He has published two hundred and sixty Times best-sellers, and Publishers Weekly has determined that he is the best-selling author of the past seventeen years. This productivity is the secret of Patterson’s success. Critics complain about his generic characters, his workmanlike, plot-driven prose, and, above all, his practice of churning out multiple titles per year with the aid of co-writers.
As with many popular authors, his success-his books have sold more than four hundred million copies-rankles those who wish the reading masses had different tastes. These stories aren’t very interesting, but Patterson himself is.
Also, they don’t seem full of themselves.” (He relates a similarly anticlimactic meeting with Warren Beatty.) Hugh Jackman and Charlize Theron, Patterson tells us, “both look amazing in real life. Serena Williams makes a brief appearance on a plane, whispering to Patterson of the other passengers, “They want my autograph, but I want yours.” Patterson once had a meeting with Tom Cruise, who was “smart and a total pleasure to talk to,” and also “not that short,” although nothing much came of the potential collaboration they discussed. Patterson has almost as many names to drop as he does stories to tell, although the celebrity encounters tend to be less amusing than his boyhood escapades. Or the time he and a buddy were caddying for a surly golf pro at a country club in Patterson’s home town of Newburgh, New York, and the buddy stole one of the pro’s balls-while it was in play.īecause Patterson has been selling more books than any other living author for many years now, these tidbits often involve famous actors, politicians, and recording artists. Or the time that, as a junior in college, he went to a Broadway production of “Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead,” and the woman seated next to him began stroking his leg, distracting him from the performance. There was the time that Patterson and a fellow altar boy-Patterson grew up in a devoutly Catholic family-almost got caught with a stash of unconsecrated Communion hosts that his friend had squirrelled away for post-Mass snacking.
The best-selling author does serve up stories, lots of them the book is a grab bag of anecdotes, many of which have the tone and the import of a humorous icebreaker in a Rotary Club speech. “Man, do I have stories to tell,” James Patterson writes in his new autobiography, “ James Patterson” (Little, Brown).
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