Pissing Matches As Platform Builders?
Posted By Jim Thomsen on November 12, 2009
- Jim Thomsen: True Crime and Mystery Author
by Jim Thomsen
1st Turning Point Staff Columnist
Copyright © 2009 Jim Thomsen
Last week, we talked about the best ways to get stories and mentions of you and your book into the news media.
I was recently re-reading fellow 1st Turning Point columnist Shelli Stevens‘ sage advice about how to sensibly react to bad reviews. While she is correct in advising authors to steer clear of conflict lest one be seen unprofessional and worse, unmarketable, I found myself musing on how much I miss reading about good old bare-knuckled literary feuds. And about how so much of the past century of America is littered with the blood and fur of literary lions like Norman Mailer and John Updike and Tom Wolfe battling each other in the savannah of their thin-skinned sensitivities.
Such musing got me to semi-seriously wondering about whether or not such high-profile hullabaloos hurt the book sales of those writers — or, in a perverse but entirely understandable way, helped them. In other words: What’s all the shouting about? I guess I’ll have to buy the book and find out, right?
In one case, I know of a Seattle-area literary feud that made at least one sale. (OK, it was to me, but still ….)
Jack Olsen, the “dean of true-crime writers who lived on Bainbridge Island for the last two decades of his life, was a contemporary of the Updike-Mailer-Wolfe generation of literary lions. And, until his death in 2002 at age 77, he roared like one. Kind and generous in private, he could be scathing and ferocious in public. Olsen waged wars on the charlatan contemporaries of his true-crime craft — Truman Capote and his seminal but shoddily sourced In Cold Blood were notable early targets, and Lorenzo Carcaterra and his memoir-turned-hit-movie Sleepers were savaged three decades later as frauds. He also charged back at critics who seemed to prefer that his books be more entertaining and less fastidious about being factual.
In the late 1980s, Olsen wrote a book called Predator, which took a typically comprehensive look at the case of a Seattle-area man falsely accused and convicted of rape — as well as the actual rapist — in Olsen’s typical tender-but-tough prose style.
Part of the story centered on the efforts of Seattle Times reporter Paul Henderson to prove Steve Titus’ innocence — and how those ultimately successful efforts won Henderson the Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. And Olsen being Olsen, he also spent a few pages on how the Times’ oddly shabby treatment of Henderson, post-Prize, led soon after to Henderson’s departure from the paper affectionately regarded throughout the region as Fairview Fannie.
When Olsen’s book came out in 1991, the Times published one of the few negative reviews of Predator. Olsen complained that the review contained several factual errors, and The Times took its time acknowledging a few of these in a published correction. But that wasn’t enough to assauge Olsen’s wounded sense of fair play, and he blasted back in a published letter that read in part:
Many of my journalistic friends are asking the same question that I’ve asked ever since the knife slid between my ribs: What motivated The Times to take out a contract on me in the first place? And to hire such an inept assassin? And to be in such a headlong rush that you became the only publication in the country to break the release date? What sins, literary or otherwise, earned me such a malignant notice, so markedly different in tone and content from other reviews now beginning to appear? How did my book manage to achieve critical success everywhere but at home? Doesn’t that strike you as odd? Why didn’t The Times just continue to ignore my work, as it’s done for lo these many years?
(Could it be because I had the temerity to write about The Times and, in effect, sit in judgment on its purity and holiness? And to make a hero of Paul Henderson, who after winning the Pulitzer Prize found working conditions at The Times intolerable and abandoned ship? Are those imagined affronts to your delicate sensibilities that Clark Humphrey was quietly avenging in his vicious “review?” Just asking . . . .)
And why such a long delay? Did you have to hold your customary 40 damage-control meetings to decide exactly how to weasel out with the least harm to your regal and majestic image?
Wow. Pretty powerful pique.
A few likely reactions:
1) That’s pretty crazy.
2) That’s pretty cool.
3) Well, Jack Olsen could get away with that because he was already an established author. (At that point, he was about 20 books into a career of 25 years as an author, and in about his 35th year as a journalist.)
A few responses:
1) Yeah. Especially when you consider that this all happened in that quaint, sepia-toned, pre-Internet era. The Times, more so than the late Seattle Post-Intelligencer (which mostly ignored Olsen), was the 800-pound gorilla in the Puget Sound literary room. In those days, it had a lot of make-or-break power in a Northwest author’s career.
