For Spectator readers not familiar with the cultural figure known as MrBeast, his real name is Jimmy Donaldson and he is best known for taking over YouTube and making himself a multi-millionaire in the process. And now his work can be discovered in a literary, rather than streaming, sphere. It has been announced that MrBeast will be collaborating with the bestselling thriller writer James Patterson to publish a novel entitled The Most Dangerous Games in September.
It does not, in truth, sound like the stuff of high literature, or even particularly distinguished page-turning trash. The plot synopsis suggests that “In a world on the brink of collapse, one hundred players face off in a ruthless, high‑stakes competition with everything on the line. The reward? The chance to save humanity – and one billion dollars. The stakes couldn’t be higher.”
If this sounds an awful lot like The Hunger Games, mixed with a bit of The Running Man, you would be right. But the book’s literary merit is considerably less important than what the publicity calls “THE BOOK EVENT OF THE YEAR: An unprecedented blockbuster collaboration between MrBeast, the world’s #1 creator with more than a billion followers, and James Patterson, the world’s #1 bestselling author.” This is not a book, but an “unprecedented blockbuster collaboration,” and is being marketed – and sold – purely on that basis.
Nobody would bet against the book being a bestseller, given the starriness of the names involved. And, as a YouTube ignoramus, it amuses me to think of a character known as MrBeast finding his way into the world of publishing, given that he sounds like a figure from a 19th-century British novel written by Anthony Trollope or George Gissing.
But there is also something rather suspect about the whole enterprise. Few, if anyone, would imagine that MrBeast would necessarily have the literary smarts of a great author, hence the presence of Patterson to offer the necessary ballast. And as someone who used to relish the Alex Cross books that made Patterson’s name, I can only applaud his literary nous; he manages to make his (many) titles thoroughly readable with a combination of short chapters, laden with cliffhangers, straightforward prose and lots of recognizable brand names.
There is something inevitably depressing about a book like this
What is more uncertain is whether Patterson himself has written most of the books that bear his name, or instead whether he oversees what amounts to a conveyer belt factory. Countless titles of his bear a co-writer’s name on the cover, in considerably smaller typeface. This is understandable for a man who has written more than 200 novels during his 50-year writing career – it would take far too long to sit down and write what amounts to four 80,000 word books a year. Yet there might be a sense of weariness creeping in from some book buyers.
The Most Dangerous Games, may have been conceived as a relatively equal division; MrBeast comes up with the idea (“Hey, I saw that Hunger Games film!”) and Patterson, or his minions, sits down and actually sketches out things like plot, characterization and setting. But there is something inevitably depressing about a book like this, which is clearly conceived far more in terms of branding than it is in terms of an original title that anyone would have a desperate desire to read.
I wish MrBeast well and hope that he can come up with a satirical, Truman Show-esque novel about what it is like to be caught up in a YouTube frenzy, as that is something he would be able to bring his undoubted knowledge to bear. But this novel, which will undoubtedly sell millions of copies, looks like a lazy exercise in yoking together two massive brands, and should be regarded, suspiciously, as such.
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