This weekend, The New York Times broke new ground in book promotion by looking at the rotting Brooklyn apartment of Mike Albo, author of The Underminer (with, coincidentally, The Times' Virginia Heffernan) in the 'Real Estate' section.

Ostensibly a piece about the author's real estate struggles, the article actually functioned as a reminder of the book, which readers might've forgotten since it was reviewed all of two weeks ago in The Book Review.

Writer Penelope Green tells us all about Albo's shabby chic (minus the 'chic') abode: the pigeon droppings that rotted his roof, the squirrel that came in and ate his food, the slanting floor, and the macrame. But here's the important part:

For Mr. Albo, a comic monologuist living in "Rent" (the musical)-style precariousness in the top-floor apartment of a run-down town house on Bergen Street in Brooklyn, "the munge incident," as he calls it, represented the final chapter of a three and a half year odyssey of straitened circumstances that began when he moved to the building just after Sept. 11.

Final, because after a year of working as a fashion writer for Cargo magazine and the publication last month of a book he has co-written, "The Underminer: Or, the Best Friend Who Casually Destroys Your Life" (Bloomsbury; $19.95), he could actually pay to have it fixed.

Next week, 'Escapes' goes fishing with Kurt Eichenwald, author of Conspiracy of Fools: A True Story.

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America, Prepare to Be Undermined