by Edward Champion

Why Was Adam Buckman Let Go From the New York Post?

buckmanOn December 31, Gawker’s Gabriel Snyder reported an unconfirmed rumor. Adam Buckman, the New York Post‘s television editor, according to Snyder’s “tipster”, was escorted out of the offices and his computer was seized. While it is true that Buckman’s last column appeared on December 15, 2008, the story grows more mysterious when one considers that the New York Daily News‘s Jonathan Lemire likewise reported on this story, only for the Daily News to retract the link days later. (The cached version can be found here.)

Lemire reported that “[i]t was not immediately known if his computer was turned over to a law enforcement agency,” and he also reported that a police spokesman informed him that Buckman was not charged with any crime.

There are some questions here: (1) Why was Buckman let go? (2) If the information can be confirmed, why was his computer seized? (3) Why aren’t The New York Post and Buckman talking? (4) Why was Lemire’s article pulled by the Daily News?

I do not believe it is fair to Buckman to toss around accusations until we have some quotes or hard evidence, and I will be conducting some independent investigation on this story to determine some answers.

Nevertheless, if both Snyder and Lemire are relying on rumors (rather than hard information) to smear a man’s reputation with insinuations (there have been unsubstantiated suggestions of potential impropriety in the Gawker thread), they need to come clean and reveal their specific sources.

[UPDATE: I have made efforts to contact Lemire, New York Post editor-in-chief Col Allan, and related parties to this incident.]

[RELATED: It’s worth observing that Mr. Allan has a reputation for a fiery temper in December. On December 18, 2007, the New York Observer‘s John Koblin reported that metro editor Dan Colarusso was upbraided in front of his colleagues and was, at one point, kicked out of a meeting. Like Mr. Buckman, who remains silent, Mr. Colarusso declined then to go on the record.]

by Edward Champion

Donald E. Westlake Dead

The New York Times is reporting that Donald E. Westlake is dead. I am exceptionally stunned by this. Westlake was a very important writer. And I hope to have something coherent later. Needless to say, if you haven’t read the Dortmunder books or the Richard Stark Parker novels, get on it now. This man was just about the finest writer in mystery. His loss leaves a staggering chasm that won’t be filled anytime soon.

[UPDATE: Assorted links over at Sarah’s.]

by Edward Champion

The Bat Segundo Show: Patricia Cornwell

Patricia Cornwell appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #257.

Patricia Cornwell is most recently the author of Scarpetta. This interview serves as a companion piece to Sarah Weinman’s Los Angeles Times profile.

segundo257

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Checked in for narcissistic personality disorder.

Author: Patricia Cornwell

Subjects Discussed: The genesis of Kay Scarpetta after three unpublished novels, Sara Ann Freed’s input into Cornwell’s early career, on being rejected by the Mysterious Press, Susanne Kirk, the unexpected success of Postmortem, how Charles Champlin’s Los Angeles Times review changed the publisher’s perception, writing a Scarpetta book before the last one was published, switching from first-person to third-person midway through the series, tinkering around in the movie business, being unable to write anymore in the first-person perspective, on later books lacking the warm element of character interaction, trying to get better through experimentation, listening to fans and readers, bringing back Benton Wesley from the dead, the differences between Cornwell and Scarpetta, writing sex scenes, privacy and reluctant fame, reporters who have the temerity to follow Cornwell into the bathroom, cops and submachine guns, Ab Fab, Judd Apatow’s films, Cornwell’s continued involvement with forensic science, taking out full-page ads to correct being misquoted by a journalist, pursuing the Jack the Ripper case, making various investments, surviving in the dour economy, and Cornwell’s political involvement.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

PATRICIA CORNWALLCorrespondent: What’s interesting too is that your career essentially started at the behest of very legendary people in the mystery world.

Cornwell: Right. That’s right.

Correspondent: And then Susanne Kirk found it at Scribner and picked it up from there.

Cornwell: And she was quite a champion for it. Because the publishing house, from my understanding back then, was very dubious about it. This was so different. Nobody wrote books like this back then really. First of all, you had a serial killer who was a stranger to the victims and a stranger to everybody. And the tradition of “mysteries” is that it was someone in your midst. And there were so many traditions that were shattered. Because real crime shatters those traditions. And I was writing about what I saw, and really taking a journalistic point of view. Although I was weaving it into fiction. And some of the rejection letters were “Nobody wants to read about morgues or laboratories.” And certainly not a woman who works in an environment like this and sees what she does. It seems silly now. But back then, that just wasn’t done.

Susanne though had the futuristic vision to think, “This is new and different. And this is pretty cool. And I want to publish this book.” But she had to have yet another opinion. She had to have another person read it. And they deliberated. And they just barely decided. In fact, the telephone call I got — the famous telephone call that changes your life — it was iffy. It was “We think we’re going to publish Postmortem, but we want to get one more person to read it.”

Correspondent: So it had to go to the editorial board in other words.

Cornwell: It was actually an outside consultant they had. Someone they considered an expert. A man, whose name I don’t remember. And they needed one more person to look at it to see if they really were going to do this. And that was my great turning point. My telephone call was a maybe. And then they did decide to take it on. But it was a very small printing. 6,000 copies. $6,000 is what I got paid. No advertising. No marketing. No nothing. And by the time people discovered it, it was out of print in hardcover.

