Two Galleycats, One Washingtonienne and an East Village Bar

How did Galleycat Sarah end up in the photo at left with Jessica “The Washingtonienne” Cutler? Well, when I mentioned being unsurprised by Cutler’s blog entry last week saying she “didn’t love [Dog Days] as much as I thought I would,” I got an email from Cutler herself wondering how I saw it coming. “I read it from the perspective of someone who already wrote a similar book,” she wrote on her blog a bit later, “which is why I can’t give Dog Days a fair critique. Since several people have asked me about the book, I think that not discussing it would be more discourteous than admitting I didn’t like it.” I hadn’t read the book at that point; I was just basing my take on what I’d seen of Ana Marie Cox’s steady public retreat from Cutler as the latter’s notoriety rose. So we decided to get together last night to talk about it, and I made sure Sarah came along to share the inside story.

By the time we met up at an East Village bar, I’d made my way through Dog Days (disclosure: Cox and I worked together nearly a decade ago on Netizen, an early attempt by Wired at online political journalism). It’s a decent enough novel, a little too reminiscent of Joe Klein at some points but certainly strong enough that Cox should stay on book reviewers’ radar so they can see if #2 is as technically accomplished. But even before Cutler told us just how much she thinks Dog Days borrows from her life, Cox’s piggybacking on the Washingtonienne scandal for her own fiction was inescapably blatant—and in such a way that, while fully conceding that I don’t know the circumstances of the novel’s creation, it really feels to this reader that an original plotline, which wasn’t necessarily tied to current events, was hijacked by a stray scandal. Not that I don’t understand the impulse—just two hours conversation with Cutler provides enough juicy material (hardly any of which we could possibly share if we wanted to be writing this column next week) for at least two or three novels. But not necessarily Cutler’s next; she says she’s gotten industry pressure to make her second book “The Washingtonienne Takes Manhattan,” but the three of us agreed there’s too many versions of that story on bookshelves already.

Sarah adds: interestingly, Cutler’s other book idea made my ears prick up, considering my usual literary bent. After she described the premise and a bit of the plot, I pointed out she was well on her way to writing a crime novel that’s kind of a female hybrid of Jim Thompson and Bret Easton Ellis. Should she follow through, it would definitely expand her audience beyond the media-drenched blogger/book deal circles of New York, DC, and possibly LA — in other words, to cities that might not place such huge importance on notoriety.

Of course, as time goes on, the whole Washingtonienne persona will fade further, and I couldn’t help asking Cutler what she’d be doing had her blog not been revealed to the world. “I’d probably still be working on Capitol Hill and living with the guy who’s suing me,” she said, adding that she was really quite happy with her life at the time. Not that she’d change anything about it now — if anything, she seemed to relish being back in New York for good — but it does demonstrate the value of a carpe diem attitude…

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