Somehow Salon always manages to find yet another writer who, unable to appreciate the fact that they’ve beaten the odds and gotten themselves published, finds something to complain about, even when they insist they’re not upset. Think “Jane Austen Doe,” or Steve Almond, and now you can add Lee Harrington to the list, as she devotes an entire essay to the angst of not finishing her memoir about raising a badly behaved dog until after John Grogan’s Marley & Me was already in stores and shooting up the bestseller lists.
“Now, I know this is not the first time in publishing history that one book has one-upped another by a matter of months [Harrington writes]. Right now, for example, there are two books out about the competitive eating circuit. And I know, because my publicist, agent and editor keep telling me, that the phenomenal success of Marley could work to my advantage. It means people buy books about couples with dogs, they say.”
It also means book section editors who didn’t run anything on Marley when they had the chance might be willing to give you a call. “I am not one of those writers who begrudges another writer’s success,” Harrington observes. “But still: Being scooped sucks.” Her solution, she jokes, will be to post “the story of my terrible, lovable dog” in the discussion area of Grogan’s web site. From what we hear, it might be because she figured out that sending him her manuscript during the middle of the Marley and Me press cycle wasn’t a terribly efficient way to get him to read it and send back that blurb she wanted. Funny how that never comes up in her article—but if he had, one wonders if she’d be telling Salon readers how bitter she isn’t about not being quick enough on the draw…