Scoundrel stars

I’m
reminded of this phenomenon reading two newspaper stories today. A columnist in
The Miami Herald reports that “Jayson Blair, the plagiarizing,
fabricate-as-you-go former New York Times reporter, was invited to speak to
journalism students at Washington and Lee University, on, of all things,
ethics.” Blair’s talk was about losing his ethical way, but it seems to me that
a fine university like Washington and Lee might have found a more virtuous
lecturer on journalistic ethics than one whose claim to fame — or infamy — is
having ignored those very ethical standards about which he was recruited to
lecture.

The
other story, in The New York Times, is the brilliant Michiko Kakutani’s review
of Sarah Palin’s about-to-be published political memoir, Going Rogue,
for which she reportedly received a $5 million advance and which already has
engendered breathless media attention. Palin has many fans, no doubt, but her
book was written “with an assist” from Lynn Vincent, an evangelical magazine
writer. Few of her readers, and no doubt her publisher, who paid so well for
her book, expect that Palin is an author worthy of a huge advance. She is a
celebrity, and one whose intellectual talents have been mocked widely. But
notoriety sells books, her experience reminds us.

As
one who writes books (11 so far) and has negotiated sales of many books by
serious writers, it irks me to have to beg for modest advances for talented
authors with interesting and often important things to say. Monica Lewinsky
received a larger advance for her book about the Clinton scandal she
participated in than did professional authors who wrote serious analyses of the
same subject. Sour grapes, some would say. But I deplore the value system that
underwrites this phenomenon. After all, it is the world of “literature” under
discussion, a world that has been eclipsed by the public interest in
entertainment, and often scandalous entertainment at that.