Posnanski and the Paterno book

I've heard the same.

 

From the Saturday New York Post: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/business/posnanski_still_in_the_game_with_9Exoqj3XZbL1MJZSvlcR9N

Keith Kelly cites the number, just not the source.

 

Joe Pos is a brand. A soft drink -- a tasty, thirst-quenching soft drink -- of sportswriting. Any Paterno book now, however, needs to be written by someone who is a good stiff Scotch on the rocks, by comparison.

The project has changed, going from a Tom Hanks role to a Christian Bale role.

If it were being conceptualized now, today, Joe Pos wouldn't be the writer most folks would think of as the best choice to do the book. Someone else would be ... but who? Pearlman? Wertheim?

 

Wetzel.

 

Halberstam.

But really, I don't think it's fair to box Posnanski in the way many in this thread have done. He often writes about what he loves. That does not mean he can't tackle difficult issues; it means he doesn't often try. Now, he's forced to try. I'm excited for a book I absolutely would not have read had the scandal not broke.

 

David Maraniss?

Jeffrey Toobin? (Obviously not a biography, but a legal page-turner about the case, like his O.J. Simpson or Monica Lewinsky books.)

George Dohrmann?

If you are S&S, that is your worry now, I think. That another publisher is going to swoop in with a heavy hitter and undermine this book. I think there are going to be multiple books about the scandal. No guarantee that Posnanski's ends up being the definitive one.

 

Ditto. In general, publishers really dislike the notion of too many competitive books, and there will likely be several from a variety of perspectives, focusing on the story of the victims, the biography of Sandusky as perpetrator, Second Mile, molestation in coaching, imbalance in big time college sports etc., and books that in a variety of way combine these approaches. Some will be fly overs and some will be in depth, some will be done quickly and others will be longer term, but there will be multiple books. I suspect authors and publishers are already scrambling over this, and Posnanski's contract will probably not be a major impediment.

There might be room at some point for a book that is Paterno-centric and focuses almost entirely on the coach and his “meaning,” but that book is years and years and years away – long after the full scope of all this that is going on now is known - and even then that book will be a radically different project from the one Posnanski's publisher envisioned.

The other issue publishers will consider is how much readers will be interested in such an unsavory topic. No matter how important it might be, there is sometimes a fatigue with with difficult topics. Intense initial interest wanes after the headlines die down. Readers will have already reached their conclusions and may not want to spend hours and hours reading about a pedophile. The full scope of this story will take years to unfold, and the definitive account may not appear for quite some time.

 

Putting myself in the author's shoes, the real problem is that everything Joe Paterno has ever said to me now sounds like a lie. Part of a coverup. It isn't of course, but readers are going to think so, too. And on the advice of council, Paterno isn't going to grant any new interview sessions. What do you do with hundreds of hours of material that rings retroactively false? Or is so unimportant by comparison as to be useless?

And which, as M. Gee points out, the cops will subpoena?

 

Yeah . . . the Titanic . . . before the iceberg.

 

Yeah, but actors fight their whole career to get roles outside of their comfort level. Hell, Tom Hanks was a comedic actor best known for dressing in drag. Know, he's an Academy Award winner known for his dramatic roles.

Posnanski should embrace this opportunity. It's a chance to write a book he likely would have never been hired to write if the circumstances were different.

If this is true -- and I believe it is -- then S&S and Posnanski need to own this story.

Instead of lamenting the situation, they need to forcefully say that, while the narrative has changed, they are still fully committed to publishing the definitive book on the scandal.

Instead of worrying about someone else ruining their book, they need to make people fear that any book they green light will be swallowed up by the book being written by the two time, AP Best Sports Columnist, who is already on the scene and has a huge head start.

 

I would hope he's gained the trust of a lot of people he now needs to talk to again.

Six months of relationship building has to help.

And, he should have plenty of background on the program, JoePa, and how much they mean to the community and the Alumni.