I Was Told There’d Be Disappointment

Sloane Crosley is successful, at least in the sense that people in the book world compare her to David Sedaris and Dorothy Parker and that HBO bought up the rights to her first book of essays, I Was Told There’d Be Cake. Sloane Crosley is also barely 30, and herein lies the problem: She’s the kind of girl that makes you feel like a slacker.

It’s not that her book, a collection of stories about first jobs, lost wallets, and bridesmaid duties, is great or even noteworthy. (Instructions for best reading experience: Go to Borders. Locate book. Read “You on a Stick.” Put book back.) But she wrote it, goddammit, and what have you done?

I tend to obsess over people who have early success, and to say that it stems from anything but sheer jealously would be giving myself way more credit than I deserve. And what makes this Crosley case worse than all the Mark Zuckerbergs and 12-year-old fashion bloggers is that—while I’m no tech wizard or fashion phenom—what this chick did is rooted in experiences I ostensibly had, experiences that lots of other twentysomethings who grew up in Applebee's towns probably had too.

She lived in the New York suburbs. She was a girl who dreamed of (yes, dreamed of, not had) one-night stands and had an exceedingly bland home life. There was no heroin- or crazy shrink-addled youth that reading Augusten Burroughs makes you wish for—you know, for the sake of material.

Thing is, though, Miss Crosley actually did it: She put the pen to the paper, or, more likely, the fingers to the MacBook, and that’s half the fucking battle. Now she’s at #30 on the New York Times Paperback Nonfiction Best-Seller List (this is what I mean by obsess). Here, a passage from her book that so many post-collegiate chicas could have written. Use it as motivation to stop bitchin' and start doin'. Or maybe that's just me.

"Justine brings along her new boyfriend, Trevor. Trevor the investment banker who is not actually an investment banker but works in finance. Since this is the only money-oriented job you come remotely close to grasping, you call everyone who works on Wall Street an “investment banker.” You think he actually does something with hedge funds. Trims them, maybe. He has taken Justine golfing for the day and their faces and arms are burned Nantucket red."