Arts & Entertainments: A Novel

Christopher Beha delivers a cutting send-up of our cultural obsession with celebrity—a deliciously witty, and ultimately tender, novel about the absurdity of fame and the complexity of love sure to appeal to fans of Maria Semple and Jess Walter.

A sharp-edged satire with heart, Arts & Entertainments is the story of Handsome Eddie Hartley who, at thirty-three, has forgone dreams of an acting career for the reality of life as a drama teacher at a boys’ prep school. But when Eddie and his wife, Susan, discover they cannot have children, it is one disappointment too many.

Weighted down with debt, his wife’s mounting unhappiness, and his own deepening sense of failure, Eddie is confronted with an alluring solution when an old friend-turned-web-impresario suggests Eddie sell a sex tape he made with an ex-girlfriend, now a wildly popular television star. Overcoming his initial moral qualms, Eddie figures that in an era when any publicity is good publicity, the tape won’t cause any harm—a decision that will have disastrous consequences and propel him straight into the glaring spotlight he once thought he craved.

A hilariously biting and incisive take-down of our culture’s monstrous obsession with fame, Arts & Entertainments is also a poignant and humane portrait of a young man’s belated coming-of-age, the complications of love, and the surprising ways in which the most meaningful lives often turn out to be the ones we least expected to lead.

Handsome Eddie Hartley was once a golden boy poised for the kind of success promised by good looks and a modicum of talent. Now thirty-three, he has abandoned his dream of an acting career and accepted the reality of life as a drama teacher at the boys' prep school he once attended. But when Eddie and his wife, Susan, discover they cannot have children, it's one disappointment too many.

Weighted down with debt, Susan's mounting unhappiness, and his own deepening sense of failure, Eddie is confronted with an alluring solution when an old friend-turned-Web-impresario suggests Eddie sell a sex tape he made with an ex-girlfriend, now a wildly popular television star. In an era when any publicity is good publicity, Eddie imagines that the tape won't cause any harm—a mistake that will have disastrous consequences and propel him straight into the glaring spotlight he once thought he craved.

A hilariously biting and incisive takedown of our culture's monstrous obsession with fame, Arts & Entertainments is also a poignant and humane portrait of a young man's belated coming-of-age, the complications of love, and the surprising ways in which the most meaningful lives often turn out to be the ones we least expected to lead.

Praise for What Happened to Sophie Wilder: “What Happened to Sophie Wilder is about many things—the New York publishing world, the growing pains of post collegiate life, the rigors of Roman Catholicism—but at its center its a moving meditation on why and for whom we write.” - New York Times Book Review

“In this smart short novel What Happened to Sophie Wilder by Christopher R. Beha, a young writer deals with the reappearance and disappearance of the woman he sometimes loved.” - O, the Oprah Magazine

“Christopher R. Beha’s beautiful, whip-smart first novel . . . is sober, unsentimental and delivered with intelligence and passion.” - Washington Post

“Excitingly alert . . . to the ways we understand life in terms of stories, in particular the stories we tell about other people - whether to keep them at a safe distance or to bring them closer to us. More, it’s alert to our alertness of this. The story Beha tells about Charlie and Sophie is a convincing contemporary love story, not in spite of its sometimes dizzying self-awareness but, in large part, because of it.” - San Francisco Chronicle

“A crisis of faith is key to the disappearance of a young woman in Christopher Beha’s What Happened to Sophie Wilder (Tin House), which deftly renders the competing impulses—creative, intellectual, emotional—of young writers in New York.” - Vogue

“Following on his impressive fiction debut, the somber What Happened to Sophie Wilder, Christopher Beha has pivoted away from that novel’s dark tone to create a wicked satire that’s every bit the equal of its predecessor in tackling serious moral issues.” - BookPage

“...The storytelling is ingenious. Beha infuses the story with rich, potent irony, suggesting how susceptible we are to others’ plotting...Beha gets to have it both ways: His novel is at once brisk and episodic while critiquing the limits of brisk, episodic narrative.” - —Kirkus Reviews

