Is James Patterson's claim that white men face racism an enraging PR stunt from a former ad man?

[marmar]

(Salon) One of richest living writers in the world, James Patterson, said in an interview with The Times on Sunday that white men like him face racism within the publishing, theatre, and film and TV industries. He described the alleged difficulty confronting the most privileged members of society as "just another form of racism. . . . Can you get a job? Yes. Is it harder? Yes. It's even harder for older writers. You don't meet many 52-year-old white males."

Citing industries almost entirely dominated by white men, Patterson doesn't have the facts on his side. The respected Lee & Low Books Diversity Baseline Survey reported in its 2019 findings that 76% of the publishing industry is white. According to a different 2020 study, 95% of published writers are white. Male writers receive more attention, acclaim and income than female writers, with 75% of books reviewed in the prestigious Times Literary Supplement written by men. Books about women are less likely to win prizes (which can translate into sales). Their titles receive about "half (45%) the price of male authors' and are underrepresented in more prestigious genres."

On the performance side, a study from The Asian American Performers Action Coalition found almost 90% of playwrights who had their works staged in the 2016-17 New York season were white and male (87.1% of those performances were directed by white directors). As Playbill reported: "On Broadway alone, 95% of all plays and musicals were both written and directed by Caucasian artists" while 89% of Broadway-produced playwrights were male.

Hollywood has a similar record. In 2019, over 85% of directors were white and over 84% were male. In 2017, only 11% of the year's top 250 films were written by women.

....(snip)....

But is this also a publicity stunt by an expert at the con? Maybe.

Since 1976, the Patterson name has been embossed on hundreds of novels you can find at airports; 260 were New York Times bestsellers. He may not even know how many he's published, as he didn't write all of them. .............(more)

https://www.salon.com/2022/06/14/james-patterson-pr-stunt-men/

[dchill]

1. James Patterson writes fiction, when he writes at all.

That's all this is.

[AZSkiffyGeek]

4. He has other people write fiction for him...

[Me.]

2. So Ridiculous It's Betond Words

[vanlassie]

3. I became disgusted reading Kiss the Girls which

contained, to quote a review:

“Indeed, the violence is explicit and unrelenting, and one passage in particular, which involves a snake with its mouth sewn closed, a milk enema, and a woman hung by ropes from the rafters, was quite literally stomach-turning.”

Gratuitous exploitation of kidnapped females. Yuck. I respect authors, and books. But when the snake was about to be made to penetrate the imprisoned girl, I threw the book across the room.

[LizBeth]

18. I am an obsessive reader and have pretty much stopped reading male authors.

Ok, not all. Koontz, Childs are pretty good but so many men authors has such perverted descriptions and sexism thru out their books there lacks the enjoyment of reading. Periodically I will pick up a female writer and think, is this a man with a woman's name. I would love to figure out how to check that out. There current book I am reading now had me googling it.

[Sympthsical]

22. I very vaguely remember an actual television commercial for this

I was a kid, so it's very hazy. Only that it ran all the time. It was a bit unusual, because you didn't typically see commercials for books. The narrator's voice seemed creepily overexcited about whatever was going on in that book as he mentioned the name of the book about seven billion times.

To this day, whenever I hear the name James Patterson, I immediately hear that weirdly sexual predatory vibey voice in my head, "Kiss the Girls!"

So, uh, that was apparently being advertised during my childhood.

[vanlassie]

23. Ugggh. Just no. And Bill Clinton wrote a book with him.

Although I guess maybe not WITH him.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

5. Right. White man are being discriminated against to the point

they no longer make up the majority of CEOs, a mere 90%. About 77% of Congress is white, and most of them are men.

It is so sad, how men are losing ground.

[ReluctanceTango]

6. I never have liked him or his writing

I've long believed that he operates a writing sweat shop, where all he creates are outlines and general character sketches while hungry unpublished writers toil away doing all the hard work of getting the books written. And he gets the royalties.

