Like reading, GOOP is fundamental

It seems we've reached a saturation point with celebrity controversy. Because now you really have to go looking for the ones that don't involve sex tapes or a combo of the phrases "Disney starlet" and "stripper pole." For example, I was researching some info about a literary agent and suddenly found myself knee-deep in a contretemps between Gwyneth Paltrow and the publishing world's bloggers.

It seems Ms. Paltrow's web-destination, GOOP, has been flagged for recommending books it oughta not be recommending. Ones that serve the self-interests of her friends.

Disclaimer: I am greatly fond of Ms. Paltrow's work as an actor. I wish she'd cut through some of the extraneous goop that surrounds her and find the gumption to make more movies.

But I disagree with the literati in their castigation of her website's summer reading list.

Some of it's just plain ridiculous. Halogen Life has a problem with the list's referral to a large number of works by Alan Furst. In response to this Christopher Roy Correa writes, "So, any book by this guy. That helps." Well, if you've never heard of the author, it is helpful. And it's not like Alan Furst is equivocal to Jackie Collins.

But it seems that's also the problem. Many bloggers are attacking the highbrow nature of the selections. Ms. Paltrow herself lists both The Count of Monte Cristo and As I Lay Dying. Apparently, more people wish the site would follow the dictates of mass media outlets and simply enumerate the same trashy, fun beach-reads.

But the one criticism every site alludes to, first originated on Jezebel in reference to agent Luke Janklow's picks:
"For starters, Janklow himself appears to represent Tilly Bagshawe, author of Sidney Sheldon’s Mistress Of The Game, and Jilliane Hoffman, author of Plea Of Insanity. Of Hoffman, Janklow said in a press release, “Jilliane made my job as her agent incredibly easy – she wrote a perfect book.” Three other authors on Janklow’s recommendations list — Alex Wellen, Gideon Defoe, and Rafael Yglesias, are represented by other agents at Janklow’s agency. Andrew Gottlieb is repped by somebody at Janklow & Nesbit, and thanks Luke Janklow in his acknowledgements. That means of the six authors on Janklow’s recommendations list, his agency represents… six."

Many of these sites now impeach Ms. Paltrow as a corporate shill, but at best she is friend to a corporate shill. Further, to my mind, even that is dubious. Why is it surprising that Mr. Janklow has had opportunity to read mostly his own agency's authors? As a lit agent his time is likely taken up reading unpublished work and the fiction that he and his friends are hoping to support. And it's not like the GOOP is trying to conceal his identity or job function.

At the end of the day it all seems fairly disingenuous for these writers and sites devoted to the book business and its readers to attack someone trying to help their bottom lines. After all, just because a woman falls in love with Shakespeare, it doesn't mean he's the only author she's allowed to cuddle up with in bed.