Nonfiction Pizza Party

Nonfiction Pizza Party is a new column by David Bersell. Please click on it every week.Last week, Stephan Lee of Entertainment Weekly wrote up a playful pitch for a reality competition show for fiction writers. You know, like America's Next Top Model/Chef/Gravedigger, except with books and glasses and stuff. Check the article out here.Since I'm a nonfiction writer and grew up on reality TV — I once attended a club appearance by a Real World cast member and tried to convince his manager to let me profile him — I have deemed myself worthy to conceive the nonfiction version of this imaginary show. (Sorry poets. You're on your own.)Title: Lee chose Great American Author. I'm going with The Book Club to try to get that crazy middle-aged Dancing With The Stars audience.Location: As an alternative to that New York thing, I will make the writers share a cabin in Maine. This will amp up the neurotic tendencies of the writers when they are helicoptered into various locations for challenges and have to talk to “regular people.”Head Judge: Joan Didion. She will dress in all white, except for her sunglasses, and when the writers are presented to her she will whisper questions and then shudder.Challenges: The writers will have to cover a town hall meeting without falling asleep, pen a travel essay while traveling, report about a cultural force that is fighting for its life as a way to show that the economy sucks but is getting better, maybe, and finally, write a memoir about the complex experience of being an overeducated, jobless 20-something (since the cast will all be young and good looking).--David Bersell