Golenbock's smutty Mantle novel finds a new home

This doesn't seem like a Lyons Press book, but they're giving it a 250,000 press run.

In other words: See you at the cutout bin by Christmas.

http://www.newsday.com/entertainment/ny-etmick0301,0,600174.story?coll=ny-entertainment-headlines

 

Here's the story from Publisher's Weekly, the book trade magazine along with a review:

http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6420112.html?display=breaking

 

Oh my Lord.

Mickey seems more of the gentleman ("I don't believe in having sex with women against their will the way Billy sometimes did")...

How the fuck does one write this shit??

 

Actually, I think the next contact would be from a process server holding a restraining order.

 

That's a giant print run.

 

Hard to believe. Publishers announce these huge print runs--sometimes months before the book goes to press--but never actually decide the real quantity until the big chains place their orders.

In this case, the book is supposed to hit the stores in a month, so they have real numbers to work with, but 250,000 is an uncommonly high number. Much more common to print conservatively, and go back to press as necessary.

 

I have a morbid fascination with this thing for any number of reasons. Anyway, the first reviews for Peter Golenbock's "7" are coming in, and they are unkind...

Entertainment Weekly has given it an F -- the only time I've seen that. (They even gave Albom's last one, which they called the worst book fo the year, a D-.)

"Words cannot fully convey how god-awful this 'inventive memoir' is. So let's try some numbers: 29 (number of naughty words in the first chapter), 24 (offensive jokes throughout), 5.2 (ratio of sexual banter to baseball talk), and 7 (number of hours wasted reading). Narrated in heaven by Mantle, with the help of late sportswriter Lenny Schecter, 7 should have died with ReganBooks, but Lyons Press salvaged it. 7 insults anyone who cherishes the Mick's memory -- or God (who asks Mantle to sign four dozen balls). And I haven't even mentioned the chapter in which Mantle, Schecter, and Toots Shor are transported to Marilyn Monroe's bedroom in 1953." -- Steve Wulf.

Y'ouch.

Anyway read this yet?

 

And yet, people still pay him to write books...

 

Jones, I won't read it. The fact that Peter Golenbock wrote it is all the reason I need.

One book on NASCAR was nothing more than his ability to feed fresh cassettes and batteries into his recorder. A couple of other books have been blasted critically.

And for reason I hope are obvious to many, I won't comment further on "Personal Fouls."

How does Golenbock continue to be published? Sheesh.

 

That's pretty much every book he writes.

He gives oral histories a bad name.

 

But at least you know he has thoroughly checked his facts