In case you missed it, The Globe and Mail, amid its post-sentencing Conrad Black coverage, took a look at the American reception for future inmate 0783124’s Richard Nixon bio – turns out there isn’t much of a reception. The Globe’s James Adams seems to take a certain glee in the story at hand: “A Life in Full has not been entirely neglected. The New Yorker accords it a review in its Dec. 10 issue, but only as a ‘Briefly Noted’ and a critical one at that.” And later: “Far more sympathetic (but almost as brief) is a pre-publication review found in the Sept. 24 Publishers Weekly.”

Quillblog’s favourite thing about the story is the headline: “Tome gets few U.S. reviews.” Stop the presses!

From The Globe and Mail:

Conrad Black will be sentenced to between 6.5 and 8.1 years in prison, the judge presiding over the case said Monday.

Judge Amy St. Eve said she is considering a sentence of between 78 and 97 months for media mogul Conrad Black, and is now hearing arguments on what penalty to ultimately impose in his fraud and obstruction case.

Black, for those who don’t recognize the name, is a respected political biographer whose most recent book is The Invincible Quest: The Life of Richard Milhouse Nixon (McClelland & Stewart), published earlier this fall.

[Update: 6 1/2 years and a US$125,000 fine.]

As had been predicted, convicted fraudster Conrad Black has made use of Margaret Atwood’s LongPen again, to promote his new Richard Nixon bio overseas. Lord Black, who is barred from leaving the United States as he awaits sentencing, made a surprise “appearance” at a London Waterstone’s yesterday, signing books electronically from the calm and quiet of his Palm Beach, Florida mansion. The Guardian described the event as follows:

Rehabilitation has to start somewhere, and for the former owner of the Telegraph it began between the “true crime” and “black interest” shelves, where he sold “about 20″ copies of his biography of Richard Nixon to 22 paying guests. At £30 per book, his evening’s work at least began rebuilding a fortune that once exceeded £175m.

[…]

Black admitted he would have to be “brain dead” not to be contemplating the four walls of a prison cell, although he refused to say whether he would attempt any more money-spinning LongPen signings from prison.

No word yet on how Peggy feels about all this, but we’re thinking she’s probably not one of Black’s bigger fans, even if she did virtually interact with him during a LongPen publicity event in Toronto recently. Maybe she can express her displeasure with him once he’s in prison by appearing on his LongPen monitor every day during dinner, eating bag lunches with husband Graeme Gibson and impugning the quality of the prison food.

At a book signing in Toronto last night, Conrad Black appeared “relaxed and smiling” from his home in Palm Beach, where Black is spending time ahead of sentencing next month in Chicago. Sitting at the other end of one of Margaret Atwood’s famous LongPen devices, Black joked with reporters, signed books, and responded to reports that former prime minister Jean Chrétien’s leaked memoir impugns his good name.

[Black] said that, despite affirmations to the contrary in Chrétien’s new autobiography, it was Chrétien who suggested Black try to become a senator while attempting to become a member of Britain’s House of Lords.

Though the “he said/he said”-type dispute must seem academic to a man facing hard time, Black’s eagerness to engage with the Canadian public seems to confirm one thing: even cyborgs love the limelight.

Former media baron and author Conrad Black has not been allowed to return to Canada following his conviction on fraud and obstruction of justice charges in the U.S., but he is finding other ways to reach out and touch the citizens of the country he once renounced.

Last night, Black appeared on CBC’s Rick Mercer Report doing a Martha Stewart-style celebrity tip on the proper techniques for waxing brightly coloured fall maple leaves. In the sketch filmed at his home in Palm Beach, Florida, he wryly suggested that it is necessary to press the leaves in books first, using weighty volumes such as his biography of Franklin Delano Roosevelt or his latest of Richard Nixon, The Invincible Quest, for instance.

Showing off the results of his efforts, he added:

Here we have a perfectly waxed maple leaf, a great solace to everyone and especially to those who, for complicated reasons, can’t at first-hand observe the changing of the seasons this autumn in Canada. (Canadian Press)

Black is scheduled to make another appearance in Canada via Margaret Atwood’s LongPen at Toronto’s World’s Biggest Bookstore on the evening of Oct. 15 to autograph copies of The Invincible Quest.

Depending on how many books Black might write if he is incarcerated, the LongPen may be a useful tool for any future book tours.

Quillblog assumes you’ve heard about that Conrad Black fellow by now; it seems he’s somewhat guilty. But amid the deluge of media coverage, we missed a little morsel from Barbara Amiel that the New York media and gossip blog Gawker has kindly highlighted for everyone. Because we had to think about it, you must too.

The Times, which carried a fairly solid timeline/analysis piece this weekend, wonders if Lady Black’s imperious image may have hurt her husband with the jury and contains this absolutely horrifying passage:

“In her last column written before the verdict, Ms. Amiel wrote about her pending move out of her temporary Chicago home – a five-room suite at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel. She noted that her husband was already well into a manuscript for a new book, having just published a biography of Richard M. Nixon, but that she had not used her spare time during the four-month trial productively.

‘Give him another four months – and fewer nights of love – and he’ll have two finished manuscripts,’ she noted.”

