Virtual Unreality

So-called reality TV series take a beating in Bill Bryan’s Keep It Real, a new novel reviewed today by James R. Winter at January Magazine.

This book’s protagonist is Ted Collins, a former Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist who’s lately become the co-executive producer of television’s biggest “reality” series, The Mogul (a barely disguised representation of Donald Trump’s The Apprentice). That position means more pay, but it also involves our hero in “the disappearance of a fetching young Maxim magazine model named Patrice,” a crime that Collins figures to use to his own advantage--a way to get “out from under the fat thumb of his boss” and “resurrect his career as an investigative journalist.” The events that follow, Winter explains, skewer rap music as well as modern American television, and show author Bryan to be a master of the absurd.

You can read the whole review here.