Skip to Main Content

The Love Song of Jonny Valentine

A Novel

About The Book

One of the most critically acclaimed books of the year, Whiting Award-winner Teddy Wayne’s second novel is “more than a scabrous sendup of American celebrity culture; it’s also a poignant portrait of one young artist’s coming of age” (Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times)—and an enduring yet timely portrait of the American dream gone awry.

In his rave on the cover of The New York Times Book Review, Jess Walter praised Wayne’s writing for its “feats of unlikely virtuosity” and the boy at its center as “a being of true longing and depth, and…a devastating weapon of cultural criticism…You’d have to be made of triple platinum not to ache for Jonny Valentine.”

With “assured prose and captivating storytelling” (Oprah.com’s Book of the Week), The Love Song of Jonny Valentine also showcases “one of the most complicated portrayals of the mother-son relationship since Room” (BookPage). Touring the country in a desperate attempt to save a career he’s not sure he even wants, Jonny is both driven by his mother’s ambition and haunted by his father’s absence, constantly searching for a familiar face among the crowds. Utterly convincing, whip-smart, yet endearingly vulnerable, with an “unforgettable” voice (Publishers Weekly, starred review), the eleven-year-old pop megastar sounds “like Holden Caulfield Jr. adrift in Access Hollywood hell” (Rolling Stone).

Called “a showstopper” (The Boston Globe), “hugely entertaining” (The Washington Post), “heartbreakingly convincing” (People), “buoyant, smart, searing” (Entertainment Weekly), and “touching and unexpectedly suspenseful” (The Wall Street Journal), this extraordinary novel has been widely embraced as a literary masterpiece and the rare “satire with a heart” (Library Journal, starred review).

Reading Group Guide

This reading group guide for The Love Song of Jonny Valentine includes an introduction, discussion questions, ideas for enhancing your book club, and a Q&A with author Teddy Wayne. The suggested questions are intended to help your reading group find new and interesting angles and topics for your discussion. We hope that these ideas will enrich your conversation and increase your enjoyment of the book.


Introduction

Onstage and offstage, from swanky hotels to celebrity green rooms, Teddy Wayne’s novel pulls back the curtain of pop-stardom to reveal the alternately glittering and grueling reality of eleven-year-old megastar Jonny Valentine’s life. The novel follows Jonny, his hard-charging mother, Jane (who is also his manager), and his entourage as he tours for his second album—a tour that will either catapult him into the stratosphere or leave him fumbling for a new record label. As if the pressures of preadolescence weren’t enough, Jonny must navigate marketing schemes, fans, elaborately staged performances, and the growing awareness that his life is not his own, all while he is faced with a startling revelation from his past. The Love Song of Jonny Valentine is a funny, moving, and unsettling coming-of-age story and a perceptive take on our obsessive and exploitative celebrity culture.  

Topics & Questions for Discussion 

1. What do you think makes the first-person narration in the novel ring so true as an eleven-year-old’s voice? When does Jonny display knowledge beyond his years and when does he reveal his inexperience and naïveté?
 
2. How does Jonny regard his pre-music-career life in St. Louis? Is he nostalgic, or conflicted? Does this change after his tour stop in St. Louis?
 
3. Why does Jane offer Jonny the choice between continuing to tour and going to school? Do you think he’s equipped to choose well? How do you feel about Jonny’s decision, in the end?
 
4. How do marketing and promotional concerns circumscribe Jonny’s life? How do you think his life would have been different if Jane had not chosen to be his manager? Do you think he would have more freedom to be a kid, or not?
 
5. Though they are employees, Walter and Nadine both care for Jonny and he cares for them. Why are these relationships so important to him? Why do you think Jonny has an easier time relating to adults than to his peers?
 
6. What attracts Jonny to the Latchkeys, especially to the lead singer, Zack? In your opinion, were they using him, as Jonny comes to suspect, or was Zack’s big-brotherly interest in him genuine?
 
