Jacqueline Susann was the first author to publish two number-one best-sellers back to back, and simultaneously to face the nearly unanimous outrage of critics. When asked if she read the reviews of her novels
Valley of the Dolls and The Love Machine, the actress-turned-writer responded: "I'd like to have the critics like me, I'd like to have everybody like what I write. But when my book sells, I know people like the book. That's the most important thing, because writing is communication." Moreover Susann contended, "The day is over when the point of writing is just to turn a phrase that critics will quote, like Henry James.
I'm not interested in turning a phrase; what matters to
me is telling a story that
involves people. The hell with what critics say. I've made characters live, so that people talk about them at cocktail parties, and that, to me, is what counts. You have to have a divine conceit in your judgment. I have it."
As Nora Ephron noted, "If Jacqueline Susann is no literary figure, she is nevertheless an extraordinary publishing phenomenon. . . . With the possible exception of
Cosmopolitan magazine, no one writes about sadism in modern man and masochism in modern woman quite as horribly and accurately as Jacqueline Susann." In addition, Ephron was able to identify the reason behind the incredible success of Susann's first best-seller: "
Valley had a message that had a magnetic appeal for women readers: it described the standard female fantasy--of going to the big city, striking it rich, meeting fabulous men--and went on to show every reader that she was far better off than the heroines in the book--who took pills, killed themselves, and made general messes of their lives. It was, essentially, a morality tale. And despite its reputation, it was not really a dirty book. Most women, I think, do not want to read hard-core pornography. They do not even want to read anything terribly technical about the sex act. What they want to read about is lust. And Jacqueline Susann gave it to them." - from
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