Judith Regan, at it again
Just when the uproar about the O.J. tell-all has finally died down, the next tasteless title from ReganBooks is raising a stink. Today’s New York Daily News details 7: The Mickey Mantle Novel, which is slated for release in March.
“One of the most beloved and talented baseball players of all time,” the Daily News reminds us, “Mantle died of cancer in 1995. In a moving eulogy, NBC sportscaster Bob Costas summed up the feelings of all Yankee fans when he said, ‘He was our guy.’”
Well, what better way to honour such an icon than to write a salacious “biographical novel” about him, “replete with pornographic passages and foul jokes”?
Peter Golenbock, the author of 7, didn’t talk to the Daily News. “But he told Publishers Weekly the book was based on Mantle stories he heard from other ex-Yankees. ‘My choice then became to write a biography and leave these stories out — but that wouldn’t be Mickey Mantle,’ he said. ‘It really didn’t leave me any other choice.’”
Of course, neither the Mantle family nor Mantle fans are all that impressed. After all, how could anyone doubt “not documentable” anecdotes that probably arose from the scout’s-honour venue of the locker room?
The Daily News spoke with Bob Thompson, a professor at Syracuse University and “pop culture expert” who said, “what Golenbock has done ‘has a long literary tradition…. I’ve read novels with Ronald Reagan as a major character,’ he said. ‘What makes this different is No. 1, it’s Mickey Mantle, and No. 2, it’s Judith Regan.’”
Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.
Related links:
Click here for the full story, including an excerpt from 7
