James Cormier is young and has dreams of being a writer, so when he read about the Harvard student with a book contract, he was thrilled. Today, he isn't:

... [H]ere I was not too long ago hoping that, for young authors, some light existed at the end of the tunnel. I was even willing to overlook the suburbo-pop-culture-bubblegum subject matter if it meant a younger (particularly Boston-based) generation was being published. ...

Call me old-fashioned, but serious writing is not something done in one's spare time. Serious writing is a career unto itself, and for most people, simultaneously writing a novel and dealing with a Harvard education might be too much. ... In an age of consulting firms specializing in writing and even admission to the Ivy League (Viswanathan paid thousands of dollars for private, outside assistance in getting into Harvard), maybe some have deluded themselves into thinking that one can have it all without the sacrifice.