While I was looking up IMDB stuff for Ms. D____ just now, I noticed that one of her newest roles is the lead in a film adaptation of Shopgirl. I picked that book up for a dollar at the same time as Microserfs and read it just afterward, so that caught my attention.
I can’t assume that anybody out there has actually read Shopgirl, because I don’t recall it doing spectacular business and I doubt it would have seen print if not for its author’s celebrity. Steve Martin plots well and his jokes are rare but good, but a) nobody actually prints standalone novellas and b) it’s pretty lame prose. He’s a comedy writer, not a novelist, so he apparently never learned things like “show, don’t tell.”
That said, the book will probably translate well to a movie, I applaud the casting of Jimmy Fallon as Jeremy, and it’s kind of cool that Martin’s writing the screenplay himself. But even without knowing the plot, doesn’t anybody else find it a little weird that he’s cast himself as a romantic lead opposite Claire Danes?