{"id":43974,"date":"2026-08-14T08:51:10","date_gmt":"2026-08-14T03:51:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=43974"},"modified":"2026-08-14T08:51:10","modified_gmt":"2026-08-14T03:51:10","slug":"great-scott-a-close-read-of-mackenzie-scotts-ambitious-substack-novel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/?p=43974","title":{"rendered":"Great Scott! A Close Read of MacKenzie Scott\u2019s Ambitious Substack Novel"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><script>\r\n  atOptions = {\r\n    'key' : '644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6',\r\n    'format' : 'iframe',\r\n    'height' : 90,\r\n    'width' : 728,\r\n    'params' : {}\r\n  };\r\n<\/script>\r\n<script src=\"https:\/\/www.highperformanceformat.com\/644b717812d811d6a1c1fc5b6ccd6fa6\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"paywall\">Long before she became one of the most fiscally generous people in history, Scott wanted to write fiction. She attended Princeton, drawn in by the prospect of studying with Toni Morrison; the vaunted author would advise Scott on her thesis project, a novel-length manuscript titled <a href=\"https:\/\/dataspace.princeton.edu\/handle\/88435\/dsp01v692t778p\" class=\"text link\"><em>The Fathering Water<\/em><\/a>. Morrison later <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vogue.com\/article\/a-novel-perspective-mackenzie-bezos\" class=\"text link\">told <em>Vogue<\/em><\/a> that Scott was \u201cone of the best students I\u2019ve ever had in my creative-writing classes\u2026really one of the best.\u201d<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">Morrison continued to champion Scott following graduation, introducing Scott to her own agent, Amanda \u201cBinky\u201d Urban. Urban signed Scott as a client. (It\u2019s not clear whether Urban\u2019s agency, CAA, still represents Scott; a representative for the company didn\u2019t respond to a request for comment.) In 2005, Fourth Estate published Scott\u2019s debut novel, <em>The Testing of Luther Albright,<\/em> a quiet, emotionally exacting character excavation that unspools the life of the titular Luther\u2014an engineer whose copper piping system begins to fail in the wake of an earthquake. (His inability to plumb his own emotions also causes a rift between him and his family.) The novel won the American Book Award, one of the prizes Morrison had won for her 1987 novel <em>Beloved<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">Scott took a break from writing during what she has called the \u201ctoo busy\u201d years she spent raising her three children with Bezos\u2014until 2013, when Knopf published her second book, <em>Traps.<\/em> She <a data-offer-url=\"https:\/\/charlierose.com\/videos\/17817\" class=\"external-link text link\" data-event-click=\"{&quot;element&quot;:&quot;ExternalLink&quot;,&quot;outgoingURL&quot;:&quot;https:\/\/charlierose.com\/videos\/17817&quot;}\" href=\"https:\/\/charlierose.com\/videos\/17817\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">described the book to Charlie Rose<\/a> as a creative departure: it takes place over just four days and is narrated in close third-person from the perspective of four different women, including an Oscar-winning actress plagued by paparazzi and a teen mom with newborn twins.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paywall\">While researching the novel, Scott said she worked for a few days at a dog shelter and also spent time on a movie set. In writing it, she set out to explore \u201cthe things that we worry over the most in life, the things we feel trapped by, the mistakes we\u2019ve made, the bad luck we come across, the accidents we come across. The paradox is, in the end, oftentimes those are the things that we\u2019ll look back and be most grateful for; those are the things that take us where we need to go.\u201d The novel was edited by Jordan Pavlin, now Knopf\u2019s executive vice president and publisher, whose authors include Kazuo Ishiguro, Bret Easton Ellis, and Jhumpa Lahiri.<\/p>\n<figure class=\"AssetEmbedWrapper-iJvQnD cOWUYC asset-embed\">\n<div class=\"AssetEmbedAssetContainer-fnduJP iaVSwI asset-embed__asset-container\"><span class=\"SpanWrapper-kFnjvc eKnjjD responsive-asset AssetEmbedResponsiveAsset-gaAbQ hXaxHA asset-embed__responsive-asset\"><picture class=\"ResponsiveImagePicture-jKunQM gjCCFj AssetEmbedResponsiveAsset-gaAbQ hXaxHA asset-embed__responsive-asset responsive-image\"><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Image may contain Jeff Bezos Paula Newsome Brian Quick Walter Jones Fashion Adult Person Premiere and Red Carpet\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"ResponsiveImageContainer-dkeESL cQPiWi responsive-image__image\" srcset=\"https:\/\/media.vanityfair.com\/photos\/6a7e1c54ac4d534b1f096601\/master\/w_120,c_limit\/144014025 120w, https:\/\/media.vanityfair.com\/photos\/6a7e1c54ac4d534b1f096601\/master\/w_240,c_limit\/144014025 240w, https:\/\/media.vanityfair.com\/photos\/6a7e1c54ac4d534b1f096601\/master\/w_320,c_limit\/144014025 320w, https:\/\/media.vanityfair.com\/photos\/6a7e1c54ac4d534b1f096601\/master\/w_640,c_limit\/144014025 640w, https:\/\/media.vanityfair.com\/photos\/6a7e1c54ac4d534b1f096601\/master\/w_768,c_limit\/144014025 768w, https:\/\/media.vanityfair.com\/photos\/6a7e1c54ac4d534b1f096601\/master\/w_960,c_limit\/144014025 960w, https:\/\/media.vanityfair.com\/photos\/6a7e1c54ac4d534b1f096601\/master\/w_1280,c_limit\/144014025 1280w, https:\/\/media.vanityfair.com\/photos\/6a7e1c54ac4d534b1f096601\/master\/w_1600,c_limit\/144014025 1600w\" sizes=\"100vw\" src=\"https:\/\/media.vanityfair.com\/photos\/6a7e1c54ac4d534b1f096601\/master\/w_1600%2Cc_limit\/144014025\"\/><\/picture><\/span><\/div>\n<p><span class=\"BaseText-fEwdHD CaptionText-cQpRdU klhnDX hbiMYj caption__text\">Scott at the Met  Gala in 2012.<\/span><span class=\"BaseText-fEwdHD CaptionCredit-cUgOGk gsdIcD hRFzlA caption__credit\">Larry Busacca\/Getty Images<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<script async=\"async\" data-cfasync=\"false\" src=\"https:\/\/pl30214220.effectivecpmnetwork.com\/9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\/invoke.js\"><\/script>\r\n<div id=\"container-9ab3d4df8a7e1a6171e16ddbf732cc19\"><\/div>\r\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Long before she became one of the most fiscally generous people in history, Scott wanted to write fiction. She attended Princeton, drawn in by the prospect of studying with Toni Morrison; the vaunted author would advise Scott on her thesis project, a novel-length manuscript titled The Fathering Water. Morrison later told Vogue that Scott was&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":43975,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/media.vanityfair.com\/photos\/6a7e21d4e52a9a2706915f48\/16:9\/w_1280,c_limit\/Mackenzie.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-43974","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-celebrity-gossip"],"brizy_media":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43974","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=43974"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/43974\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/43975"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=43974"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=43974"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/usnews-14267fa.ingress-comporellon.ewp.live\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=43974"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}