Please excuse this Quillblogger; she has to go scrub her brain with steel wool.

The newest issue of Frank magazine has, as part of its coverage of the trials and tribulations of one Conrad Black, a set of oddly familiar-looking photos from Black’s recent surprise appearance at a Toronto book launch in late March.

Take a look:

(Go here for the originals.)

You’re welcome, guys. (Not that you asked….)

Do we at least get a free subscription?

George Jonas launched Reflections on Islam (Key Porter Books) at the University of Toronto’s Massey College with a little help from Conrad Black and Barbara Amiel, who made a surprise visit from Chicago.

Black noted that the reception he received from the attendees was warmer than he was used to over the past few weeks. In his introduction, he also said that knowing Jonas was one of the side-benefits of marrying Barbara Amiel (Jonas’s ex-wife).

Click on the photo above for more photos from this event, or click here.

UPDATE: Below, exclusive video of Conrad Black introducing George Jonas. (Warning: the sound is terrible.) “On the subject of Islam,” says Black, “I must admit that I hadn’t recognized that [Jonas] actually knew much about it…”

The Globe and Mail has a story about Conrad Black doing some quick pre-publication publicity in early March for The Invincible Quest, his upcoming biography of disgraced amoral tragically misunderstood former U.S. president Richard Nixon, just before heading off to Chicago for his trial. The interviewers had to agree to stick to the topic of the book – which is just as well, since any mention of Black’s legal troubles would have likely resulted in an angry, multisyllabic tirade. The interviews also have to be held until after the book’s publication in May.

After outlining the particular challenges of publishing a 1,000-page tome by a man who could be facing serious time (“We went into this deal knowing that would be the case,” M&S president Doug Pepper is quoted as saying), the article then goes into some interesting territory – specifically the role Toronto lawyer Michael Levine played in getting the book published.

The Invincible Quest isn’t Levine’s first professional engagement with Black. That would be Black’s 1993 autobiography, A Life in Progress, which Levine got wind of through another of his clients, Peter C. Newman.

At that time, Newman was thinking of updating his 1982 biography of Black, The Establishment Man, and, as a courtesy, placed a call to Black, whereupon Black informed him that he was “working on a book of his own.” Newman at that point recommended Levine’s services as an agent.

The article also discusses Black’s review of Margaret MacMillan’s Nixon in China in the Literary Review of Canada, and his later apology for it (more here), and reveals that both the LRC and the Globe have asked MacMillan to review The Invincible Quest.

In the interest of full disclosure, Q&Q is considering putting in a call to U.S. attorney Patrick Fitzgerald to review the book. He may be a little busy.

Conrad Black has followed through on a promise to file “the mother of all libel statements of claim” against Tom Bower, author of Conrad & Lady Black: Dancing on the Edge, The Globe and Mail reported this week. The suit also names HarperCollins Canada, the Canadian publisher of the book, as a defendant in the $11 million case.

Even through the legalese, Black’s trademark linguistic flourishes can be heard in the statement of claim. Here are a few examples:

Black alleges the writer’s conduct has been “vindictive, high-handed, contemptuous, sadistic, pathologically mendacious and malicious.”

Lord Black claims Mr. Bower “concocted a pre-conceived thesis that [Lord Black] is a criminal sociopath who, throughout his whole business career sought to enrich himself, in breach of the law, at the expense of his shareholders. [Lord Black], who has been regarded as one of the world’s most distinguished and successful newspaper publishers and respected financier, writer and historian, in recognition of which he was made an Officer of the Order of Canada, a Privy Councillor of Canada, a life Baron of the United Kingdom and a Knight Grand Cross of the Order of St. Gregory the Great (Holy See); is represented by [Mr. Bower] as having been incorrigibly and notoriously corrupt and dishonest, psychiatrically maladjusted, unrelievedly odious, in fact evil and devoid of any redeeming or even mitigating qualities.”

And here’s one The Globe left out that Quillblog quotes directly from the statement of claim. The book implies that the “plaintiff was slithering along Bay Street sucking a life line.”

Black also accuses Bower of repeatedly representing his wife Barbara Amiel as “grasping, hectoring, slatternly, extravagant, shrill, and a harridan…. She is falsely accused of flying to London to have lunch with former U.S. president [George H. W.] Bush and generally of being a domineering, vulgar, obsessively materialistic and altogether repulsive personality.”

Quillblog knew the popularity of the Bush clan was in decline, but didn’t realize lunching with the ex-president was something to be so vehemently denied.

Of all the things Conrad Black is known for, being apologetic isn’t one of them. Nor is he known for being attritional, compunctious, conscience-stricken, contrite, penitential, regretful, repentant, self-accusing, self-condemnatory, or even self-reproachful. However, as Martin Knelman reports in the Toronto Star, the disgraced former media baron has publicly apologized for committing an act so heinous, so gruesome, even he knew he was over the line.

That’s right: he wrote a snarky book review.

The offending review was of Margaret MacMillan’s latest book, Nixon in China, and appeared in the Literary Review of Canada. Though Black and Macmillan are friends (or “frenemies”?), LRC editor Bronwyn Drainie (who is also one of Q&Q’s contributing editors) chose him to review the book because he is at work on his own biography of the former president.