2) Oh, yeah. In a revenge-fantasy-that-we’ll-never-fulfill-in-person way.
3) Yeah. But, having known Olsen personally, I can safely say that he didn’t take his literary status into account when he leveled this broadside against the predominant newspaper of his home region. Simply put, his sense of fair play was injured. If you’re not convinced, think back to his feud with Capote, which dates back to the late 1960s when Olsen was still struggling to establish his name as an author. (He pretty well hit the big leagues with his 1970 examination of Sen. Edward Kennedy’s accidental drowning of a campaign worker in The Bridge At Chappaquiddick.) By taking on Capote, arguably the largest light in the literary universe, Olsen could have done serious damage to his career within the clubby, insular world of New York publishing-house politics. But, in Olsen’s eyes, a larger principle was a stake. And more than 20 years later, little had changed. In his eyes, The Seattle Times did him dirty, and The Times needed to be called out on it.
The rift slipped off the printed page, but was never forgotten. A few years later, Olsen came back with another set-in-the-Seattle-area true-crime thriller titled Charmer. The story is about a Mercer Island man whose sociopathic charisma blinded almost everyone he knew into thinking well of him even as he stole from, lied to them about almost everything and eventually murdered a few of them. Charmer, in typical Olsen style, pulled together fascinating snippets of the killer’s personality — or lack thereof — through dozens of people of knew him.
And, in one brief line, Olsen took a slap at The Seattle Times: The paper, he wrote, “customarily underplayed crimes involving African-American killers or victims.” That’s a pretty hard slap at a paper that values its Pulitzer-studded integrity.
Unlike Predator, Charmer was not among Olsen’s better-reviewed books. Publishers Weekly gave it a lukewarm endorsement, the New York Times and Library Journal gave it a stronger thumbs-up, and Kirkus Reviews outright recommended against it. But, once again, no review was as negative as the savaging he took in a December 1994 review in The Seattle Times. It actually argued that Olsen’s narrative would have been more colorful and gotten to “the soul of the truth” if he had invented scenes or facts in the style of Truman Capote or Norman Mailer. It conculdes: “A true-crime book relies on truth being revealed through orthodox or unorthodox means. Olsen’s failure to do this prevents “Charmer” from rising above the titillation that so often limits this genre.”
As you might imagine, Olsen once more roared back:
In a final burst of effluvia, your reviewer suggested that instead of sticking to the facts in “Charmer,” I should have used “poetic license” to give my readers “the soul of the truth.” Where on earth did he learn such a lighthearted approach? From Clifford Irving? Baron Munchausen?
From The Seattle Times?
Again, wow.
I always wished I’d thought to ask Olsen what happened after that, but it appears that the literary lion and Fairview Fannie managed to make peace and move forward … or at least declare a stalemate. Olsen’s next book, in 1996, was his last Seattle-area one, and Salt Of The Earth won praise in The Times.
And when Olsen died, the Times wrote a fairly sympathetic story. It read, in part:
Occasionally combative and fiery, he came from the old school of hidden emotions, a compassionate, sensitive man who kept his distance during a child’s graduation ceremony so he wouldn’t be seen crying. Otherwise, unless he was immersed in writing or out fishing, he loved being with people, a common sight at the nearby grocery or playing pool with local police officers.
“He lived his life fighting injustice,” said Su, his wife of 38 years. She described her husband as a man who never compromised his integrity, even when the alternative was financially difficult.
Now that deserves a wow.
So what’s the lesson here for those of us trying to get ourselves established? I’m not seriously suggesting you go out and pick fights with everybody who gives you a bad review. Instead, look at the spirit and not the letter of Olsen’s struggle with The Seattle Times. And look at the last line in that story from his obituary.
The lesson, in my mind, is to draw lines on the compromises you’ll make in order to be successful. We all know that we have to accept strong editing — and often editing so strong that a lot of what we initially put forward gets lost along the path to publication. We all know we have to “play the game” and “write to the market” to some extent if we want to see our books on Amazon.com or in Barnes & Noble. But do we have to compromise ourselves to the point that we’ve lost ourselves along the way?
If we’re sitting still for savagings by reviewers based on false impressions or misstated facts, then I suggest that line has been crossed. And that’s when you fight back. Do so without assuming that speaking up and out will hurt your standing or your prospects in the literary community and the publishing industry. And speaking up and out does cost you sales or even future deals down the road … well, then, at least you have what matters most: Your integrity.
