Nell James, etc.

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An Open Letter to the Morning News’ Tournament of Books Commissioner Kevin Guilfoile

Upon discovery that the plot of your novel involves the rape and murder of a 17-year-old girl, my Mother requested that I avoid further contact with you. However, I decided to take my chances and write this letter in response to your commentary on my Tournament of Books review (which, I have a suspicion, you didn’t actually read).

Here is your introduction to the commentary as I imagine it has been sitting on your hard drive for several months:

“I have never been especially hip, but until I had a child a few years ago I still considered myself relatively young…the only thing I know about teenagers is how much they charge for baby-sitting. Until about three days ago, I thought MySpace was one of those bags you put your sweaters in and then sucked out the air with a vacuum cleaner, so I won’t pretend I have any insight into this decision by 17-year-old [insert name of token teenage judge].”

Although I would’ve thought that my 680-word review was “insight” enough into my decision, you’re right about not understanding teenagers: I probably shouldn’t be revealing this, but on the night of every blue moon, we gather in underground caverns and do each other’s hair and nails while we discuss narrative form and the implications of mythology in a contemporary social context, and devise schemes to perpetuate literary award injustice in the name of our High Priestess, Ali Smith. However, I must admit that I know less than you do about teenage baby-sitters since, as a San Francisco-reared child, my baby-sitter was a 30-something drag queen that participated in Divine look-alike contests in the Castro.

You went on to say that you are afraid of Gaiman and his rabid followers, and therefore proclaimed that I cheated them out of their win (apparently you understand teenagers better than you admit, having folded under peer pressure like a drunk 13-year-old). But what you failed to consider is that I may have an equally frightening posse of my own – I am a prog rocker, after all; if you’d recently been to a Yes concert, you might know that any individual prog rock fan weighs more, and is probably louder, than the whole of Gaiman’s wispy goth followers combined. Although Neil Gaiman’s purportedly all-black wardrobe may seem imposing, from what I can gather he is a very nice guy, much nicer than my Hawaiian-shirted friend who could literally crush you for disagreeing with a girl who learned to play the bass line from “Tempus Fugit”.

Anyway, I am hopeful that judges who are too prestigious for you to pick on (“[I] call this the biggest injustice of the tournament so far. Gaiman was robbed…” Ouch!) will second my choice of “The Accidental” (maybe I was just blinded by the Whitbread). And of course, I appreciate that this Tournament is all in good jest, and when you wrote your commentary, you were just trying to be funny. And you were funny; funny like a lazy eye.

Yours truly,
-Nell James, TOB Judge

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UPDATE: Many rounds and judgements later, “The Accidental” won the Tournament of Books.

the morning news, tournament of books, kevin guilfoile