7. Jane tells Jonny, “The top person is never simply the most talented, or the smartest, or the best-looking. They sacrifice anything in their lives that might hold them back.” (p 37) Do you agree? After his appearance with Tyler Beats, how does Jonny’s perception of his own talent and work ethic change? Do you think this is a healthy change, or not? Would Jonny have been able to see himself this way at the beginning of the book?
 
8. How would you characterize Jonny’s feelings about his fans and celebrity? At one point he says, “A celeb is only a celeb if you remember them. It’s like we disappear if no one is paying attention.” (p 96) Do you think he’d prefer to disappear? Or to be loved unconditionally by his fans? If you could choose, would you want to have Jonny’s level of fame?
 
9. Towards the end of his tour, before his Detroit concert, Jonny thinks: “So screw them. If this is what they were giving me, I wasn’t just going to do a bad job. I was going to make it my worst show ever.” (p 236) What is making him feel this way? Does he deserve to be so angry? Why is he unable to follow through on his intention to deliver a poor show?
 
10. How does the author use the video game Zenon as a metaphor throughout the book? Does Jonny gain something valuable from the game or does the fictional world of Zenon obstruct his understanding of the real world?
 
11. Over the course of the book we learn that Jane has concealed from Jonny information both personal and music-related. In your opinion, are her decisions motivated more by protecting Jonny or herself, or by keeping him career-focused? Is she really the bad mother the press claims she is?
 
12. By the time Jonny finally gets a chance to meet his father, he has built up a number of expectations throughout the course of their correspondence. Discuss how this plays out, and what the result of this meeting means for both Jonny and the novel.
 
13. Throughout the book, Nadine and Jonny are studying slavery in their history lessons; Jonny’s final essay question is “What does it mean to be the property of another person and what does it mean to be free?” (p 223) Talk about how this theme ties into the book’s larger message. When Jonny claims at the end that he knows how to answer the essay question, do you think he’s right? What does his answer tell you about the journey he’s taken in the course of the book?
 
14. After reading this novel did your feelings about celebrity culture or the music industry change? Do you think one can have both celebrity and normalcy, or are they mutually exclusive?

Enhance Your Book Club

  1. Have you ever read a musician’s autobiography? If so, were there any similarities to The Love Song of Jonny Valentine? What about the autobiographies of some current teen pop stars, such as Justin Bieber or Miley Cyrus? Ask several members of your group to bring autobiographies to compare to the novel.   
 
2. Set the mood for your book club by preparing a music playlist. What current hits remind your group most of Jonny’s songs? Ask group members to suggest songs for the playlist.   
 
3. Ask each member of the group to recall their favorite musicians when they were tweens or teens. Did any of those bands or singers achieve longevity? Discuss how tastes change and whether stars like Jonny can have lasting careers.   
 

A Conversation with Teddy Wayne 

1. How did you come to write this novel? What inspired you?  

I wrote a now-defunct weekly column for The New York Times periodically over a span of two years. The focus was on marketing and media, and for nearly every article I would interview an expert in the field, who tended to overuse branding and marketing jargon unironically. Just as my experience editing MBA application essays filled with financial terminology informed the narrator’s voice in my first novel, Kapitoil, I found this a worthwhile source to plunder for Jonny’s vocabulary; it seemed like an apposite metaphor for our culture of self-promotion.  

My other interest in writing this book comes from my own tepid flirtation with fame after Kapitoil came out in 2010. I was far from a household name, and literary renown is a pale imitation, but my limited exposure to the public showed me how uncomfortable the process made me (at times; it was also often gratifying)—and how incapable of functioning I would be if I ever had, say, Justin Bieber’s level of celebrity. That, coupled with my lifelong fascination with both gifted children and child celebrities, inspired this novel.

