautifully written as a novel.” Emphasis mine. Cliché Sedaris’s. Should we blame him? He liked the book. He wanted people to read it. And David Sedaris is nothing if not a savvy salesman. He must’ve understood that the promise of “enjoyment,” married to all that is implied, in the context of a book blurb, by “a novel”—characters, plot, resolution, a seamless world—beneath a best-selling writer’s “brand,” would give Behind the Beautiful Forevers a readership far beyond the market share for true tales of relentless filth and poverty. “Reads like a novel”—that’s the elevator pitch. That’s how you sell suffering for $27. …

My own work has on occasion been compared to a novel, and whenever it was, I was delighted. I knew that for a book to be “like a novel” meant that it was safe for mass consumption. It knew that to be “like a novel” meant sales, even though nonfiction outsells fiction. But facts like that are beside the point. For David Sedaris to say that Behind the Beautiful Forevers is like a novel is to reassure the reader that the suffering documented on every page isn’t what matters. It’s the experience. The reader’s, that is. This book will make you feel close to that suffering, but not too close.