A Heartbreaking Groove

If you think Dave Eggers is meta, hang onto your genre-blurring debut memoir and your well-intentioned volunteer position at 826 Valencia. Jonathan Plummer made headlines when New York Times bestselling author Terry McMillan filed for divorce in 2006, claiming that Plummer concealed his homosexuality in order to marry her and gain U.S. citizenship. Her novel and the subsequent movie, How Stella Got Her Groove Back, based on their romance, had previously inspired a nation of African-American women and homosexual men obsessed with Taye Diggs to keep hope alive in the face of their own diminishing grooves. Now, in a scandalous turn of semi-autobiographical publishing cattiness, Plummer reads in support of his new novel, Balancing Act, a story about a Jamaican sugarcane merchant who enters a passionate tryst with a vacationing female model from the United States only to discover a hidden hunger for a sweaty, plot-enhancing male model. If this metafiction trend continues, the next installment may involve inaugurating a sexy, delirious interracial affair with an SF Weekly freelance writer who attended the author's S.F. appearance.
Wed., Oct. 3, 12:30 p.m., 2007