Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Book Review - The Love Song of Jonny Valentine - Teddy Wayne

The Love Song of Jonny Valentine
Title: The Love Song of Jonny Valentine 

Author: Teddy Wayne 


Review: The modern appetite for news and information has gotten out of control.  Every bus crash, windstorm, and flu outbreak is available to us in an instant through the internet.  When everything becomes instant news, then the flow of information coming to us can never end.  The side effect of this is all aspects of someone’s life, no matter how remotely famous, becomes open to the public.  Discover three kidnapped women and the next day we all have access to your previous arrest records; and you were the hero in the story. 

Thus the nature of fame, at least fame in our modern interpretation of it, is slowly exposed in this insightful novel by Teddy Wayne.  Our hero, young Jonny Valentine got exposure through some cute Youtube videos that demonstrated his singing abilities.   Within a few short years he has become an entertainment package, going on tour and heading for Madison Square Garden. 

The reality of this book is it shows that for every story of fame there is a tremendous tale of cost right behind the scene.  Jonny ceases to be an 11 year old kid who can carry a tune, instead he is reduced to a brand.  A brand that can be manipulated and abused to give the world what it demands.  Need to grow him up, make him more sexual to his fan base who are also growing up.  Easy, set him up on a fake date with another prepackaged tween star who , bonus, is Hispanic (expand your demographic).  Yet when he actually tries to sex himself up with a fan, well that falls flat because reality is not a requirement for the young star. They have sacrificed the kid to create a polished product they can sell. 

And the real fault lies with us, the consumers.  We are so desperate for more and more news; more celebrity, more frivolous in our life that we pay people to make this product.  We buy the music, we read the magazines, and in the end we trample them underfoot when we have used them up.  It is no wonder so many of these child stars end up on the drug abuse trash heap later in life.  We have drained all the life out of them to vicariously enrich our simple lives; and then we enjoy kicking them down again when that becomes en vogue to make ourselves feel better. 

The Love Song of Jonny Valentine is a wonderful tale of modern celebrity and should serve as a warning to us all.  We do it to ourselves.  (Note this is a work of fiction but you will get a Justin Beibery vibe from the book). 

Publisher: Free Press 
ISBN: 978-1-4767-0585-9
Copyright: 2013 
Pages: 285
Quick Review: 4 stars out of 5 
Where I Obtained the Book: Sent to me by the publisher for review. 

Synopsis:   Megastar Jonny Valentine, eleven-year-old icon of bubblegum pop, knows that the fans don’t love him for who he is. The talented singer’s image, voice, and even hairdo have been relentlessly packaged—by his L.A. label and his hard-partying manager-mother, Jane—into bite-size pabulum. But within the marketing machine, somewhere, Jonny is still a vulnerable little boy, perplexed by his budding sexuality and his heartthrob status, dependent on Jane, and endlessly searching for his absent father in Internet fan sites, lonely emails, and the crowds of faceless fans.


Poignant, brilliant, and viciously funny, told through the eyes of one of the most unforgettable child narrators, this literary masterpiece explores with devastating insight and empathy the underbelly of success in 21st-century America. The Love Song of Jonny Valentine is a tour de force by a standout voice of his generation.

Author Biography: 
  Teddy Wayne is the author of the novels "The Love Song of Jonny Valentine" (Free Press, Feb. 2013) and "Kapitoil" (Harper Perennial) and is the recipient of a 2011 Whiting Writers' Award, an NEA Creative Writing Fellowship, the 2011 PEN/Robert W. Bingham Prize runner-up, and a finalist for the 2011 New York Public Library Young Lions Fiction Award finalist and the 2011 Dayton Literary Peace Prize. He is a graduate of Harvard and Washington University in St. Louis, where he taught fiction and creative nonfiction writing. His work has appeared in The New Yorker, the New York Times, Vanity Fair, McSweeney's, the Wall Street Journal, and elsewhere. He lives in New York.

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