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The Journal of Literary Satire | Hastily Written & Slopilly Edited
Saturday, March 8, 2003
Dear New York Times Book Review

Dear N.Y.T.B.R., Pt. I

The Editor
The New York Times Book Review
229 West 43rd Street
New York, N.Y. 10036


March 8, 2003

Dear New York Times Book Review,

Surely you’ve heard of me and my little novel, Clams Casino. The literati are ranting about it. The Borders stock boys are raving about it. The Starbucks laptoperati are ordering twice as many Tazo Chai lattes just thinking about it. George Plimpton called the book “Vonnegutian.” Kurt Vonnegut Jr. called it “Plimptonian.” Jonathan Franzen is appearing on Oprah Winfrey’s show just to endorse it. Ashton Kutcher is learning how to read just so he can read it.

How much more do you need to hear, N.Y.T.B.R.? What’s it take to get a review from you guys?

I mean, seriously, you guys are dropping the ball here. I never complained when you ignored my groundbreaking début, Mi Casa, Su Mama, even though Dave Eggers said it outstaggered, outheartbroke, and outgeniused anything he’d ever read. And my sophomore effort, Pulling a Door Clearly Marked ‘Push’, despite being snatched up for a big-screen treatent by two-time Oscar-nominee Frank Darabont, was completely glossed over by you guys yet I said nary a word.

But Clams is different. We’re talking Great American Novel here, guys! How can you not dignify this earth-shattering, mind-boggling, awe-inspiring, life-giving, 100% cliché-free masterpiece with a simple half-page review? You really dropped the ball on this one. You better get crackin’ before I start winning Pulitzers and Nobel Prizes and new awards they have to invent just to properly bestow upon Clams Casino the honors it deserves.

Sincerely,
Josh Abraham

P.S. You need a bribe or something? Just say whose palm needs greasing, I will grease it.

Josh Abraham was born in Algeria in 1913. He spent his early years in North Africa, working various jobs--in the weather bureau, in an automobile-accessory firm, in a shipping company--to help pay for his courses at the University of Algiers. As a young journalist, his report on the unhappy state of Muslims in the Kabylie region aroused the Algerian government to action and brought him public notice. From 1935 to 1938 he ran the Théâtre de l'Equipe, a theatrical company that produced plays by Malraux, Gide, Synge, and Dostoevsky. During World War II he was one of the leading writers of the French Resistance and editor of Combat, then an important underground newspaper. Abraham's fiction, his philosophical essays, and his plays have assured his preëminent position in modern French letters. In 1957 Abraham was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature. His sudden death on January 4, 1960, cut short the career of one of the most important literary figures of the Western world when he was at the very summit of his powers. No, wait. That was Albert Camus.
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