Sellevision!

7/2/06

Take a trip to the twisted world of home shopping in Augusten Burrough’s debut novel.

Although not quite as up to par as his critically-acclaimed and hysterical memoir Running with Scissors, Augusten Burroughs’s Sellevision takes us to a similar place: the surreal and camp world of America’s retail broadcasting network, in what Burroughs himself calls a “shallow, petty, mean-spirited little book”. If you’re into dark and sarcastic comedy, this is your cup a’ tea.

Reminiscent of Armistad Maupin’s popular Tales of the City, Sellevision reads swiftly, jumping from episode to episode in a quirky sit-com-like manner.

Full of laugh-out-loud moments, Burroughs mocks cliché over-the-top on-camera personalities, following the stories of Sellevision’s top tv presenters: Max, Peggy Jean, and Leigh.

Leading presenter of Sellevision, handsome and gay Max Andrews’s luck takes a turn for the worst when his accidentally exposes his penis on live television.

The scandal sets off a series of events including the promotion of Leigh, Sellevision’s junior presenter, who uses her new fame to plot an even more scandalous revenge on her current married boyfriend, who also happens to be her boss.

But the real star of Sellevision is Peggy Jean Smythe: church-going, elitist, and self righteous - the perfect embodiment of the teeth-clenched, irritatingly synthetic tv bitch.

After a string of vicious emails from a stalker mocking her “hairy earlobes”, Peggy Jean plummets into a world of binge drinking and pill-popping , following a pattern of favourite female gay icons, ironically redeeming herself through failure. As Peggy Jean loses her grasp on reality and heads to rehab, her husband turns his attention to the underage babysitter Nikki.

There’s something sadistically pleasurable about watching the demise of Peggy Jean, and at times, you almost wish the entire novel followed her – the other characters are tedious in comparison.

I found myself wanting to skip forward to Peggy Jean’s bits. Even Max, the staple gay of the book, comes across as a pitiful wet blanket.

While Sellevision is an engaging and humorous quick read, it comes off a bit flat. The energy that begins the book dwindles and most of the characters come across as one-dimensional caricatures.

Burroughs succeeds in creating the cartoony world of the home shopping network, and in a way, the book reflects his own cynical attitude toward advertising [His memoir Dry records Burroughs' years as an alcoholic Manhattan ad writer].

While Sellevision doesn’t reach the fantastic calibre of his memoirs, it certainly gives you a taste of his deliciously sardonic wit- and is perfect if you need a literary upper to relieve your winter blues.