The Gutter Years

Marko Sijan's CNQ essay on the clusterfuck surrounding the failed publication of his first novel (the piece also doubles as a devastasting profile of Toronto agent Sam Hiyate) is monstrously good:

What I liked most about Sam’s “Coke and Sex Parties” was meeting women....Tell-all memoirs of former strippers also aroused Sam’s interest and some of these reformed pole-dancers attended his parties. One of them claimed to be in the process of writing her memoir. She had a nasally voice and a laugh like a punctured accordion, both of which she attributed to her nose job. To protect her surgeon’s work she wouldn’t let me kiss her, and to keep me far away from her nose, we had sex in the manner of dogs.