2. Did you do any research for the novel? How did you create such an accurate representation of the music industry?  

I read a number of child-celebrity autobiographies and biographies, as well as critical literature on the phenomenon. And I immersed myself in the shallower end of the pool, soaking up celebrity tabloids, concert documentaries and footage, and Internet fan sites. I knew a bit about the inner workings of the music industry from being a longtime fan and about the commercial side of media from my own experiences as a writer, but whenever possible read up on the behind-the-scenes music details, from recording to tour buses to song analysis.

3. Did you listen to pop music while writing? Any favorite artists or songs, now or from your teen years?  

I expressly listened to more contemporary pop than I do normally to write this book; typically, I encounter it only through osmosis in public spaces. So while I recognize that such songs can occasionally be fun and energizing, my own tastes run (huge surprise) counter to Top-40 paradigms. When writing, I frequently listen to Bob Dylan, since I know the words well enough that they don’t distract me, and for help in exploring Jonny’s nascent rebellion, reconnected with my teenage musical love, the Clash.

4. The songs in the book are spot on—how did you come up with them? Was it fun?  

I’m an intermediate guitarist and singer—I wish I were better, but I don’t have the chops. Over the years I’ve written my own, mostly jokey songs, often in the manner of Zack Ford improvising lyrics for the benefit of friends (mine are likely less appreciative). For this novel, though, I didn’t want to satirize pop lyrics; I wanted to write realistic embodiments of them. If the effect is comic, it should be because they sound like the real thing, which provides enough comedy without embellishment. They were very fun to write, and I have recorded my own version of “Guys vs. Girls” on acoustic guitar. Record labels, I await your call.

5. On the one hand, the novel can be read as a dark, ironic send-up of tween pop stars, but on the other hand it’s a very affecting coming-of-age story. How did you balance that duality?  

Although I write a lot of short-form satire for magazines, I don’t enjoy writing or, really, reading caustically satirical novels; I need to feel there’s real heart and lives at stake. The key for any novel is crafting a voice, whether it’s the author’s or a character’s, that makes the reader feel like what he or she is reading matters. Once you do that, a novel set on Mars in the year 2400 can seem more authentic than a warmed-over depiction of a failing marriage in contemporary America.

6. Is there any of your preadolescent experience in Jonny?  

Were you not a fan of my 1990 smash hit, “Teddy Time (featuring Tone Loc)”? Most of the novel draws from my and Tone’s now-legendary North American tour as the short-lived T+T Music Factory. Otherwise, Jonny’s preoccupations and anxieties are closer to my current state of mind than to my more unfettered preteen self. Ultimately, the question shouldn’t be how I got into the head of an eleven-year-old boy for this novel, but how do I get out of it in my daily life? Every day is a struggle.

7. What inspired the video game The Secret Land of Zenon? Why is it so integral to Jonny’s story?  

Admitting to this childhood hobby will make me sound very cool: When I was around Jonny’s age, I was a fan of Ultima, a role-playing computer-game series. What appealed to me about it was its completist rendering of an autonomous world. If you chose, you could simply live—one could bake bread, sell it for money, buy food, sleep, ad infinitum—as opposed to trying to win the game. Other characters went about their daily lives, too, as if your presence were irrelevant. It was the first time I saw a gaming world constructed in this profoundly nonlinear fashion. I modeled The Secret Land of Zenon off Ultima, as it makes sense why the career-focused, gaffe-fearing Jonny would want to escape into another world in which he can merely exist as a relatively anonymous character, and where he gains “experience points” by exploring different actions, though he doesn’t know what their consequences will be. It’s a metaphor for the kind of childhood which expects little of its participants other than that they should figure out who they are and learn from their experiences, for better or worse—precisely what Jonny’s own upbringing prohibits.

8. Both your first novel and The Love Song of Jonny Valentine are written in the first person. What draws you to first-person narratives? What are the particular challenges or pleasures of creating a character’s voice?  