“In this novel, being a star is like being trapped in a Kafka story. As Beha pushes Hartley through the bizarre mechanics of fame, he brings in everything from religion to social media. It’s a funny, sharp study of celebrity and all the strings that come with it. A-” - Entertainment Weekly

“A smart, biting exploration of the tensions between reality and performance, pretending and believing, audience and self, Arts & Entertainments is also a thoughtful meditation on the fundamental human need to believe that somebody out there is watching.” - Kirkus Reviews

“Arts & Entertainments is indeed entertaining, but it’s also a thoughtful reflection on how we shape our own stories.” - Shelf Awareness, Starred Review

“...a moving, discomfiting and at times painful satire on our reality-TV culture that had me cackling in recognition and cowering in shame.” - —Adam Ross, bestselling author of Mr. Peanut

“A funny novel about bad fame… [a] fast-moving satire by Christopher Beha about the semi-accidental creation of a contemporary two-bit celebrity: sex tape, social networks, and subsequent media circus.” - —New York Magazine

“A former actor’s sex tape rocks his world. Arts & Entertainments, by Christopher Beha, is a must” - —Cosmopolitan

“Hilarious.” - —Huffington Post

“Arts and Entertainments is a 21st-century Faust written in the style of Muriel Spark.” - —Books & Culture

“The ingenious way he plots to get back into his wife’s good graces provides lots of laughs in this very clever takedown of celebrity culture. Beha, deputy editor at Harper’s magazine, also gives his hapless hero plenty of heart in a novel that is both entertaining and thought provoking.” - —Booklist

“It’s short and fun and was an easy read, but there’s also something to chew on. We definitely recommend you add it to your list.” - Entertainment Weekly / Shelf-Life.EW.com

“It’s the funny type of social satire that is less LOL, more, “God, our society is so messed up that this could easily be real, and all I can do is laugh about it,” and that’s what makes it such a treat to read.” - Flavorwire

“Beha captures in hilarious detail the many insidious ways we rush to cheapen our own identities, and how even as our sense of self veers out of our control, we still never stop trying for some deeper meaning. A funhouse dissection of our current frailties.” - —Dana Spiotta, author of Stone Arabia

“Arts and Entertainments is a sharp, hilarious look at what we’ve wrought, and Christopher Beha proves himself a truly gifted novelist. This book is smart and full of feeling and just rips along with narrative thrills. Read it, and then burn your sex tapes.” - —Sam Lipsyte, New York Times Bestselling author of The Ask

“I tore through Arts & Entertainments in a single evening, riveted by Beha’s satiric indictment of an appallingly recognizable celebrity culture...a deft, clever, and altogether too plausible novel, its last line delivering an unexpected punch that is entirely earned. Read it in an evening and see what I mean.” - —Rebecca Mead, author of My Life in Middlemarch

“Christopher Beha is one of the most talented young writers at work today.” - —Jess Walter, author of Beautiful Ruins

“Beha’s story could be (and is) a light satirical romp across our cultural lowlands, but it is also a meditation on the inchoate impulses that lead people to expose themselves, often literally, to the world.” - New York Times Book Review

“A darkly witty tale.” - Christianity Today

“Accomplished.” - American Spectator

“What Happened to Sophie Wilder is subtle, surprising and, finally, urgent.... Expect it to vibrate in your breastbone.” - Cleveland Plain Dealer

“Christopher Beha’s What Happened to Sophie Wilder is a wonderful novel—smart, sly and lucid, a story about belief in all its forms that is wholly satisfying and quietly thrilling.” - Jess Walter, author of Beautiful Ruins

“A remarkable first novel, which should especially be read by those who have given up on contemporary literature. Along with giving them something good to read, it will renew their faith in what literature is capable of achieving.” - Commentary

“An utterly hilarious and believable tale of the flawed and messy vagaries of fame. It’s a wild and funny ride, one which I enjoyed heartily.” - —Jami Attenberg, author of The Middlesteins