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January 17, 2006
Stranger Than Fiction, Yes. But Why Less Publishable?
"Soon I was having meetings with publishers in Canada and the U.S. They loved the whole concept; the pain, the suffering, the haunting, bla-bla-bla... There was just one problem in their opinion (and this was the case with all of them): The book didn't have an ending.Interesting, interesting stuff. John relates it to the controversy over James Frey's "A Million Little Pieces." Read the whole thing.Come back when the serial killer is captured, then we'll talk.
I'm not kidding. You can't make this stuff up. And what I tried to tell these publishing geniuses was that the truth is more interesting; some crimes aren't solved, some pain never goes away, and some murders most certainly are random acts that don't comply with our desire for a patterned, ordered and causal environment."
Posted by Eric at January 17, 2006 12:14 PM
Comments
The recent movie portrays Truman Capote as having had the same dilemma. Having initially assisted the murderers' defense, he withdrew further support, but it appears that his motives were at least mixed -- i.e., that only their execution would furnish a satisfying ending for what became "In Cold Blood."
Posted by: Kevin at January 17, 2006 1:52 PM
A number of years ago the writer Elizabeth Spencer asked me to read the manuscript of her memoir, Landscapes of the Heart. I pointed out, somewhat quizzically, that one chapter was, verbatim, a short story she had published many years earlier (about a little girl's first day of school). She was not in the least troubled by or even very interested in what I thought was a pretty astonishing discovery.
Posted by: Sally at January 19, 2006 11:12 AM