After yesterday's item about my idea for a reality TV show set in a creative writing workshop, the bookblogger who calls himself "Novel Gobbler" emailed to remind me that Tony Cowell, Simon's brother (as seen at left), was a judge on a British show called Lit Idol a while back, and is not only planning a new series called Bestseller for later this year, he's going to come to America next month and pitch it to the networks here. It's not quite the same as our gimmick, because it's about authors with completed manuscripts looking for agents and/or publishers, but maybe we can get a piece of the action anyway...

Closer to my original concept, Noria Jablonski, the author of the short story collection Human Oddities, suggested the legendary Gordon Lish, which made me feel somewhat stupid for not thinking of him myself, and then came back with another nominee: Dale Peck. Later in the afternoon, somebody recommended Cynthia Ozick, but made us promise not to reveal his identity...