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Opinion: Dropping an author is one thing. Vanishing his book is another.
Opinion: Dropping an author is one thing. Vanishing his book is another.
Opinion by Matt Bai
Contributing columnist
April 29, 2021 at 9:00 a.m. EDT
From everything Ive read, the greatest American architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, was an unseemly human being. He abandoned his small children, treated his wives shamefully, behaved generally like Genghis Khan with a drafting board. ... What are we to do with this knowledge? Do we evict whoevers living in the hundreds of remaining homes Wright designed and bulldoze them?
How about his Guggenheim Museum in New York? Burn it to the ground and start again? ... Thats pretty much the decision the publisher W.W. Norton made this week when it decided to un-publish a book it had released to great fanfare only weeks ago.
Since then, the author of Philip Roth: The Biography, Blake Bailey, has been sullied by horrific and detailed allegations of having sexually assaulted multiple women and preyed on former students he met when he was a high school teacher.
Nortons announcement that it would not only walk away from the author, but also that it would effectively erase the book he wrote, is an extraordinary development the kind of thing that seems more like a Roth plot line than real life.
{snip}
Matt Bai Follow https://twitter.com/mattbai
Matt Bai, a Washington Post contributing columnist, is a journalist, author and screenwriter. He spent more than a decade at the New York Times, where he was the chief political writer for the Sunday magazine and a columnist for the newspaper, and five years as the national political columnist for Yahoo News.
Opinion by Matt Bai
Contributing columnist
April 29, 2021 at 9:00 a.m. EDT
From everything Ive read, the greatest American architect, Frank Lloyd Wright, was an unseemly human being. He abandoned his small children, treated his wives shamefully, behaved generally like Genghis Khan with a drafting board. ... What are we to do with this knowledge? Do we evict whoevers living in the hundreds of remaining homes Wright designed and bulldoze them?
How about his Guggenheim Museum in New York? Burn it to the ground and start again? ... Thats pretty much the decision the publisher W.W. Norton made this week when it decided to un-publish a book it had released to great fanfare only weeks ago.
Since then, the author of Philip Roth: The Biography, Blake Bailey, has been sullied by horrific and detailed allegations of having sexually assaulted multiple women and preyed on former students he met when he was a high school teacher.
Nortons announcement that it would not only walk away from the author, but also that it would effectively erase the book he wrote, is an extraordinary development the kind of thing that seems more like a Roth plot line than real life.
{snip}
Matt Bai Follow https://twitter.com/mattbai
Matt Bai, a Washington Post contributing columnist, is a journalist, author and screenwriter. He spent more than a decade at the New York Times, where he was the chief political writer for the Sunday magazine and a columnist for the newspaper, and five years as the national political columnist for Yahoo News.
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Opinion: Dropping an author is one thing. Vanishing his book is another. (Original Post)
mahatmakanejeeves
Apr 2021
OP
This is ridiculous. Matt Bai should ask someone to explain free speech to him.
Scrivener7
Apr 2021
#1
Scrivener7
(50,774 posts)1. This is ridiculous. Matt Bai should ask someone to explain free speech to him.
What nonsense. They are taking the book out of print. The author is free to take it to another publisher, if he can find one who wants to look past his slimy ass crimes.
wryter2000
(46,016 posts)4. Exactly
The world is losing Hamlet here.
lagomorph777
(30,613 posts)8. Is this Matt Bai a great artist like Wright or Roth?
He seems to be trying to salvage the book by associating himself with these guys.
wryter2000
(46,016 posts)2. If they can do this contractually
They are within their rights. Hes then free to find another publisher.
Thomas Hurt
(13,903 posts)3. It is unclear to me, what is so hard about neither demonizing or venerating famous dead people...
As far as that goes, live famous people should not venerated or demonized either.
Arrest, convict and imprison if necessary but demonizing accomplishes little.
wryter2000
(46,016 posts)5. Maybe
They just dont want to be associated with him. I wouldnt.
PoliticAverse
(26,366 posts)6. "Mr. Bailey will be free to seek publication elsewhere if he chooses."
NEW YORK The publisher of a highly anticipated and widely discussed biography of Philip Roth is pulling the book and cutting ties with author Blake Bailey, who faces multiple allegations of sexual harassment and assault. W.W. Norton and Company previously released Baileys memoir The Splendid Things We Planned.
Norton is permanently putting out of print our editions of Philip Roth: The Biography and The Splendid Things We Planned, Blake Baileys 2014 memoir, the publisher announced Tuesday. Mr. Bailey will be free to seek publication elsewhere if he chooses. In addition, Norton will make a donation in the amount of the book advance for Philip Roth: The Biography to organizations that fight against sexual assault or harassment and work to protect survivors.
Norton is permanently putting out of print our editions of Philip Roth: The Biography and The Splendid Things We Planned, Blake Baileys 2014 memoir, the publisher announced Tuesday. Mr. Bailey will be free to seek publication elsewhere if he chooses. In addition, Norton will make a donation in the amount of the book advance for Philip Roth: The Biography to organizations that fight against sexual assault or harassment and work to protect survivors.
Phoenix61
(16,954 posts)7. Matt Bai is confused.
A publisher is free to publish or not anything they want. The author is free to take the book to another publisher of self-publish.