Bookmark this: Conrad Black Book Club

According to Q&Q reviewer Dan Rowe, “Only devout Black completists will find anything of value” in Conrad Black’s second memoir, A Matter of Principle (McClelland & Stewart).

Unless, of course, you’re a Ron Burgundy or Sideshow Bob fan, or you’re a member of Toronto Life’s entertaining Conrad Black Book Club.

Each week TL editorial assistant Emily Landau breaks down a chapter of the book and offers a few select Black bon mots. If you haven’t been following for the past eight weeks, Chapter One starts here.

But first, read Rowe’s review (from the December issue of Quill & Quire).

Conrad Black memoir due this fall

After several years of delays, the newly re-sentenced Conrad Black is ready to publish his memoir chronicling (among other things) his prison years. And if you take Lord Black at his hyperbolic word, readers should expect nothing short of an epic confrontation with the U.S. justice system.

Black’s publisher, McClelland & Stewart, confirmed today that A Matter of Principle – originally scheduled for publication in October 2008 and later pushed back to spring 2009, when Black was serving time at a federal prison in Florida – will appear sometime this fall.

According to the official press release, the book, which covers the years from 1993 to 2011, chronicles Black’s downfall as the head of Hollinger International, and his subsequent trial and imprisonment. The memoir also “weaves together Black’s very personal views on a number of big themes ranging from politics to corporate governance to the U.S. justice system.”

In an interview earlier this week with The Toronto Star, Black put it more bluntly, telling columnist Mitch Potter that he plans to launch an all-out attack on those responsible for his unjust imprisonment. “I urge you not to game this prematurely,” Black wrote in an e-mail. “Some victims of this awful system are harder to grind to powder than others. They (U.S. prosecutors) had their chance — they opened demanding life and impoverishment and got three years and $435,000. And now it’s my turn.”

Black went on to describe the memoir in martial terms. From the Star:

“This is a war, and wars don’t end until the fight stops,” Black, 66, told the Star….

“We are moving to a battlefield that is a much more level battlefield than an American criminal court, where the government almost always wins, and not with a fig leaf of fake, retrieved counts, as in this case.”

The former Hollinger International press baron described his initial 29 months at Florida’s Coleman Correctional Complex as “interesting and fulfilling.”

The Star notes that Black, who has already spent 29 months in jail and must return for another eight- to 13-month stint, will be in the slammer when the book is launched. Lucky for him, he has plenty of experience using Margaret Atwood’s LongPen.

Take that, Stephenie Meyer!

It may not star the young wizard from Hogwarts, but J.K. Rowling’s latest book, The Tales of Beedle the Bard, has become the fastest-selling title of 2008. According to Reuters (by way of the National Post):

Since it was released on December 4, The Tales of Beedle the Bard has also become the top selling book of 2008 on both sides of the Atlantic, topping the USA Today and Daily Telegraph charts and raising 4.2 million pounds ($6.5 million) for charity.

Proceeds from sales of the book, which has a global print run of eight million copies, will go to the Children’s High Level Group (CHLG), a charity for vulnerable children in Eastern Europe co-founded by Rowling.

The book does have a Potter connection, having been mentioned briefly in the series finale, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows. Rowling is now the world’s richest author, beating out Stephen King, Danielle Steel, and Conrad Black.

Publishers fail to snap up book on Sarah Palin

In a vivid example of the dangers of writing history while it’s being made, the New York Observer reports that right-wing broadcaster Hugh Hewitt’s proposed book, How Sarah Palin Won the Election… And Saved America, has failed to land a publisher.

When the erstwhile Alaskan governor and Tina Fey lookalike was first named as Presidential hopeful John McCain’s running mate, her anti-abortion, pro-gun credentials made her the great white hope for the Republican party’s right wing nut jobs ultra-conservative base. But subsequent gaffes in media interviews and the vice-presidential debate have diminished Palin’s glow, and called into question whether she can save her own political skin, let alone the entire country. This has made publishers understandably reticent to sign up a book with a title that presupposes a Republican victory on Nov 4.

Literary agent Curtis Yates, who has stopped trying to sell the book for the moment, said that the change in Palin’s fortunes have played a role in the book’s marketability:

“The book obviously presumed [a McCain-Palin victory],” Mr. Yates said, “but the theory was that her impact on this election will have a lasting effect regardless — that she’s not gonna go anywhere, that she’s just gonna be a figure in G.O.P. politics going forward.”

The title of the book, Mr. Yates said, “went through a couple of different iterations.”

At one point it was How Sarah Palin Won the Election. At another point it was How Sarah Palin Won the Election … And Saved America.

“If they were to lose the election it would have just been How Sarah Palin Saved America,” Mr. Yates said. “We were trying to cover our bases depending on what may happen.”

There is no word on the future potential of the book, or of the other books in Yates’s stable, which are rumoured to include How Conrad Black Won His Case… And Saved American Justice and How the U.S. Army Uncovered WMDs in Iraq… And Saved the World.

The New York Sun shuts down

After a six-year run, the New York Sun is shutting down. From the New York Times:

The Sun’s president and editor, Seth Lipsky, said a three-week search for new financial backers had failed. Mr. Lipsky announced on Sept. 4, in a front-page “Letter From the Editor,” that the Sun would shut down by the end of the month unless it raised new money.

As he spoke, the stock market was diving toward the largest one-day point loss in the history of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. “Among other problems that we faced,” he said, “was the fact that this month, not to mention this week, has been one of the worst in a century in which to be trying to raise capital, and in the end we were out not only of money but time.”

The Sun will close after publishing today’s issue. Lipsky started publishing the Sun with $15.9-million he raised from several backers, one of whom was Conrad Black – though Black’s company Hollinger International sold their stake in the Sun after Black quit Hollinger in 2003.

