Truthiness in Advertising
For the last ten years of his life Roger Keith Coleman lived truthily on death row as an innocent man. If he’d written the book that was obviously in him–about injustice, anger, and personal growth–Talese and Winfrey could have taken him under their wing and given his nightmare a chance to galvanize the nation. And last week when DNA testing finally told us that Coleman had indeed committed the murder in 1981 that he was executed for in 1992, they could have protested indignantly that for millions of readers Coleman’s memoir “remains a deeply inspiring and redemptive story.”
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Actually, that language showed up in Doubleday’s defense of A Million Little Pieces, Frey’s 2005 best seller that recently flunked an old-fashioned true-false test administered by thesmokinggun.com. Doubleday, which produces the books Talese personally oversees, reminded us in a state-ment that a memoir is “highly personal,” and Frey’s “was his story, told in his own way . . . true to his recollections.” As Frey was being interviewed live by Larry King, Winfrey got on the horn and told King, “The underlying message of redemption in James Frey’s memoir still resonates with me. And I know that it resonates with millions of other people.”
Books editor Elizabeth Taylor wasn’t excited about moving to Saturday, but she says she’s happy to go tabloid, even though she’ll wind up with less space. Readers also prefer a tabloid, she tells me: “It feels more bookish.” She hopes to find new advertisers. The traditional advertisers, the publishing houses, won’t pay the freight, but she’d like to think colleges and cultural institutions would enjoy the company of literature. Even the occasional movie ad for a literary adaptation wouldn’t be out of place.
Tribune readers who spotted a prissy January 14 item about a Metra conductor suspended for uttering a “vulgar sexual epithet” over the train’s PA system must have wondered what it was. Fortunately, the Reader’s Don Humbertson was on the scene. “The cocksuckers say you can’t smoke on the train platforms anymore” is how he heard it. Humbertson says that the following Monday the conductor, who’s popular with passengers, walked through the train in civvies apologizing.
