Garrison Keillor and Authors Guild insiders lament decline of New York literary elite

Author, satirist amd radio personality Garrison Keillor just had a humorous column lamenting the decline of the sacred New York literary elite printed in the . . . Baltimore Sun: “When everyone's a writer, no one is.” The funniest part of Keillor’s anti-self publishing piece is the opening:

"In New York the other night, I ran into my daughter's favorite author, Mary Pope Osborne, whose "Magic Tree House" books I've read to the child at night, and a moment later, Scott Turow, who writes legal thrillers that keep people awake all night, and David Remnick, the biographer of President Barack Obama. Bang bang bang, one heavyweight after another. Erica Jong, Jeffrey Toobin, Judy Blume. It was a rooftop party in Tribeca that I got invited to via a well-connected pal, wall-to-wall authors and agents and editors and elegant young women in little black dresses, standing, white wine in hand, looking out across the Hudson at the lights of Hoboken and Jersey City, eating shrimp and scallops and spanikopita on toothpicks, all talking at once the way New Yorkers do."

What was the “rooftop party in Tribeca” that Keillor attended? The annual gala of the elitist Authors Guild, which Keillor conveniently neglects to mention. And who was the “well-connected pal” to whom Keillor refers? None other than the prairie homeboy himself, a longtime director of the affiliated Authors Guild Foundation who has contributed more than $20,000 to that organization since the year 2000.

[via Charles Tan of Bibliophile Stalker]