Full Disclosure Dept.: I first met Jack by running afoul of him when I worked for my hometown Bainbridge Island Review in the mid-1990s. At the time, his son was playing for the Bainbridge High School baseball team, and Jack was leading — or appeared to be leading — a parent-driven effort to have the coach fired. I quoted disproportionately from his letters in print, primarily because his words were far more articulate, colorful and entertaining than anybody else’s. Small wonder, right?
He was upset that I had appeared to single him out as the ringleader of the lynch mob, called to tell me so, and we arranged to meet. He blasted off on me for a while. I conceded some, but not all, of his points. By the end of the date, he had invited me to not only join him in the stands at a ballgame but to drop by his drafty garage office for coffee and conversation about our mutual interest in crime writing. This led to a friendship that endured until he died … and an ongoing encouragement to pursue nonfiction crime writing the right way. It’s a lesson I’m honoring every day.
***
Jim Thomsen is a local news editor for the Kitsap Sun in Bremerton. He is working on his first book, a Northwest true-crime story. His blog is at jimthomsen1.wordpress.com. He can be reached at desolationisland@gmail.com.
“Wow” is right. I can certainly see how Jack Olsen’s battles with The Times would inspire one to buy one or more of his books. It’s kind of like a David and Goliath tale, even though Olsen was multi-published and not exactly a vulnerable newbie.
Thanks for a very interesting and well-written article, Jim. I would like to think Mr. Olsen would be proud to have this article written and published about him.
Ann Charles
Hi Jim,
I definitely enjoyed this article about a man unafraid to take the lion by the tail when wronged. Too many of us are expected to roll over and play dead these days instead of taking a stand. We all have to choose our personal line in the sand. But we also have to be prepared to face the consequences, as you’ve pointed out. Not sure I would want this to occur as a way to get publicity, but if it happens then I say use it to your advantage if you can.
I think we all make mistakes on our journey that give us pause. It’s what we do with them - whether it’s a public defense or a personal admonission not to make that mistake twice that matters. I can recall early days in my career where I was looking for advice - often times from the wrong people who who had their own agendas. It really wasn’t until I’d made a bunch of mistakes and also had some tremendous success that I could sort out what was worth changing and what wasn’t.
Hi Jim:
Fascinating, beautifully written war story. But someplace I wouldn’t want to go. Would rather be spending all that energy writing under cover of darkness.
I loved this article. What a fascinating character. I wish I had known him. I must say, however, that if I’d gotten reviews like his, I would have curled up and died. LOL I’m not a lion.
I’ve been published since 1996 but didn’t start using the Internet until 1998 as a platform tool to promote my books and myself. Over the years, I’ve watched many, many authors shoot themselves in the foot getting into pissing matches with one another, reviewers, readers, and publishers. Some of those matches were knee-jerk reactions to something the author perceived as insulting or was simply taken out of context–reading more into it than the reviewer/other author/reader intended. Writers are notoriously thin skinned and when someone attacks us, we reach for the matches and the torch.
It’s bad enough when a writer makes a fool of himself or herself when engaging in flame wars against other writers but when they take on a publisher and pull other non-author bloggers into the fray, it becomes a very ugly thing. Those who don’t have a stake in the matter are all too willing to put their two cents worth in just to read what they’ve written. All that does is add fuel to the fire.
And it can hurt the writer’s success, chance of finding a new publisher, or maintaining a loyal fan base. Of course there will be some die-hard fans who will follow no matter what but when you badmouth a publisher or a reviewer, be prepared to don flame retardant undies because the back draft is going to come at you full force.
You should always be careful what you say and do on the Internet because it never, ever goes away. Remember those with an agenda usually don’t have your best interest in mind when they implement it.
[...] Point, a Seattle-based Web site of shared marketing and promotion strategies for authors, is titled “Pissing Matches As Platform Builders?” It’s a tongue-in-cheek look at the only semi-ludicrous idea that staging a literary feud with [...]
Thanks, Jim, for sharing this story. If I had read the negative reviews in the Times and Olsen’s pithy published responses, and then spotted his book in my local bookstore, my piqued curiousity would have made me stop to pick it up off the shelf. Once it’s in my hot little hands, that book sale is halfway home. Just shows the old adage about any publicity being good publicity can be quite true.