Novak's Harvard English and Spanish major bona fides come through in wry stories about retooling seminal works of world literature for today's readers. In "J.C. Audetat, Translator of Don Quixote," a would-be poet finds an alternate route to literary fame by translating classics into accessible vernacular English. Quotes from prominent critics' gushing reviews of these audacious new editions — "Audetat blows the cookie crumbs off Proust" — are absolutely hilarious, but Novak undercuts his story by unnecessarily spelling out Audetat's not-so-little secret well after readers have figured it out.
As in David Sedaris' modern-day fables, Squirrel Seeks Chipmunk, a surprising number of these stories proceed from absurdity to moral lessons, such as "slow and steady wins the race, till truth and talent claim their place," in "The Rematch." In "The Something by John Grisham," the best-selling author discovers to his horror that his latest thriller has been published with his place-saving title. Chewing out his new editor, he confesses that one of the titles he'd been toying with was a mantra of his protagonist, "So far only goes so far." Surely, there's a lesson in there somewhere about this wildly uneven but wildly promising literary debut.
Read an excerpt of One More Thing