green monster (non-)recommendations #3
olivia nuzzi
I can’t look away from Olivia Nuzzi, the political journalist catapulted into group chat fame twice in the past two years. Last year, for her (non-physical) affair with Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.; a month ago, for her glitzy New York Times profile and book excerpt published in Vanity Fair. Her book, American Canto, was published last week by an imprint of Simon & Schuster. It’s too soon to tell how it’s selling, but one thing’s for sure: the launch got a lot of people talking.
Am I jealous of her? Or would I never want to be her in a million years? I can’t quite tell.
Most reviews of American Canto have panned the book, calling it “self-serious and altogether disappointing,” “fan fiction about herself,” “using words as armor, not conduit,“ “risk[ing] so little of herself throughout,“ and “vacillat[ing] between purple and incoherent.“ But does it matter? Does it matter as long as people read it, whether that’s now or in ten, twenty, thirty years?
Nuzzi herself seems unbothered. When asked about the initial negative feedback to the excerpt, she said:
I am pretty detached from the outcome. Any time the notion of the external world intruded on the process of writing the book, I’d bat it away, thinking that a very, very good outcome would be if the book was received with open minds in 20 or 30 years. Hilariously, I’m an optimist.
The focus! The self-assurance! The verve to imagine your book decades into the future when it’s already been called “fan fiction about yourself!” Nuzzi is an exercise in quantum mechanics: is she invincible, or just reckless? Does the mere fact of asking render her immortal? (Maybe she has more in common with Caroline Calloway than casting themselves in Harry Potter fanfiction.)
Because Nuzzi’s tale is a story of second—and third, and fourth—chances. Where things went right for her, they went wrong for me. I’ve spent innumerable hours tallying the differences between Nuzzi and me, wondering if I could’ve done something to be more like her and less like me. Pursued journalism? Skirted the lines of journalistic ethics by cozying up to sources for the story? Been born a Hitchcock blonde? Simply been more interesting?
In 2018, she sold a book about the 2020 presidential campaign “reportedly for about $1 million.” This book was supposed to be coauthored with Ryan Lizza, another political correspondent (and her then-fiancé).
As of last year, however, there was no book. Six years after selling the book, this book about the 2020 presidential campaign did not exist. The only thing that existed were the tabloid headlines about Nuzzi’s affair with RFK, Jr., whom Nuzzi profiled during his presidential campaign run for New York magazine. Nuzzi was put on leave and then parted ways with New York magazine.
Nuzzi then absconded to California. She apparently tapped out American Canto on her phone, while hiking. And when she turned that manuscript into her editors—who’d purchased a book about the 2020 presidential campaign, mind you—her publisher was actually receptive to this change in creative vision. It wasn’t what they bought, but they must’ve believed in this new work. Because they could’ve cancelled the contract, cut their losses, but they didn’t. They went ahead to print.
It’s genius, really. It doesn’t even matter if the book is “good” or “bad,” because it seems like it was what Nuzzi wanted to publish—and she did it. I could go off about how her advance could’ve funded so many other talented writers—the Iowa Writers’ Workshop grads, the journalists who have never committed ethical errors, the normies who don’t look like Fox News anchors—but at the end of the day, I’m just jealous that she got to do it her way. I’d jump on that opportunity, too, if it ever presented itself.
