While browsing through the fiction authors at Barnes & Noble this weekend, I came to the “Smiths.” Next to Dodi Smith, author of “I Capture the Castle,” a book I read solely because I had heard that J.K. Rowling liked it, was a book by Meta Smith. I had never heard of her, so that wasn’t what caught my eye. What I was amazed by was that “Heaven’s Fury” had been co-authored by 50 Cent and published by G-Unit Books. Who knew?
G-Unit Books, part of Pocket/MTV Books, which is in turn a unit of Simon & Schuster, was formed in 2005 and publishes 200 to 300-page novels in the “urban novel” or “street literature” genre.
According to a statement by 50 Cent on the Simon & Schuster Web site, the genre depicts “dramas me and my crew have been dealing with our whole lives: death, deceit, double-crosses, ultimate loyalty, and total betrayal. It’s about our life on the streets and no one knows it better than us.”
I read the first chapter, but found the cover more indicative of its content. The cover of “Heaven’s Fury” features a Hispanic model in a luxurious apartment, pouting at the camera. The covers of 50 Cent’s other novels also feature real-life models a la cheap romance and adventure novels ““ most “literature” covers feature old paintings or symbolic designs.
The back cover of “Heaven’s Fury” promises to show good girl Heaven pulled into a drug war, only to discover that her “wrath is deadly.” The first chapter depicts an explicit affair and seems to be aimed at about a middle-school reading level.
On Amazon.com, 50 Cent is credited as either author or “creator” on about 10 novels, and another, “Diamond District,” is set to be published in March. The trend seems popular: Hip-hop culture is getting literary, or more aptly, more and more industries are cashing in on celebrity names to draw customers to tired genres. The name “50 Cent” can sell a million albums; can it sell books?
And novels are not the only genre using popular culture to reach out to non-traditional audiences, though 50 Cent seems to be the least self-parodying. Tonight and Wednesday night, “Jerry Springer: The Opera” will have its New York City debut in Carnegie Hall. The show ran for over 600 performances from April 2003 to February 2005 in London and was filmed for television. Segments from the show are on YouTube, including the opening in which a large chorus sings, “My mom used to be my dad, snip snip,” in operatic rounds.
It also toured in select U.S. cities, and depending on its reception at Carnegie Hall, it could make it to Broadway.
Now I’ve been to a few operas, and I still can’t quite picture this one. Is it a mockery or is it a legitimate attempt to reinvigorate the genre? With tap dancing Klan members, I lean toward the former, but with a transvestite belting out “Talk to the hand ’cause the face ain’t listening,” I lean toward the latter.
A 2003 review of the London show in The Guardian described singers who “scrap over their cheating lover like rival sopranos in a Donizetti opera,” a complimentary comparison, which means this show probably made at least a few attempts at legitimacy in the elite field. Maybe all it takes is cross-genre cross-dressing to get crowds into Carnegie Hall.
And maybe once these young readers start to understand the unintentional humor of 50 Cent’s writing, they will progress to something worthwhile.
If you can think of better gateway novels than those by 50 Cent, e-mail Crocker at acrocker@media.ucla.edu.