BSS #257: Patricia Cornwell (Download MP3)

This text will be replaced

Listen: Play in new window | Download

by Edward Champion

The Bat Segundo Show: Allison Amend

Allison Amend most recently appeared on The Bat Segundo Show #256.

Allison Amend is the author of Things That Pass for Love.

segundo256

Condition of Mr. Segundo: Pondering the troubling things that pass for love.

Author: Allison Amend

Subjects Discussed: Dealings with the Atlantic Monthly, what constitutes a proper golf story, miniature golf, how Jewishness and faith relates to sustaining a narrative, speaking multiple languages, Pig Latin, the connotations of “molested,” small animals in short stories, whether an author should be concerned about manipulating the reader, grabbing the interviewer by the beard, discovering stories through subconscious intent, stories that “need more gerbil,” writing stories that run counter to an innate perspective, verisimilitude, magical realism, whether multifarious themes and motifs disguise the primary premise of a story, the narrative complexities of romantic intimacy, avoiding the “chick lit” label, Curtis Sittenfeld, the Glimmer Train essay, Amend’s two unpublished novels, dealing with potential editors who issue demands to include a love story, how much one should compromise for art, authenticity vs. marketability, frequent appearances of Zima within Amend’s stories, authors who include brand names in fiction, experimenting with lists and found documents, planning the endings of stories, selecting stories for the collection, and thematic unity.

EXCERPT FROM SHOW:

Correspondent: Golf figures prominently into a number of these stories. In “How Much Greater the Miracle,” you write, “The soul and golf are interrelated. I try not to wax too philosophical, but the soul is like a golf ball.” Now is this particular statement one of the reasons you frequently return to golf in your writing? Do you feel that golf gets a bad rap? Is this your way of essentially taking it, or absconding it, from the upper-class country club associations? Are you trying to counter the John Updike/Richard Ford/Kevin Costner kind of approach to golf? I think this is a very important question!

Amend: Sure, sure. I think that your answer is much better than the one I’m going to give you.

Correspondent: No, I’m sure your answer is going to be fantastic.

Amend: Which is that back when I was in grad school, Michael Curtis, who edits the fiction for the Atlantic Monthly, requested some golf stories. He was editing the fiction section of Golf Digest.

Correspondent: Oh wow.

Amend: And he needed some golf stories. So I was like, “I can write a golf story.” And he said, “Oh, it’s very good. I don’t want it. But it’s a good story.” And I said, “Thank you. I’ll write another one.” So I wrote another golf story.

Correspondent: Aha!

Amend: He said, “I don’t want this either. But I like your writing.” So I wrote one more just to see. But actually I do really like golf as a literary theme. Because, first of all, it’s something for your characters to do without really having to have them do a lot of business. So everyone knows how you play. I mean, everyone sort of knows the theory of golf. You hit a ball towards a hole. And so your characters can talk a lot and can think about things without — it’s not like it’s basketball, where you have to describe the reaction all the time. So I really like golf that way. But also it’s this really absurd game. I played a lot when I was younger and don’t play so much now. But if you told me that you can’t see there’s a hole about the size of your palm and you can’t see it from here. But if you hit the ball three times, you will hit it in the hole. I would never have believed it.

Correspondent: Now you say that you had had golf experience before when you had been asked to do these stories. Or did you have to go into golf again and do a refresher course so to speak? Or a refresher run?

Amend: Well, I was at Iowa. We had a lot of free time.

Correspondent: Okay. They have golf in Iowa.

Amend: They do have golf in Iowa. And it’s actually pretty accessible. There’s a great municipal golf course. A nine hole golf course. And so I actually played a decent round of golf. But mostly I just asked my parents. They are very into golf. And so when I needed some golf details to make the story seem more authentic, I just asked them. I said, “What do you do if the ball’s on the side of a hill?” And my dad’s like, “Well, you hit down on it obviously.” I’m like, “Oh, of course.” And I’m taking notes as I’m talking to them. So that was my golf experience.

Correspondent: But this is an interesting notion of what a golf story is.

Amend: Right.

Correspondent: Because if one plays golf, it’s automatically a golf story? Or golf happens to be a motif? I mean, how golf-intensive does a golf story have to be?

Amend: You know, I don’t know. I don’t think that the golf story is going to be the next hot genre. Although there is the golf novel that does pretty well — apparently every year. But for me, it’s just a story where I have to ask my parents a lot of questions about golf to write it. So to me, that’s a golf story.

Correspondent: I’m just wondering if there’s any golf criteria for a golf story. I’ve never been asked to write a golf story. And I’ve never actually considered, until we just talked about this subject, about what a golf story entails. And so I’m wondering. Maybe it’s like a Christmas story.

Amend: It just has to be some Christmas.

Correspondent: Yeah, I don’t know.

Amend: Yeah, I think so. I’m not sure that I’m the best person to ask, since none of my stories were accepted for Golf Digest.

Correspondent: But they’re in here! There’s like three golf stories in here.

Amend: But they’re in there. In which case, golf is sort of a theme.

Correspondent: Yeah! So you are a golf story person.

Amend: Apparently, I’m a golf story person.

Correspondent: Among many other things. Well, okay.

Amend: Well, I could be. I’ve been called worse.

BSS #256: Allison Amend (Download MP3)

This text will be replaced

Listen: Play in new window | Download