Although third-person novels afford a more epic scale, I have found that first-person novels speak most intimately to me and sustain the strongest illusion that I am inside someone else’s head. As a writer, it is similarly pleasurable to escape my own self through another narrator’s—and, in the process, end up ventriloquizing what is most important to me. I also prefer novels that take big ideas or settings (9/11 and Wall Street, pop-stardom and the gilded cages of a corporate music tour) and funnel them down, quietly, to a highly specific character and viewpoint, as opposed to rendering them in equally sprawling terms (or aiming for a completely hushed story). The challenge is in justifying the first-person voice. If it is a voice that could just as easily be transposed to third person, then it doesn’t necessarily warrant the more limited perspective. Both Kapitoil and this novel employ idiosyncratic voices that draw heavily from professional idioms while cutting them against mathematical and preteen grammars, respectively. It’s difficult to maintain consistency in the writing at first—but then it becomes addictive.

9. Literary novelists don’t command the sort of fame that pop stars do, but being a writer does involve publicity, marketing, and interacting with audiences. How do you balance writing and promoting?  

Compared to my experiences promoting even the pre-Internet-age “Teddy Time (featuring Tone Loc),” you’re correct, this is a lot easier. But unless you’re a globally celebrated writer, the publicity demands aren’t that taxing, and to complain about them is a first-world problem among first-world problems. The real complaint should be when no one wants to hear from you, a condition that has afflicted me for lengthy periods (such as last week). So I’m grateful when the public shows any interest in me, and though I’m on various social media platforms, I don’t do it so much that it takes over my life, both out of principle and laziness.

10. Do you see any similarities between the publishing industry and the music industry, though the scale may be different?  

While the literary-publishing industry has more integrity than the pop-music industry (and likely an equal amount to the indie-music industry), and privileges intelligence and originality over image and derivative appeal, and sometimes makes knowingly unprofitable decisions, it is nonetheless a business, and functions the way any business must, even one dealing with ostensibly high art: trafficking in promotion and marketing and hype and packaging and positioning. Just as the majority of music hits are fulfilling expectations from their labels, most “big” books are preordained as such, their fates nearly sealed before publication (although there is always room for sleepers, and, of course, many of these fated bestsellers flop). Had I self-published this novel, there is little chance you would be reading it now, and even less chance it would be reviewed anywhere, though it would be the same text, minus my supremely talented editor’s ministrations. It helps to have a polished presentation and a team of dedicated professionals whose job is to disseminate your book to the public. Nevertheless, everyone I’ve encountered in the field of publishing, to a person, believes deeply in what he or she is doing and could probably be making more money elsewhere; I’m not sure I’d be able to say the same about all music-industry professionals. While Valentine Days is Jonny’s second album and The Love Song of Jonny Valentine is my second novel, I’m happy to have a less cynical relationship with my own industry, though it is still fair to use the word industry.  

Mostly I’m just glad they never make authors do the equivalent of liner notes.

About The Author

Photograph by Kate Greathead

Teddy Wayne, the author of Loner, The Love Song of Jonny Valentine, and Kapitoil, is the winner of a Whiting Writers’ Award and an NEA Fellowship as well as a finalist for the Young Lions Fiction Award, PEN/Bingham Prize, and Dayton Literary Peace Prize. He writes regularly for The New Yorker, The New York Times, Vanity Fair, McSweeney’s, and elsewhere. He lives in New York.

Product Details

  • Publisher: Simon & Schuster (February 4, 2014)
  • Length: 320 pages
  • ISBN13: 9781476705866

Browse Related Books

Raves and Reviews

"Provocative and bittersweet…Jonny is such an engaging, sympathetic character that his voice carries the novel...A very funny novel when it isn't so sad, and vice versa."
Kirkus (starred review)

“Harrowing, hilarious…It's less a coming-of-age story than a price-of-this-age story, where self-promotion is the equivalent of self-preservation. In The Love Song of Jonny Valentine Wayne manages to negotiate a character so original, so multitextured, and teetering so precariously between innocence and emptiness, the result is a stunning achievement in literary zeitgeist."

