So best-selling author Jennifer Weiner watched the Super Bowl halftime extravaganza, and the perfect looks and body of Jennifer Lopez made her feel inferior.<\/p>\n
Talking about her Facebook friends, she wrote in the New York Times<\/a>: “Some members of my social-media community were in awe. Others \u2014 myself included \u2014 were feeling personally judged.”<\/p>\n This is her very tired shtick as an author.\u00a0 Not so long ago she was complaining in the New York Times<\/em> about how the \u201csnobs\u201d in the literary world looked down on her novels. And she lamented her status as a writer of popular fiction.<\/p>\n Weiner\u2019s professors were Joyce Carol Oates and Toni Morrison and she said she couldn\u2019t ever have imagined them liking her published work. Did she ask them? And even if they thought her work was trash, so what?<\/p>\n Most authors are never mentioned by the Times<\/em>, but she\u2019s a contributing opinion author there. She was even the subject of a glowing profile in The New Yorker<\/em> about\u2014you guessed it\u2014not being respected.\u00a0 How many writers in America get that kind of exposure?<\/p>\n Don\u2019t be fooled by all her happy-face publicity photos. It seems that whenever you read an opinion piece by Weiner or see her quoted, she\u2019s got this humongous chip on her shoulder.<\/p>\n The last time I checked, her first novel was in its 57th printing. The New Yorker<\/em> reported back then that \u201cWeiner\u2019s books have spent two hundred and forty-nine weeks on the Times<\/em> best-seller list.\u201d Over fourteen thousand readers on Goodreads had reviewed her latest novel. Weiner\u2019s also made millions from her books, and more than one of them was turned into a movie.<\/p>\n How many writers in America enjoy that level of success?<\/p>\n Whatever people say about her books and however much she gripes about being dissed, Jennifer Weiner is in the publishing world\u2019s 1%<\/em><\/strong>. She wealthy and famous, but she\u2019s not satisfied. I guess she wants to be as honored as Toni Morrison and Joyce Carol Oates. Well, dream on.\u00a0 Who wouldn\u2019t?<\/p>\n Weiner\u2019s consistent carping reminds me\u00a0 of the author whose first novel sold half a million copies in hardcover and was ecstatically praised\u2014but he bitched to a writer friend of mine that he didn\u2019t get a Pulitzer nomination.<\/p>\n For some people, some authors, nothing is ever good enough.\u00a0 If Weiner got the\u00a0 Pulitzer, you can imagine her asking why it took so long.\u00a0 And so of course Jennifer Lopez makes her feel like crap.\u00a0 If she looked Like J-Lo, she’d feel inferior to Beyonc\u00e9, and the beat goes on….<\/p>\n Lev Raphael is the author of 26 books in genres from memoir to mystery, most recently State University of Murder<\/a>.<\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" So best-selling author Jennifer Weiner watched the Super Bowl halftime extravaganza, and the perfect looks and body of Jennifer Lopez made her feel inferior. Talking about her Facebook friends, she wrote in the New York Times: “Some members of my social-media community were in awe. Others \u2014 myself included \u2014 were feeling personally judged.” This … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[2174,2156,2176,738,2157,2153,317,2155,2175,659,2160,268,2158,169,1709,2154,2159],"class_list":["post-5582","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-authors","tag-carping","tag-complaining","tag-envy","tag-goodreads","tag-griping","tag-jealousy","tag-jennifer-lopez","tag-jennifer-wiener","tag-low-self-esteem","tag-new-york-times","tag-new-yorker","tag-pulitzer-prize","tag-rich-authors","tag-shame","tag-state-university-of-murder","tag-super-bowl","tag-wealthy-authors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5582","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5582"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5582\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5690,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5582\/revisions\/5690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5582"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5582"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.levraphael.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5582"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}