Word: portman
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Luckily, one of his fans grew up to be a book agent who specializes in young-adult novels. So when Steven Malk, 33, used his job as an excuse to talk to Dr. Frank, as Portman is known, after a show, he was surprised when Dr. Frank said yes, sure, he would write a novel for teenage boys. That novel, King Dork, is far more successful than all the songs Portman has ever written put together. Already in its sixth printing, it has been showered with positive reviews. Will Ferrell's film company just bought the film rights...
Although the thought of Johnny Rotten writing the next Catcher in the Rye seems weird, Portman is punk's best-educated tone-deaf singer. An excellent student at Berkeley, he deferred a Ph.D. program in history at Harvard to play in a Bay Area punk band. Not only that, but he knew the teen genre because in high school he worked as a children's librarian, and as part of the job he downed all the young-adult classics. The Mr. T Experience's teen anthems were surprisingly literary: a breakup song, Checkers Speech, is based on Nixon's television...
...Portman argues that simply writing rock songs made him uniquely qualified to write a book for both teens and adults, a literary Gilmore Girls. "Rock 'n' roll is teenage music. But you don't stop listening to the Who when you're 20," he says. "Our entire popular culture's about high school. It's this thing that most people suffered through terribly or like to think they did." His impossibly brilliant 14-year-old character, when taking a break from getting beaten up and riddling through confused if well-meaning lectures from his righteous Bay Area stepfather, works...
Still, writing a novel is not like writing songs, and it took Portman a while to adjust. Beverly Horowitz, publisher of Bantam Delacorte Dell's young-readers division, said he had to do a lot of revisions to clarify and simplify his manuscript. "Frank was able to come to understand that there's a difference between writing a novel and music," she says. "You can't stand next to it and say, 'This is what I meant in Chapter...
...teen novels. Or J.D. Salinger. In fact, the punk conceit of King Dork is that the main character rails against "the cult of Catcher in the Rye." The cover of King Dork is a faux red Catcher cover, with the title and Salinger's name erased and replaced by Portman's. "I always felt a lot of people might have been faking the adulation of it, to impress their parents or their teachers," says Portman. Plus, he knew that writing about a disaffected, sensitive young man with father issues would invite comparison. "So I said, 'What if the character made...