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the breakfast table: An e-mail conversation about the news of the day.

Timothy Noah and Marjorie Williams

the breakfast table
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from: Timothy Noah

More on Books I Never Read

Posted Tuesday, July 21, 1998, at 3:58 PM ET

Dear Marjorie,

Yeah, if I ever have a success like Midnight In the Garden of Good and Evil, I hope my friends turn out to be more generous about it than Gay Talese is being to John Berendt.

I haven't read the Berendt book, though I probably should, just to acquaint myself with a publishing phenomenon. I agree that Streitfeld is a great publishing-industry reporter (he's the guy who definitively unmasked Joe Klein as the anonymous author of Primary Colors), but there's one bit in today's piece I really don't like. In discussing why the book is a hit, Streitfeld theorizes that readers are "responding to the hybrid nature of Midnight. As the author's note in the back of the book says, 'certain storytelling liberties' were taken with this 'nonfiction.' This has gotten him in trouble with people who believe in the purity of nonfiction, but it gives his tale the juiciness of a novel."

Who are these "people who believe in the purity of nonfiction"? I don't want to sound too stiff-necked here, but I would think this group would include any and all serious journalists. Yet Streitfeld makes it sound as though these people are prigs (and, although this is not an opinion piece, he strongly implies that he himself is too publishing-savvy to fall for any notion that nonfiction must be "pure," i.e., factually accurate, every second of every hour). I remember reading a very good piece in the Weekly Standard some time ago documenting exactly what Berendt made up, and as I recall it was rather a lot--more, for instance, than Truman Capote is now said to have made up in In Cold Blood. (It's true, I give Capote a bit more wiggle room than Berendt because a.) He was a moonlighting novelist; b.) He was a genius, which I gather Berendt is not; and c.) The passage of time makes it easier to accept factual inaccuracy in writing of lasting value; there just aren't that many folks left in Kansas who knew or care about the Clutter family as people rather than as characters in Capote's book.)

Not to excuse the famous inventions of Stephen Glass, but: Don't you think a young man seeking to make his fortune in journalism these days would be confused by the gap between what's expected of magazine and newspaper writers, on the one hand (e.g., factual accuracy), and what's expected of nonfiction book writers (who actually reside higher up the literary status ladder)?

Anyway, the runaway success of Midnight in the Garden of Evil is amazing. The movie (which was a financial bust) is already out in video stores, and yet you can't buy a paperback of the book. According to Streitfeld, conglomeration in book publishing now increases the likelihood that the same publisher will put out hardcover and paperback versions of a book; which means the publisher can hold off the paperback version for a longer time than in the past; which means that a hardcover can stay on the bestseller list for a longer time than in the past. Apparently much the same thing is happening with Angela's Ashes, another book I haven't read, but one I expect to. (Maybe in that Adirondack chair, if I'm not playing catch-up with Ulysses.)

Which reminds me, guess who else hasn't read Ulysses? James Fallows, my terrifyingly well-read former boss! He confided this to me by e-mail last night, and I felt it too newsworthy to keep out of Breakfast Table. Let's invite other famously erudite people to e-mail Breakfast Table if they, too, haven't read Ulysses. The person for whom this admission is most embarrassing will win...a paperback copy of Ulysses! If Slate won't spring for it, I'll pay.

I could even start a club, called: What The Heck Is Bloomsday, Anyways?

Having discussed various books I haven't read, I must now confess I also haven't read that John Bayley piece you wanted me to look at in The New Yorker, about his Alzheimer's-addled wife, novelist Iris Murdoch. You know I don't like stories like this, and you, who have a higher tolerance for them than I do, didn't even like this one! So forget it, I'm not reading it. But I'll second your opinion that it was wrong to allow Richard Avedon to photograph Murdoch's vacant stare. I'll also offer up that it was wrong for your employer, Vanity Fair, to snap some similarly voyeuristic shots of Ronald Reagan a couple of months ago. (Honey, please don't second this opinion in your next message, okay?)

I promise I will never do to you what John Bayley and Nancy Reagan did to their spouses, i.e., turn them into carnival sideshows. The comparatively prim Breakfast Table represents the far limit of my taste for exploitation and exhibitionism.

Modestly and protectively,

Tim

the breakfast table
entries
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from: Timothy Noah

More on Books I Never Read

Posted Tuesday, July 21, 1998, at 3:58 PM ET
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Timothy Noah writes Slate's "Chatterbox" column. Marjorie Williams is a contributing editor at Vanity Fair.
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