I Invented the Friggin’ iPod

Understand: this is not meant to be a review of Options: the Secret Life of Steve Jobs published last month by Da Capo and written by (ahem) “fake Steve Jobs.” The whole premise of the book is so 1999-with-blogging, I’m tired of it almost before I think it through. A decade ago, I would have been falling off my chair reading this book. Now? Not so much.

Options is a parody-memoir (read that: fiction) about trouble in the paradise of Apple CEO and co-founder Steve Jobs. It’s based on a popular blog written by Fake Steve Jobs (recently joined by Fake Bono, as if the real Bono wasn’t quite enough) and apparently “required reading among coders and cube dwellers from Boston to Bangalore,” according to AP. Who apparently know about these things.

Fake Steve Jobs is actually Forbes reporter Daniel Lyons, even though it doesn’t say so on (the extremely shiny) cover of the book. Back in 1996 (which is, hmmmmm, just a little more than that chair-falling-off moment a decade ago), Lyons was named one of Granta magazine’s Fabulous 52 in the 1996 Best Young American Novelists Competition. (To put things in perspective, Jonathan Franzen, Lorrie Moore, Ann Patchett and Edwidge Danticat were part of the same field.)

There’s nothing wrong with the writing here. In fact, some of Options is funny -- as in funny-clever, not necessarily funny ha-ha. But, hey, Danticat it’s not. Me? I’m looking forward to Lyons sucking it up and writing another real book.