Random Notes

But I haven’t even noted the really embarrassing thing, which was, apparently, news not fit to print. Sure, as the story did say, the book is hot (five hundred thousand sold, twice that in print), and, yes, reviewers have been less than kind; you might even say vicious (the Times’ own Janet Maslin—a film critic—called the book “disastrous”). But I don’t know how one can write about Warner, Scarlett, and reviewers, yet fail to mention that the first did not send copies of the second to the third until finished books were already in bookstores. The usual practice is to provide “bound proofs” to review media one to three months in advance of the pub date in order to give us book editors time to assign a reviewer and to get back his copy in time for publication on or about that pub date. Warner, obviously fearing its $5-million investment was at risk, cynically—and, let it be said, cagily—decided to deprive critics of their accustomed role as the DEW line of consumer judgment. Warner prexy Larry Kirschbaum, no doubt suppressing laughter, told the New York Times: “The reviews have hurt our pride but not our sales.” Tears must have been welling up in his eyes—how hard it must have been to keep from bursting into guffaws—as he went on: “Word of mouth has been good.”

What was the Times up to? Was the same-day appearance of front-page and C1 stories plugging Miss Ripley just an occult coincidence? Was the Times ashamed of giving the book to a movie reviewer, and then boldly publishing her attack across the bottom of its Weekend section, instead of on its pallid book page? Was October 3 just another “slow news day”? Or was the Times simply trying, rather gracelessly, to boost the sagging image of its best-seller list? —Brad Miner finally Princeton, havens to any number of drifting friends or down-on-their-luck relations. Despite a reputation for haughtiness, Wilson was the rare success who understood failure, as in the case of a sibling, Josie, whose hard lot it was to be Woodrow Wilson’s not especially gifted brother (and who, after a series of loans and failed projects, vanished).

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But I haven’t even noted the really embarrassing thing, which was, apparently, news not fit to print. Sure, as the story did say, the book is hot (five hundred thousand sold, twice that in print), and, yes, reviewers have been less than kind; you might even say vicious (the Times’ own Janet Maslin—a film critic—called the book “disastrous”). But I don’t know how one can write about Warner, Scarlett, and reviewers, yet fail to mention that the first did not send copies of the second to the third until finished books were already in bookstores. The usual practice is to provide “bound proofs” to review media one to three months in advance of the pub date in order to give us book editors time to assign a reviewer and to get back his copy in time for publication on or about that pub date. Warner, obviously fearing its $5-million investment was at risk, cynically—and, let it be said, cagily—decided to deprive critics of their accustomed role as the DEW line of consumer judgment. Warner prexy Larry Kirschbaum, no doubt suppressing laughter, told the New York Times: “The reviews have hurt our pride but not our sales.” Tears must have been welling up in his eyes—how hard it must have been to keep from bursting into guffaws—as he went on: “Word of mouth has been good.”

What was the Times up to? Was the same-day appearance of front-page and C1 stories plugging Miss Ripley just an occult coincidence? Was the Times ashamed of giving the book to a movie reviewer, and then boldly publishing her attack across the bottom of its Weekend section, instead of on its pallid book page? Was October 3 just another “slow news day”? Or was the Times simply trying, rather gracelessly, to boost the sagging image of its best-seller list? —Brad Miner finally Princeton, havens to any number of drifting friends or down-on-their-luck relations. Despite a reputation for haughtiness, Wilson was the rare success who understood failure, as in the case of a sibling, Josie, whose hard lot it was to be Woodrow Wilson’s not especially gifted brother (and who, after a series of loans and failed projects, vanished).