Following up on this column's mention of Maddox, the guy who used his e-mail list to put The Alphabet of Manliness in the #1 spot at Amazon three months before publication, NYT scribe Warren St. John checks out the stars of the emerging "fratire" market. But it seems life on the JT LeRoy circuit has left St. John a little less trusting of the louterati (much better than "fratirists," no?):

"'Whatever your favorite food is, if you eat it every day for a month, you're going to get sick of it,' [Tucker Max] said. Mr. Max was referring to his recent promotional tour for his book I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell, a collection of supposedly [emphasis mine] autobiographical stories that typically involve Mr. Max getting extremely drunk, hooking up with strangers and, as often as not, making a fool of himself."

"For a certain age of guys," Max goes on to say, "when they think about drinking and sex, they think about me." Of course, keep in mind that he also describes many of these readers as "dudes who can't spell 'dude' right." Meanwhile, Newsweek considers Maddox a fluke, believing "good buzz in literary circles" is beyond his capabilities.