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January 8, 2022

Almanac of Story Tellers: Judith Krantz

 Every day brings a new story.  And each day contributes to the art of story telling -- in prose and poetry, in music, on the stage, on the screen, and, of course, in books

Today is the story of January 9th.

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    It is the ninth day of the year, leaving 356 days remaining in 2022. 

    On this date in 1928, the American novelist Judith Krantz was born in New York City.

    She didn't publish her first novel until she was 50 -- but oh, what a novel it was. It was the first in a new genre she is credited with creating: the "sex-and-shopping" novel, sometimes called the "bonkbuster."

    Scruples was its name -- and the name of the boutique that served as a location for the novel. It was filled with, well, sex and shopping, although the Guardian newspaper opined that "the shopping ... had an intensity the sex could never match."

    Krantz spent nine months writing Scruples, which was published in 1978. It quickly took off.  Buoyed by a prodigious public relations campaign, coupled with Krantz's flair for self-promotion, the novel made its way to the New York Times best-seller list.

    Krantz parlayed its success into a record advance for her second novel, Princess Daisy, another successful publication. She wrote 10 novels in total, along with her memoir, Sex and Shopping: Confessions of a Nice Jewish Girl.

    Before she started writing novels, Krantz was a magazine writer and fashion editor.

    She died in 2019 in Los Angeles.

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