In a letter to the editor of the respected literary publication, Black confesses: “On re-reading my review … I find that although I expressed my liking and admiration for the author and for this book, the tenor of part of my review was one of inadvertent condescension. That is entirely inappropriate and was unintentional, but I apologize for the slightly patronizing tone of several sentences.”

If he had re-read carefully what he had written, he adds, “I would have altered the tone to indicate more clearly the high opinion I had of the book, despite minor concerns.”

Knelman gets in the best line of the whole thing early on: “Condescension, of course, has long been a key weapon in Black’s rhetoric, but no one ever called it inadvertent.”

Related links:
Read about Conrad Black’s apology to Margaret MacMillan
Read Q&Q’s own unapologetically positive review of Nixon in China

Just in case you missed it over the Christmas break, Toronto Star columnist Joey Slinger points out that Prime Minister Stephen Harper wrote an article for the Star on Dec. 23 about the 100th anniversary of the first time a team of paid hockey players hit the ice in Toronto. Slinger makes much of the paper’s modesty for only putting the story, surely quite a prize from the notoriously media-unfriendly politician, in a small space on the bottom of the front page. However, his real point was to marvel that Harper is reportedly writing a book about hockey while in office.

“[N]ever, until now, has a prime minister written a book that doesn’t set his, or her, record straight (it was unblemished). And never before in history – this is the most astonishing thing of all – has a prime-ministerial masterpiece been created while the prime minister was still in office.

Stephen Harper must like living dangerously.”

Slinger compares this writing venture to Conrad Black’s authoring of his 1,360-page book about Franklin D. Roosevelt while he was still in charge of Hollinger Inc. And we all know how well that went.

Quillblog is sure Mr. Harper will be more succinct, though its qualification as a masterpiece will have to be judged if it is published. Since hockey is a religion in this country, writing such a book could help him win voters’ hearts and minds. On the other hand, if the mission in Afghanistan goes awry or global warming disasters strike on Harper’s watch, it does leave him open to critics’ charges that he fiddled while Canada burned.

Still, it could be worse. Jon Stewart’s Daily Show mocked George Bush for not having time to respond to a committee report on the war in Iraq released in December while still finding time to release his dog Barney’s Christmas video special. Maybe that’s what makes Bush such a good neighbour and important ally.

Related links:
Click here for the Prime Minister’s original article in The Toronto Star
Click here for Joey Slinger’s column in The Toronto Star

The Sunday Times ran a lengthy excerpt this past weekend from Tom Bower’s new, vigorously unauthorized biography of disgraced newspaper magnate Conrad Black, aka Lord Black of Crossharbour. In it, Bower reprints an email Black sent him after finding out that Bower would be writing the book, in which he offers two perspectives on himself — one as an “honest businessman,” the other slightly more convincing.

“[Y]ou have made it clear that you consider this whole matter a heart-warming story of two [that is, Black and his wife, Barbara Amiel] sleazy, spivvy, contemptible people, who enjoyed a fraudulent and unjust elevation; were exposed, and ground to powder in a just system; have been ostracised, and largely impoverished; and that I am on my way to the prison cell where I belong.”

Bower also outlines how many of Black’s former chums began treating him as a pariah after his legal troubles became public. More than one — in the spirit of Black himself, perhaps — seems to have cracked open a thesaurus so as to make their verbal blows more… mellifluous.

Simon Heffer, a columnist on Black’s Telegraph, observed: “Barbara has turned Conrad from an homme sérieux into a society petal. He’s besotted with her, like a spaniel.”

Hal Jackman, a rich investor and disillusioned old friend, labelled Black “a parvenu drifting away from reality.

Perhaps now Black truly understands the wisdom his father tried to pass on to his son. According to Bower, George Black’s dying words were “Life is hell, most people are bastards, and everything is bullshit.”

Related links:
Read about Conrad Black in The Sunday Times

On Thursday night in Toronto, reporters swarmed a party (hosted by none other than former Ontario Premier Mike Harris) for a new book published by John Wiley & Sons Canada, Rescuing Canada’s Right: Blueprint for a Conservative Revolution by Adam Daifallah and Tasha Kheiriddin. I suppose this is what happens when you invite a recently indicted press baron to your book launch.

Conrad Black showed up for a glass of white wine and the company of some like-minded individuals. The real fun began when Black left the party at the Albany Club and found that his driver hadn’t arrived with his car. I suppose the hired help tend to slack off when it starts to look like the boss could be going away for a while.

Left with only reporters to talk to until his car arrived, Black held forth on his predicament. “This has been one massive smear job from A to Z and it will have a surprise ending — a complete vindication of the defendants and the exposure of their persecutors,” he said. “This isn’t Enron. This isn’t WorldCom. This was a magnificent company that the people who seized it used as a platform in which to persecute and defame the people who built it. [They] have torn it apart and destroyed it at the expense of the shareholders…. Those are my thoughts for the evening.”

Related links:
Click here for the story from the National Post
Click here for the CBC story, which has the delightful video