Sources today tell us that PhillyMag was recently sent a nasty letter from local chick-lit, um, icon Jennifer Weiner’s camp. Seems that Weiner’s got her granny panties in a bunch about a couple of things: One, Jessica Pressler’s piece on Weiner that ran last September, and two, the photos that were run with it. The piece, some of you might recall, was neither complimentary, nor particularly damning. By the end of it, you could tell that Pressler probably thinks the same things about Weiner’s brand of Sex & The City-lite (minus the sex ‚Äî or at least, sexy sex ‚Äî and in some cases, without the city) as you do: It’s featherweight stuff, oversimple and for those who like it that way, and to defend it as “literature” is, well, indefensible. But Weiner’s got the $2mil house on Cape Cod, so who’s really the loser here? Not exactly earth-shattering info. But still, Weiner obviously bristled at the snark, which is especially odd considering that Weiner’s blog is called ‚Äî wait for it ‚Äî SnarkSpot. (Confidential to Weiner: On your to-do list, please add, “Contemplate words, meanings of words.”)
Why would Weiner & Co. be getting so twisted up about this now, you ask? Because PhillyMag has posted the story online, where it can be viewed (for the moment) by anyone who cares to have their illusions of what it’s like to be a chick-lit queen shattered ‚Äî shattered, I tell you! ‚Äî and, we presume, because this is the size and shape of rep-damage control on the Net these days.
And so it came to pass that Weiner’s camp ‚Äî and God how it is seriously killing us not to make any “tent” jokes right about now ‚Äî sent PhillyMag a strongly worded letter demanding that the piece be taken down off the site, and complaining about the vaguely bitchy tone of the whole thing, as if anything could be done about that now anyway.
The irony here is that the plotline we just discussed mimics one of Weiner’s righteous-and-”real”-fat-girl-versus-skinny-bitch tomes perfectly. To which we say, honey, if you are trying to dredge up material for your next book, this is one hell of a way to do it.
PhillyMag: Miss Popularity
SnarkSpot: Lolly, Lolly, Lolly Get Your Impassioned Chick-Lit Defenses Here
Related: Jennifer Weiner On Myspace

This entry was posted on Wednesday, August 16th, 2006 at 4:07 pm.