Posnanski and the Paterno book

I have a feeling before this is all said and done a court might ask for those notes.

 

Brink popped into my mind as well. I was curious how often it happens. Cobb could be on the list, but in Brink, Feinstein did figure out a way to bring out the deep shortcomings of Coach Knight and the strong positives of the man.

It can be done.

 

Dick:

Let's say Jerry Sandusky never exists, just as an exercise, and Joe Paterno is still Joe Paterno: Super Amazing Nerdy Smug Moral Football Coach/Sultan of Central PA.

Could one write a biography of Joe Paterno that, while ultimately a favorable book, still revealed the complexities and darkness of the man? The obsession with control, with winning, with letting assholes like Anwar Phillips play in bowl games even though they were accused of rape? A book where, despite all that stuff we cynics know is true about football coaches, ultimately comes down on the side that Paterno was, in general, a very positive force in the lives of many, many people? (Shotty is masturbating to the thought of this very book right now.)

Because that's the book I think he went to write. Some people want to believe it was going to be one big stroke job because it fits their argument that Pos doesn't have the balls or the world view to do a "real" book. Yet I know for a fact Pos wanted, instead, to write a full account of the man. Favorable, perhaps, but for a long time it wasn't such a stretch to believe Paterno, while flawed, was generally a positive force.

Now obviously things changed DRAMATICALLY when "full account" suddenly meant "covered for, and ultimately enabled, a child rapist." But I think it's unfair to act like he wanted to write the Penn State version of "The Fab Five" based on the what the publisher put out to market the book a year before it was even written.

As it is, I think this needs to be my last word on this. I'm ignoring my own work to argue about this stuff, and while it's certainly fascinating to argue on behalf of the minority opinion (I can take solace in the fact I didn't cite fugitive slave laws to make my point), I ultimately need to let this one go.

 

I have a feeling if Jerry was not a skeleton in the PSU closet for the next coach to find, Joe might have retired a decade ago, or more.

 

My last word, as well, for now, but, hey, you asked.

I don't think you're giving the skeptics enough credit here. You keep saying that people are skeptical about their book because they want to fit it into their narrative about Pos being "soft," but in large part there isn't a sports writer who has been more unanimously feted on here than Joe Posnanski. The board, by and large, is much tougher on the perceived "negative" writers like Bayless or Doyel or some of the Boston guys than it is the Posnanskis and Plaschkes of the world.

You've said from the outset of this thread that he intended to write a straight biography, and I take it you have personal knowledge of that. But that's not what the book was pitched as. This is from the New York Times:

Soon enough, there was the book proposal, a copy of which The New York Times obtained. It spoke of “the grand experiment” that Paterno carried out at Penn State by stressing academics and athletic success. But the pitch also spoke about sons and fathers. The biography would be about much more than sports for their own sake.

Elaborating on his conversations with Paterno, Posnanski wrote in the proposal: “He was told again and again that the story is not about a season or a game or a stolen moment behind the scenes. It is about a remarkable life and the many people who have been touched by it.”

When Paterno agreed, Posnanski shared the news with his readers. In a March 22, 2011, post titled simply “Announcement,” he wrote: “I cannot begin to describe how excited I am about this project. I am, as you could probably tell from my previous stories on the man, a huge fan and admirer of Joe’s. But even more than that I am endlessly fascinated by him and his lifelong quest to do something large, to impact America, through football. So writing about Joe, his triumphs, his struggles, his journey, well, it really is everything I’ve ever wanted to do as a writer.”

More importantly, though, I think that people are justified assuming that it was going to be "Tuesdays With Joe" because Posnanski has already written that kind of book, the Buck O'Neil book. The set-up of this seemed completely similar. Spend time with a legendary sports figure. Write about all the amazing times you had and the lessons learned. Listen to the cash registers whir.

So to recap, posters have:

(1) Posnanski's track record as a generally optimistic fellow;
(2) His gushing admiration for Paterno;
(3) His gushing book proposal;
(4) A similar book already under his belt.

People were not anticipating a soft book because they don't like or don't respect Posnanski. They were anticipating a soft book because every shred of evidence about what was in the hopper led them in that direction.

 

That's a great point.

 

Going back on that last word thing...

I concede that you've pinned me against the ropes here, Dick, albeit in a much more thoughtful way than some of the crap earlier in this thread that had me incensed. I think we both know that book proposals are shaped by agents and written for publishers, and they're rosy by default, and if you get the contract, you can in a somewhat sneaky journalistic way, hope to write with a bit more nuance. But the blog post is pretty damning. We're in a whole new world here, of course, where all our thoughts are digitally archived forever. I think all the time now when I crack a joke about someone on Twitter: Am I ever going to have to write about this person? Will they find it two years from now and refuse? What if someone sees a fawning tweet of mine and decides I can't be objective about, say, Kobe Bryant?

Ultimately, here, on a site (allegedly) for sports journalists, I'd just prefer that people didn't shit on Pos with quite so much glee.

 

Would just like to add two cents to some incredibly thoughtful posts on this page:

Penny No. 1:

You mean ... he wanted to write David Maraniss' Lombardi book.

A biography that presented such a beautifully human picture of a man that it made him seem like even more of a hero because of his flaws.

By the way, I've never met Joe but I do tend to agree with your take on his intentions. I think that's exactly the biography he wanted to write about Paterno, while framing it within The Grand Experiment and all the lives he positively impacted.

I feel very, very strongly that Posnanski has/had zero intentions of writing anything remotely similar in style to his wonderful Buck O'Neil book.

Unless he secretly has ambitions to become the John Grisham (or Mitch Albom) of the sports world — using "The Soul of Baseball" as his formula to guaranteed best-sellers — or he happens to have a worthless editor and/or agent who sucks up to him and tries to steer him in that direction, I think that would be about the worst possible path he could take as a writer.

All the evidence suggests he wants to tell an optimistic, feel-good, possibly even gushing story (or that he can't help himself, even if he doesn't want to.) But I don't think he would ever want to tell Joe Paterno's "Soul of Football" story.

 

Oh, and for the record: I loved the O'Neil book.

I don't think anyone took it otherwise, but I can see where it might seem like I was using it as criticism. I thought it was terrific.

 

You mean the Cobb book by Al Stump? Yeah, he made a lot of that up.

 

Well at least one person pulled it off.

 

And away we go . . .

http://jimromenesko.com/2012/07/17/promo-for-paterno-book-now-seems-outdated/

Looks like the naysayers were right.