– Interview

"It speaks well of both Jonny and his creator that the result is this good, a moving, entertaining novel that is both poignant and pointed — a sweet, sad skewering of the celebrity industry...his satirist's eye is impeccable...so limpidly does Wayne imitate the voice of a preteen celebrity, he risks making it look easy...to create out of that entitled adolescent voice a being of true longing and depth, and then to make him such a devastating weapon of cultural criticism — these are feats of unlikely virtuosity, like covering Jimi Hendrix on a ukulele...Embodying a character who might otherwise be easy to dismiss, Wayne has crafted a funny, affecting tour of our cultural wasteland...you’d have to be made of triple platinum not to ache for Jonny Valentine." (Jess Walter, New York Times Book Review (cover review and Editors' Choice)

"Sad-funny, sometimes cutting...more than a scabrous sendup of American celebrity culture; it’s also a poignant portrait of one young artist’s coming of age."

– Michiko Kakutani, The New York Times

"Switchblade-keen satirist Teddy Wayne. . .delves into the twisted world of celebrity culture with delicious, detailed insight. It's as if People magazine were written by Kurt Vonnegut, smart and fun and fanged... there are also great swaths of heart and pain and genuine compassion."

– Tampa Bay Times

"Surprisingly moving...heartbreaking...A mix of pre-adolescent angst and industry cynicism that makes him sound like Holden Caulfield Jr. adrift in Access Hollywood hell." (Rolling Stone)

"Heartbreakingly convincing...Hate Bieber? Wayne's touching portrait might change your mind."

– People

“Deft and delightful . . . touching (and unexpectedly suspenseful) . . . so frank and engaging . . . A sweeter, softer-edged satire of the pop-culture carnival.” (Wall Street Journal)

"'The Love Song of Jonny Valentine' is a fun, highly diverting read.…Wayne generates considerable sympathy for the 11-year-old kid trapped at the center of the churning entertainment machine….This is a portrait of the artist as a young brand.” (San Francisco Chronicle)

"It would be easy to simply satirize the life and times of an 11-year-old pop star. But while Wayne does riff on America's obsessions with youth, celebrity and weight, among other things, he chooses to take his hero seriously….If Justin Bieber provides the book's cultural context, "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" gives it its soul…. [An] entertaining novel about the pop-celebrity-Internet air we all breathe, even if we don't want to inhale."

– Cleveland Plain Dealer

"The Love Song of Jonny Valentine” is a showstopper….The book’s greatest triumph — and there are many — is Jonny’s voice, which falls somewhere between bright-eyed kid and jaded industry veteran (of course, he is both)….In addition to an exquisite rendering of Jonny’s growing awareness, the novel provides other delights [and] plenty of genuinely affecting moments. As Jonny realizes he has the money and power of an island nation, he feels the disappointments of his life more keenly and asserts himself in ways that aren’t anywhere near family friendly; we discover he is a flawed child in addition to an exploited one and empathize with him because of it. In the end, “The Love Song of Jonny Valentine” is a serious book that is way more fun than the life of a child star." (Boston Globe)

"Heartbreaking and amusing...more than anything, Jonny reminded me of Jack, the 5-year-old captive narrator of Emma Donoghue's Room. Like Room, this novel takes a sordid tabloid situation and illuminates it with a child's voice so real you want to climb inside the book and rescue him."

– Newsday

"Through Wayne’s assured prose and captivating storytelling, we see Jonny as one large cog in the entertainment machine—who, despite how talented he may be, knows he may soon be replaced by a younger model." (Oprah.com, Book of the Week)

"A buoyant, smart, searing portrait of our culture's obsession with young pop stars." (Entertainment Weekly)

"Depicting the inner life of a protagonist who is not yet a full-fledged adult is no small feat, but author Teddy Wayne pulls it off masterfully." (The Daily Beast)

"Masterfully executed...the real accomplishment is the unforgettable voice of Jonny. If this impressive novel, both entertaining and tragically insightful, were a song, it would have a Michael Jackson beat with Morrissey lyrics."

