Posnanski and the Paterno book

I say this as a fellow author: If they pry it from his cold, dead hand. As it should be.

 

Pos has always been in a lose-lose situation since the scandal broke. The book was supposed to come out next June and they pushed it up to take advantage of the scandal. When you do something like that, quality is going to suffer.

 

Yeah, even if the book didn't sell a single copy he wouldn't have to give back any of the advance, provided he delivered the book on time, etc.

http://accrispin.blogspot.com/2008/10/victoria-strauss-writers-myths-giving.html

 

I'm guessing it will hit the NYT top 10, which is pretty rare for a sports book.

 

Do you think that was intentional on Poz' part or just trying to hard to be non-judgmental.
I haven't read the SI review, but is it possible it could also be a case of the book not villifying JoePa, as some readers would anticipate?

 

I think it's more that he had complete access to Paterno for quite some time but probably has pretty limited insight to the scandal, which at this point is what people are going to want to read about.

It sounds like he has great insight on Paterno's history, but unfortunately, nobody really cares about that anymore.

 

Did anyone else pick it up yesterday? I'm about 30 pages in right now. Hoping to make some more headway today.

Berra criticizes Posnanski's "flaccid" writing. I agree that it can come off as Poetry Lite sometimes. But I think it works really well for mass audience appeal. He's not David Maraniss, that's for sure. But he writes in bite-sized chunks, as he did in his other books. It almost reads like a series of breezy, organized columns about Paterno's life. Like vignettes. Also, every aspiring sports writer should be forced to sit down and examine how Posnanski and Jeff Pearlman use quotes from people in their books. Quotes that say nothing are a scourge upon newspaper and wire sports reporting, but those two show how it's done, consistently. I also think it's interesting to read it and try to discern what was in before the scandal, what had to be reworked or reworded and so forth. Just from a writer's point of view, that's interesting to me.

I'd like to read the Fitzpatrick bio, to compare. I grabbed it at the library one day a few weeks ago, but decided I had too much else on my plate at that point, including other reading material, to pull the trigger. I thought Fitzpatrick did a tremendous, tremendous job on the Texas Western-Kentucky book. The way he wrote about Rupp in there was a clinic on how to provide a balanced portrait of a person, then ultimately condemn him.

 

They might be.

But they could also be "explanations." People often read an explanation and interpret that as an excuse.

"John killed that pedestrian because he was driving drunk and couldn't react quick enough" is an explanation. It's not an excuse.

Will be interested in reading how much Poz actually tried to excuse the behavior.

 

The Fitzpatrick bio was horrible. The veiled theme throughout the book was that Paterno couldn't win anymore, ending with the suggestion that the next season should be the final downfall ... and then Paterno's team goes 11-1.

Not a good way to write a book.

 

This doesn't apply to Berra, but I think that because of the subject matter, a lot of non-sports writer reviewers are going to be drawn to this book. I suspect a lot of them are going to be unfamiliar with Posnanski, and quite familiar with the scandal. And I think a lot of them are going to read it and think, "This is the fucking book this guy wrote about what happened?"

It is, again, timing. I think a lot of people find a straight Paterno biography, complete with hardscrabble Brooklyn nostalgia porn, tin-eared right now. Particularly one written in Posnanski's sepia-toned style which, like I said, I find enjoyable. But I can totally see the "WTF?" reaction by reviewers, fair or not.

 

Probably more the former than the latter. He was on with Francesa yesterday (worth a listen if you have 45 minutes) and it was frustrating to hear how wishy-washy he was on offering an opinion about anything during the interview, all under the guise of "letting the readers draw their own conclusions." The premise of the book certainly wasn't nonjudgmental, as it was intended from the start to be the definitive portrait of St. Joe. It's not so much that readers want Paterno to be vilified but rather that Poz bends over backwards to uphold his original thesis even though it had been blown out of the water.

 

It will and you are correct.