Ever since the ‘Stuff White People Like’ book deal was announced, everyone I know has needed to have a conversation with me about it. The best one, after the ‘Times’ article came out, involved a friend who doesn’t work in publishing predicting that the people at Random House who had OK’d giving Christian Lander “about” $300,000 to pad out his blog would get fired. (Kurt Andersen and Gina Centrello probably will not end up getting fired.) The second best one was with a friend who does work in publishing. She reported that, with the same speed that copycat blogs have picked up the ‘Stuff [ ] Like’ meme, copycat proposals had started arriving. Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but she did say that she’d gotten a proposal for a book about white boys — their clothes, their cuisine, their drug choices. It’s called ‘The White Guy,’ and it’s actually already coming out in Canada this May. I wish I could type the face she made while describing this proposal.
So then, this morning, Ron and I kicked off our first-ever IM conversation by talking about this book …