– Publishers Weekly (starred review)

"Think an imagined life of a star like Bieber...but so much better; moving and hilarious and typical of Wayne.” (The Atlantic Wire)

"Hilarious and heartbreaking...An original, poignant and captivating coming-of-age story...a breathtakingly fresh novel about the dark side of show business."

– BookPage Fiction Top Pick

"The best—and only—tween-pop novel you'll ever read. The Love Song of Jonny Valentine, the second novel from rising star Teddy Wayne, depicts the world of prepackaged pop through the eyes of a precocious 11-year-old tween idol (think Justin Bieber by way of Holden Caulfield)." (Details)

"Wayne brilliantly narrates from the perspective of Jonny's tweenage prison...Reading about Jonny means rooting for him, even though there is a sense that he, like so many real stars who we will never know so well, is already long gone." (Boston Phoenix)

"Few novels with child narrators can truly appeal to adults in a complex way. Flannery O’Connor’s The Violent Bear It Away and, of course, Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird are obvious exceptions, and we can add this novel to the list."

– BookReporter.com

The Love Song of Jonny Valentine takes us deep into the dark arts and even darker heart of mass-market celebrity, twenty-first-century version. In the near-pubescent hitmaker of the title, Teddy Wayne delivers a wild ride through the upper echelons of the entertainment machine as it ingests human beings at one end and spews out dollars at the other. Jonny’s like all the rest of us, he wants to love and be loved, and as this brilliant novel shows, that’s a dangerous way to be when you’re inside the machine.”

– Ben Fountain, New York Times bestselling author of Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk

“I’d wanted to go slowly and read The Love Song of Jonny Valentine over the course of a week or two, but once Jonny’s voice got into my head, I was hooked, and kept picking it back up, and so I ended up on the last page, reading that final, amazing sentence, at like three in the morning. This novel is a serious accomplishment....America as we know it, with laughs on every page, but also a book that doesn’t take one cheap shot....And at the swirling core, you have an eleven-year-old boy trapped by his fame and trying to figure out how to move through the world, and who wants nothing more than to find his father. This is a book with a runaway narrative engine, tremendous ambitions, and an even bigger heart. I do not lie when I tell you: Teddy Wayne is as good a young writer as we have.”

– Charles Bock, New York Times bestselling author of Beautiful Children

“What is most searing about Teddy Wayne’s splendid new novel is not his trenchant social criticism, nor the itchy, unsettling way that he makes tragedy entertaining, but that in the bubble of celebrity which comprises little Jonny Valentine’s whole world, at times the only differences between the savvy, drug-taking, lonely adults and the savvy, drug-taking, lonely kid himself are his outsized talent, and their avarice plus wrinkles.”

– Helen Schulman, New York Times bestselling author of This Beautiful Life

The Love Song of Jonny Valentine is a novel of ferocious wit and surprising poignancy. Teddy Wayne has written a pitch-perfect anthem for our surreal American Dream, a power ballad for the twenty-first-century unhappy family, an epic ode to the fleeting glory of fame....Adored by his fans, enslaved by the music industry, Jonny Valentine navigates the high-stakes game of celebrity while secretly longing for the love of his missing dad. And we, in turn, long for him to hold on to his soulful spirit, his baby chub, his cri de coeur, his "major vulnerabilities." A deeply entertaining novel with humor and heart to spare.”

– Amber Dermont, New York Times bestselling author of The Starboard Sea

“In Jonny Valentine, Teddy Wayne has created a vivid and achingly authentic portrait of an adolescent prodigy trying to make sense of a world from which he’s been kept mostly separate. Wry, witty, and genuinely moving, this is a novel that delves into the private longings of a public figure, exposing the sometimes dark and often ridiculous inner workings of a life in show business. The Love Song of Jonny Valentine is absorbing and beautifully written—and also a ton of fun to read.”

– Aryn Kyle, New York Times bestselling author of The God of Animals and Boys and Girls Like You and M

Resources and Downloads

High Resolution Images

More books from this author: Teddy Wayne