view page | download magazine

REPORTER: So, explain this again?

MICHAELA: I usually make it a game: “How many pages do I need to read before I can write a cover blurb I won’t get in trouble for?” While I used to use a Gaussian distribution to pick the pages I’d look at, that got too complicated. Now, I just take the sample manuscript, toss it in the air, and catch a few of the pages. I never get confused, since the title and author are at the top of each page like they’re important or something.

REPORTER: And that works?

MICHAELA: It’s a great strategy, because at the end of the day I can just sweep up the pages on the floor and throw them all in the recycling bin together. I always recycle.

REPORTER: Have you ever run into problems?

MICHAELA: Sometimes. Every so often, I can’t figure out what’s going on and it’s no use looking for the rest of the book once it’s in the mass on the floor. This rarely happens, so I figure that if the book is so lame that you can’t get the plot after three or four pages, it deserves one star. So I call my friend who writes the reviews and tell him so. Such books almost never get read, so it doesn’t matter what their dust jackets say. Except for the one that got the Pulitzer.

REPORTER: For example, you insisted upon a one-star rating for G. E. Dancer’s A Machined Writing.

MICHAELA: Exactly. I distantly remember that one. One page was about a voyeur who liked to pretend to be in his girlfriend’s room with a dog, another was about a woman who shelved books in Kate Chopin’s fantasy land, and another was about some lame people with boring lives who spent all their time doing anagrams and having sex.

REPORTER: It’s a collection of short stories. The description you wrote reads, “Photo a redoubtable finely puke.”

MICHAELA: I think I’m a misunderstood genius.