I haven’t read Teddy Wayne’s new novel, The Love Song of Jonny Valentine.

There are too many good rock novels to waste my time on a novel about a tween pop star.

Last year Wayne got off to a bad start with Baby Boomer feminists like me when Salon (a liberal magazine, right?) published his querulous, right-wing article claiming that male writers have a harder time than women.  His irascible essay was triggered by best-selling author Jennifer Weiner’s blog about stats tracking reviews of books by gender.  The numbers that irked him?  Of  254 works of fiction reviewed by The New York Times in 2011, only 104, or 40.9 percent, were by women.

Wayne said:

“..and being a midlist male author who writes about males is a distinct financial disadvantage. Not only will you not get reviewed in the Times, but you won’t get reviewed in the women’s magazines that drive sales, like People and O, the Oprah Magazine. Book clubs will ignore you. Barnes & Noble will relegate you to the back shelves. Your publisher won’t give you much support — if it even publishes your book in the first place. As a book-editor friend once admitted to me, “When we buy a debut novel by a man, we view it as taking a real chance.”

Teddy Wayne’s anti-feminist article in Salon annoyed me.

Poor Teddy Wayne.  What interests me is the incredible publicity machine that has won Wayne not just a single review in The New York Times, but triple coverage in a single week:  he wrote an Opinionator humor piece, “Tips for Public Speaking,” published Feb. 23; Jess Walter’s review of Wayne’s new book was published in The New York Times Book Review Feb. 24; and today, March 1, Wayne’s essay, “By Any Other Name,”appears.

In “By Any Other Name,” he gives us a hint about his publicity savvy.  He tells us, “Readers are much more likely to remember a byline with Teddy, my somewhat gravitas-deficient nickname since birth, than one with my more common legal name, Derek.”

I’m waiting to see what bloggers say before I write him off completely.  At Tony’s Book World, a contemporary fiction blog, Tony has already written about the book: he didn’t like it.  He writes, “The Love Song of Jonny Valentine” has been called the Justin Bieber novel.  What ever possessed me to read this book?  That is an excellent question.”

And now for a more important issue.  Who has written the great rock novel?  There are so many.

ROCK NOVEL LIST:

Marcelle Clements’ Rock Me (1989).   I LOVE Marcelle Clements’ writing:  she  is a  journalist and a novelist.  Her first novel, Rock Me, is perhaps not up to her later excellent novel, Midsummer, but it interests me because it is about a woman rock star (very few rock novels are about women).  The heroine, Casey, is a rock star who needs some time to herself.  She goes to Hawaii and…  Grade:  A-

Don Delillo’s Great Jones Street (1973).  Rock star Bucky Wunderlick needs a retreat, but when Happy Valley Farms Commune finds him and drugs hime, everything goes downhill. Grade: A.

Clyde Edgerton’s The Night Train (2011).  A beautifully-written, humorous novel about two boys, one black, one white, who perform rock and roll in a small Southern town in 1962.  Jazz piano may be African-American Larry Lime’s ticket out of town, as he studies with a brilliant hemophiliac musician knows as the Bleeder; meanwhile, the privileged Dwayne, son of the owner of the furniture refinishing shop where the two boys work, learns the power of  rock and roll through talented Larry Lime’s patient explication of James Brown’s “The Night Train.”  Grade:  A

Roddy Doyle’s The Commitments (1987).  An Irish band wants to bring soul to Dublin.  Grade:  A

Nick Hornby’s Juliet, Naked (2009).  The heroine, Annie, breaks up with her boyfriend, a middle-aged man obsessed with Tucker Crowe, a rock star who retired in 1984.  After thye disagree about Tucker Crowe’s new album, “Juliet, Naked,” Annie posts a bad review on the website that  sparks a friendship between Annie and Tucker.  Grade:  A

Dana Spiotta’s Stone Arabia (2011).  The protagonist analyzes her relationship with her brother, a rock musician who has recorded his own original music at home, and distributed the limited editions of his records to his family.  Grade:  A-

Jennifer Egan’s A Visit from the Goon Squad (2010).  Beautifully written, interwoven stories about characters in the music business. The novel falls apart in the last few chapters, one done as a Power Point presentation, the other about a dystopian concert.  Most loved this book.  I did not.  Grade:  A-

Jonathan Lethem’s You Don’t Love Me Yet (2007).  A very light novel about  a Los Angeles alternative rock band, and, yes, there are women in the band. Lethem’s Fortress of Solitude and Chronic City are masterpieces, but I have to say this very short book is not his best.  Lethem does long better. Grade:  A-

Sylvie Simmons’s Too Weird for Ziggy.  A collection of linked short stories about rock musicians. In one of the stories, a male rock star grows breasts and likes them.  Simmons is a British rock journalist.  Grade:  A-