Elise Blackwell’s Grub (Toby Press, 2007) is a laugh-out-loud satire of the glamorous, arcane world of modern-day book publishing. Grub’s plot structure and character list rely on an almost as delicious, longer-winded Victorian predecessor, George Gissing’s New Grub Street. The premise of both is simple: Some writers will starve slowly on principle for Art, while others will sell out in a heartbeat to Mammon, god of Bling.

Blackwell adroitly mocks the entire literary food chain. Besides the ample cast of authors, there’s Jeffrey Whelpdale, the cigar-smoking writer-turned-manuscript doctor, who authors Give the People What They Want, How to Write a Damn Good Book, and Scribble Yourself to Wealth. There are Lana and Lane, two indistinguishable agents who host a deal-making lunch with the shy novelist Margot, who gags over a monstrous crab-on-the-hoof sandwich. Meanwhile Lana and Lane go gaga over their “to die for” yam ravioli and fennel and garlic-laced linguini. Appropriately, food and drink abound in Grub. The glitterati dine at the chic Greenwich Village restaurant, Grub, while at home writers sip green tea with their pickled-ginger-topped sushi dipped in wasabi or choke down cheap beer and day-old bagels in front of their laptops.

Although primarily satire, Grub contains a few scenes touched with pathos. In one, a writer returns home to find his tenement house ablaze. Having rescued his manuscript, he stands at the window preparing to leap to a NYFD trampoline below. Meanwhile the crowd below chants ambiguously, “Jump! Jump! Jump!”

“Mordantly delicious,” says the jacket blurb. It’s true. So is the old joke told by sweet, good Margot: “Did you hear about the writer who died? St. Peter offers him the choice of heaven or hell. The writer asks to see each one before deciding. As they descend into the fires of hell, the writer sees row upon row of writers, all chained to steaming-hot desks, being whipped by demons. ‘Show me heaven,’ he says. They ascend to heaven, where there’s row upon row of writers chained to steaming-hot desks, being whipped by demons. ‘It’s just as bad as hell,’ the writer says. St. Peter shakes his head and says, ‘No. In heaven your work gets published.’”