There is no way he can crank out the output he does on a yearly basis otherwise.

[Haggis 4 Breakfast]

8. That's exactly what he does.

He was interviewed years ago for Vanity Fair. He has college students and aspiring writers do all the heavy lifting for him. There was a picture where you could see wooden inboxes, one after another, with working titles written on them where the young writers would put their material and he would "review" it later.

He doesn't write, he churns out pulp on an assembly line. And he's been taken to task by other writers for what he does. He's very sensitive about it and defensive, too.

[electric_blue68]

10. I've never read him. And this what he does is rather disgusting!

[Haggis 4 Breakfast]

11. Where I come from,

Taking credit for someone else's work is called academic dishonesty. The least Patterson could do is give contribution to whoever assisted in his book(s).

He is America's richest writer. His net worth as of last year was estimated at (Are you sitting down ?) $800 million dollars. So at this point, he's just greedy.

[electric_blue68]

14. A credit or co-authored? Richest writer (800 mil - woah) who's not doing all that writing.

[Haggis 4 Breakfast]

15. The world's richest writer is J. K. Rowling.

She also writes under pseudonyms. One is Robert Galbraith. But at least she does all her own work.

[electric_blue68]

16. 👍

[struggle4progress]

7. Liars believe that everyone's a liar; thieves, that everyone's a thief;

racists, that everyone's a racist; &c&c

[CrackityJones75]

9. My white friend was a victim of racism.

Last edited Wed Jun 15, 2022, 12:35 AM - Edit history (1)

He was beaten severely. He could have died. He ended up with internal bleeding and a lacerated kidney. His face was so badly beaten that his glasses didn’t fit his face.

The reason he got beaten so badly? He was white. Walking across the park at the wrong time of night on the wrong day and the 5 black kids that beat him up made sure he knew they were beating him because he was white.


He is also one of the most anti-racist people I know. He wasn’t beaten because the black kids who beat him up were racist. He was beaten up because the racism in this country at the hands of white people has pushed us to the poi t we are at. Those kids were angry. They certainly weren’t right to beat my friend. But we understood why it happened. It was racism but not in the way that people would think we thought it was.

[Haggis 4 Breakfast]

13. That's horrible.

How is your friend recovering ? This would be so traumatic - not just at the moment -- but the aftermath.

[CrackityJones75]

17. This was years ago

He is fine but his recovery wasn't good. We grew up in a fairly rough part of Saint Paul, MN. It would have been very easy (especially given the blue collar low edicatio area we were raised in) to become a racist himself. That didn't happen. We were smarter than that. Admittedly because of our upbringing we had to overcome some of our own learned behavior but we were smarter than all of that.

The racists that drive me the most crazy are the ones that try and use patriotism to hide it. Those are the ones that make me crazy.

[Haggis 4 Breakfast]

24. Right now, I'm reading a book dedicated to bringing the story of the rise of White Supremacy

in this country to a well-researched narrative, "Bring The War Home" by Katheen Belew. She ties so many thing into the movement. One of them is christian identity. Another is veterans being unable to be re-integrated into society and feeling abandoned. Some of what I'm reading is terrifying. But the book is V E R Y informative.

[uponit7771]

12. Equality or anything near it is oppression to the privileged

[Caliman73]

20. I agree with this.

The very fact that doors have been unlocked to women and people of color in the industry, even very slightly, seems like oppression. The fact that White male authors now have the slightest bit of competition, and different view points are gaining a small amount of traction in the industry is very scary to some.

Beau of the Fifth Column had a good video on this. He said that Patterson was acknowledging that systemic racism exists by his comments. It just isn't working quite as well as it used to, and that is pissing people like Patterson off.

[uponit7771]

21. +1, just looked at BOTFC's vid of this yesterday and Patrick Lotaya ... He's right on point

[Johonny]

19. It's easier than ever to publish a book thanks to online publishing

It's also dirt cheap to do. Getting anyone to read your books is just about impossible.