Eighteen-year-old New York literary phenom Nick McDonell has sold his novel, "Twelve," to Ted Field's Radar Pictures.

And 22-year-old cult writer J.T. Leroy has sold his story collection, "The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things," to Chris Hanley's Muse Productions. "XXX" star Asia Argento plans to adapt, direct and star in the project.

These aren't the unformed scribblings of untalented brats. They're ambitious books by authors with major publishing contracts and the stamp of approval from prestigious book review outlets.

And they're part of a welter of activity in Hollywood for writers so young, some aren't even past puberty.

"Crazy," a German novel written by Benjamin Lebert at age 16, has sold in 30 countries and has been optioned by Brillstein Gray; an as yet untitled trilogy of fantasy novels by 14-year-old English writer Catherine Webb, which sold for six figures to HarperCollins U.K., is being shopped in Hollywood by Ken Sherman Associates; Miramax and Jane Startz are developing "Teen Angst? Naaah....," a short story collection that Hunter College student Ned Vizzini published at age 18; and Liev Schreiber may direct "Everything Is Illuminated," for Industry Entertainment. That novel has made its author, Jonathan Safran Foer, a cause celebre at the ripe old age of 25.
 

These novels mark a sharp turn away from the flood of glossy, blockbuster-friendly young adult books that have washed up in Hollywood recently. Most are for mature readers, offering unvarnished treatments of teenage life that are more Larry Clark than Harry Potter.

"Twelve" is McDonell's gritty chronicle of drug and decadence among the kids of New York's privileged class. Field, who said the book "speaks to baby boomers as loudly as it does to kids," called it "the most real and visceral depiction of what it's like to live on the Upper East Side of Manhattan and be in the maelstrom of drug use."

The book, repped in Hollywood by CAA and brought to the shingle by exec Joe Rosenberg, takes its place on a list of edgy literary material on Radar's slate, next to Meghan Daum's "Quality of Life Report" and Benjamin Alire Saenz's "The House of Forgetting."

Leroy's book is the semi-autobiographical second novel from an author with a rough-edged and elusive personal history. A hellish odyssey of drug abuse, prostitution and foster homes, it has a huge cult following among actors and writers who've staged elaborate readings of Leroy's work, even as the author has shunned the limelight. Leroy is repped by Donadio & Olson and BKWU.

"There's something about a youthful perception that adds to the artistry," Hanley said, "whether it's Rimbaud or Jean-Michel Basquiat, the painter. It's something you don't get once youth is replaced with a different kind of experience."

In a town that fetishizes youth and beauty, in which the reins of studios and agencies are often inherited by players who haven't yet hit middle age, the sensation caused by these books owes something to the age of their authors.

It also helps if they're well connected. McDonell is the son of Sports Illustrated managing editor Terry McDonell, and family friend of his editor, Grove Atlantic publisher Morgan Entrekin.

"You can't separate out the elements of what makes a book interesting," said Entrekin, who has some experience publishing young superstars. He published Brett Easton Ellis' "Less Than Zero" when the author was a 19-year-old Bennington College student and Entrekin was as an editor at Simon & Schuster.

"Part of the reason you're going to be able to bring attention to the book is the author's age," Entrekin said. McDonell, he said "is bringing a voice from a generation you haven't heard from. It's on the exotic edges of the dominant culture."

Entrekin has already translated that exotic mystique into a publishing success story. "Twelve" is entering its sixth printing, and has sold close to 60,000 copies.

But Field, who as former impresario of Interscope Records, has long allied himself with edgy, outsider artists crashing the gates of the mainstream culture, said McDonell's age was not a factor.

"The fact that he is young was irrelevant," Field said. "He writes like someone who is far older."

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  [Variety, Aug. 6, 2002]
  
Twelve: A Novel by Nick McDonell

The Heart Is Deceitful Above All Things by J. T. Leroy

Crazy by Benjamin Lebert, Carol Brown Janeway (Translator)

Teen Angst by Ned Vizzini

Everything Is Illuminated: A Novel by Jonathan Safran Foer

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