USA Today has anointed The Tourists author Jeff Hobbs' as the winner in the battle of 80s brat pack protégés, saying that his book is "more impressive and ambitious" than Dana Vachon's Mergers and Acquisitions. Um, sure! Maybe in the same way that Pirates of the Carribean: Curse of the Black Pearl was more impressive and ambitious than Fantastic Four: Rise of The Silver Surfer. Anyway, the rave (yes, the USA Today rave) has thrust Hobbs' literary hand-holder Bret Easton Ellis (as opposed, of course, to Vachon's #1 fan Jay McInerney) back into the spotlight. He didn't go to Hobbs' book party, after all. Has he abandoned his furtherance of Hobbs' career?

"Poised for success in the literary community: Not only is Jeff Hobbs dedicating The Tourists to his mentor Bret Easton Ellis, but The Tourists has a plot and depth that makes it comparable to some of today's finest literary fiction," according to the copy on the galley of 27-year-old's debut novel. These statements are not entirely untrue! The literary community, or something like it, did turn out in full force last night to celebrate the book's publication. Jonathan Franzen was there! (Supposedly: we didn't actually glimpse him). And so was, for some reason, Aaron Eckhart!

"If F. Scott Fitzgerald had gone to Yale instead of Princeton, set his novel among precociously successful designers and financiers, with a struggling freelance journalist rather than a Midwestern bond dealer narrating, it might have turned out a bit like "The Tourists," a new novel by a 27-year-old Angeleno transplant named Jeff Hobbs," begins Scott Timberg's LA Times mag tongue job about that precocious novelist. "I'm almost embarrassed by the comparison," Hobbs is then quoted as saying. How modest and cute! Also cute: that author photo with a doggie woggie! This book must be great. Hey, look, there's a copy of it lying around our offices! Let's dive right in.