Shinan Govani takes on Bennett’s blue bloods

Gadfly and gossip-hound Shinan Govani takes novelist Jonathan Bennett to task in the pages of today’s National Post, suggesting that Bennett’s portrayal of the well-heeled, monied classes in his new book, Entitlement, misses the mark. The novel, set in a fictional Toronto boys’ school called Lower Simcoe College – which bears a striking resemblance to Upper Canada College, the private boys’ school that boasts Michael Ignatieff and Conrad Black as alumni – includes passages stating that wealth “doesn’t matter” in Canada, and that, when it comes to success, Canadians of all classes either “disregard it or do not recognize it.”

Bollocks, declaims Govani:

Speaking as someone whose job, over the years, has involved tangling with the rich and the boldface-able, and observing these species up close, Bennett crafts an interesting point here. Too bad he’s off. It’s true that the Canadian scene when it comes to wealth and fame is markedly different – Canadian socialites are a distinct breed, for sure! – the world that the book reflects is a fading one, and Entitlement reads a little like a period piece.

In a post-Conrad Black-in-jail scene, in a country that has the well last-named only too happy to be covered in our own Hello! mag, and where some of these same elites cajole hard to get social column inches (believe me, I would know), the scene has changed. We’re not as pious as we think.

Glad that Govani – the Perez Hilton of the North – had the decency to use the first-person plural in that last sentence. Whatever the faults in Bennett’s novel, piety has never been high on Govani’s list of attributes.

Conrad Black writes from the belly of the beast

The currently incarcerated Conrad Black has written a review of Rick Perlstein’s book Nixonland in the New York newspaper The Sun. (There’s only so much time you can spend in the weight room.)

Nixon was an unusual character, to be sure, and some of his notions of how to conduct his office were unacceptable. But he was also a very capable and considerable president who rendered great service. He must be situated in American history as the man who spent more time in national elective office and for whom more people voted than anyone else in the country’s history. The real story is not a garish and fractious Nixonland; it is the imperishability of interest in Nixon.

Analyzing the literary Obama

On The Tyee, Crawford Killian reviews Barack Obama’s book The Audacity of Hope. Killian focuses on the Democratic contender’s rhetorical style and notes that he seems to break all the rules of effective communication – but Killian decides that this is a good thing.

Obama has a remarkable fondness for 60-word sentences rich in subordinate clauses.

Reading his book, I itched to edit the text. Short, punchy sentences and paragraphs would jolt readers whether they read him on paper or on a website. Tough editing, I thought, could make it comparable to Tom Paine’s Common Sense – a document to detonate a revolution.

On reflection, though, I recalled that Common Sense wasn’t written in short, punchy sentences either.

Ultimately, argues Killian, Obama’s long-winded style is a rare and welcome sign of respect for his audience.

For decades, Canadian and American politicians (and their apologists) have chosen one of two registers: the windbag addressing millions, or the con artist addressing halfwits. For the halfwits, short words in short sentences are essential. For the quarter-wits, make it a 10-second sound bite.

Such registers convey a contempt quite as thorough as Conrad Black’s. Yet North American voters have tolerated this contempt, even seemed to demand it, since Ronald Reagan and Brian Mulroney.

Now, after two or three decades of discourse in this moronic register, Barack Obama is talking to American voters as if they didn’t have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder.

Memories of World’s Biggest Bookstore

Eye Weekly has a brief history of the World’s Biggest Bookstore in downtown Toronto. Apparently, it used to be a bowling alley. (Bring your own tenpins and a bowling ball and it still could be.)

The writer, Marc Weisblott, traces the evolution of the WBB from its awe-inspiring early days when it dwarfed all the other book stores (which were all 5’x11’ or smaller and sold flour and sugar too) to its Indigo-owned present day, when barnlike stores are the norm and one of the WBB’s biggest-selling titles is Mood Your Change – How to Mind Your Think by Feeling Your Toes (or something like that), which Weisblott takes as a marker of the store’s current identity.

Weisblott lumps the WBB in with such much-loved icons as Sam the Record Man and Honest Ed’s, but its history, while varied and quirky, has brought it to its present state of fluorescent lighting, grubby lino flooring, and Conrad Black via LongPen. Meanwhile, as Weisblott points out, the Yonge and Dundas intersection on which it squats is rapidly cleaning itself up. How long before the condo developers come calling?

So do you want to save the WBB? Do you want to save things just because they’re old and rich with history, or do you have to actually like them too?

The year in Quillblog

We are officially on holiday as of yesterday, but we thought we should end the Quillblog year with a look back at our ten most popular posts of the year.

They are:

• Secrets of the Canadian literary cabal (January 23)
• Event Photos: George Jonas launches book with a little help from Conrad Black (March 29)
• Fun with blurbs (Rebecca Eckler edition) (April 2)
• Eckler vs. Hollywood (June 4)
• Harry Potter and the Online Leak (July 18)
• Lawyers are not rats, say lawyers (July 30)
• CanLit hates youth, says young author (October 22)
• Bill O’Reilly outs J.K. Rowling as a “provocateur” (October 24)
• The Golden Compass banned by Catholic school board (November 22)
• The most influential people in the Canadian book-biz are….? (November 26)

What these posts say about our readership we wouldn’t presume to say.

All we can do is hope that all you scandal-loving, muckraking, conspiracy-minded booklovers who delight in the misfortune of others have some very happy holidays.

See you in the new year for more of this kind of thing.

Feel free to tell us in the comments what your favourite books of the year were, what books you hope to be given as presents, what books you plan to give yourself as presents, and what books you are looking forward to next year.

Oh, and tell us how you think the industry should handle the issue of pricing differentials – you know, Christmasy stuff.