DATE: February 14, 2001 This article, by Mr. Kirkpatrick, will be made an example of, for many reasons. First, there are some standard factual fabrications. Next, there is the strangely icky, almost angry tone throughout. Not strange that a journalist might take such a tone, but strange considering the way the piece was proposed. For any article in progress, there is often some negotiating of terms between interviewer and interviewee. In this case, everyone involved -- me and those at Vintage Books -- was wary about Mr. Kirkpatrick's work. So his interview requests were repeatedly refused. But his emails continued to come, and they actually began to seemed even sort of warm -- he mentioned mutual friends, said nice things about my work, and he made many intriguing promises, in particular that I could see most of the piece before it ran -- this promise was unsolicited -- and that he would only publish words emailed to him under an "On the Record" rubric. As you'll see, I stressed that I preferred the Q&A format. This way there is no leverage given to either side -- it's simply information, without any tweaking. It's fair, and it's a format always agreed to when a periodical simply wants to get information to its readership without bending it. For example, if I was doing a Q&A with Dr. Heimlich (inventor of the manuever), it might look like this: Q: Which of your manuevers do you like best? I have asked a question, and given the subject a chance to answer. I haven't bent his words or put any sort of spin on them. Now, if I'm a journalist with guile, working outside of the Q&A format, I could take that quote and make it look like this: Dr. Heimlich claims that he "loves" his best-known maneuver, because it's "saved many lives" and he insists that saving lives is "good." What's happened here is that I've used the words Heimlich provided, but by taking quote fragments -- words out of context, between quotation marks that cast doubt on the words' sincerity -- I've made something kind of snide and sinister out of something simple and straightforward. Note that by putting the word "love" between quotation marks, I've made Dr. Heimlich's sincere statement about his work seem false. Anyway, Mr. Kirkpatrick promised not to use anything labeled "off the record," and in the end, a little less than half of the quotes he used were, sadly, ones clearly marked "off the record." Then there were the factual errors. Lastly, the tone of the final piece, which, as you will see, is rather at odds with the tone of his promissory emails. To illuminate this process, the entire, unedited exchange between Kirkpatrick and me is reprinted below. Please enjoy the exchange. It really is interesting to read. - - - - First, though, the factual things. Unlike the last correction, here we'll just excerpt some passages and offer clarifications right underneath. PASSAGE: "He has developed a reputation for elaborate surprises, like chartering a bus to drive the crowd from an East Village bookstore to a Trenton bar..."
PASSAGE: "For the new paperback, Mr. Eggers insisted on selling tickets to stops on his book tour to raise money for causes like cancer research..."
PASSAGE: "At a reading in Toronto, women reportedly threw themselves at him as though he were a pop star."
PASSAGE: "Despite public disavowals of making money from his work, Mr. Eggers has also made it clear that he does not much like sharing the proceeds. For example, he refused to pay his former literary agent, Elyse Cheney, a cut of the $2 million he got for the film rights to his book and recently settled a lawsuit she filed..."
- - - - Now, below is the exchange, begun on the 16th of January. There are no emails left out, and no words edited. The headers have been removed, in favor of a simpler "DK to DE" or "DE to DK" to indicate the sender and recipient. When Mr. Kirkpatrick's emails are not reponded to, this is also indicated. - - - - 1-16-01
Dave Eggers-- Your publishers at Vintage have persuaded me to do a story about your new paperback, and it would be a big boost to its accuracy and appeal if we could talk on the phone about it. They'd like me to do it this week, and I'd like to for my own reasons as well. Any chance you could spare me a minute on the phone-- at least just to make sure I have the facts straight--- before you leave town? I'm at 212 556 XXXX. If you miss me there, I am at 917 XXX-XXXX. Thanks very much. David Kirkpatrick
- - - -
- - - - 1-16
please, please, please call 212 556 XXXX, 917 XXX-XXXX - - - -
- - - - 1-17
Dave--- Did you get my emails of yesterday? If a phone call is out of the question, would you answer some questions by email? I gather there is a big rush because you are about to leave wherever you are. Please let me know. David Kirkpatrick
- - - -
- - - - 1-30
Dave--- Hello! I have to tell you, I belatedly read your book over the weekend, and I really was blown away---- I have never read anything even remotely like it. I was a big fan of Might magazine, too. I told you that before, actually, when you and I met once. I am a good friend of Ariel Kaminer and I believe she introduced us at a party. At the suggestion of Russell Perrault at Vintage, I am hoping to write an article for the Times about the new paperback edition before I leave town early Friday morning, so the story can run next week. It would be a big help if we could get in touch somehow--- ideally, over the phone or in person--- to talk about it. I'm also not the fastest thinker/writer in the world, so it would be great if that could happen soon. Could you let me know if you receive this? David Kirkpatrick
- - - - 1-29
David, I can't say I'm all that enthusiastic about anyone doing a story about the paperback, or me. I know Vintage would kill me if they knew, but I'm really hoping to keep a low profile for a (long) while, letting the work speak for itself. Worse for you, I only do email interviews -- less stress, less room for uncertainty. But if you agree to a Q&A-only interview, where you just print the exchange without alteration, I will chat. If the Times won't allow that -- and I doubt they will -- I understand. Sorry to be difficult. Dave - - - - 1-30
Dave- Well, that is difficult. But you are holding all the cards. How about this? I will limit the interview to a very few questions, and do my very best to print your answers in their entirety, in a context that reflects the question you were responding to. To make sure, I will email you the text of the passages in question for your approval. No approval, I cut it. I will tell you what is in all the other passages of the story, too, for your comment and/or correction. And only the official "responses" will be considered stuff I can use. Your end of the deal is: 1) don't play a game with me by responding for 6 pages to one little question. and 2) be available to respond to the playback passages emailed to you on Thursday. The gist of the questions is this: why sell the paperback to Vintage? Why add the new material? Why start upside down from that back? Why three covers? I can't promise I won't think of another question, but you can answer or not on a case by case basis. Let me know what you think. Terms are negotiable. I'm going to lunch. David - - - - 1-30
David, Your willingness to bend is great. But I really can't do anything but a straight Q&A. Again, it's because you're asking me to do something (an interview) I don't want to do. Imagine someone asked you to jump in the East River. Because you don't want to jump in the river in the first place, you might say Sure, but I get to wear a wetsuit. A poor analogy, I know. Still, my wetsuit is the Q&A format. It's simple and fair for both sides, ensuring no one is misunderstood, and answers are printed as intended. Your questions are good, and I'm happy to answer them, but can only do it if the format is simple and unadorned. Otherwise I could just take the Arts section up on the offer to do a Writers on Writing piece -- no risk. I'm sure you can sympathize. Dave - - - - 1-30
Dave--- Well, I will say in my defense that I got into this at Vintage's behest, and then I have re-arranged the schedule a couple times also at their request. But let me just get a clear view of your line in the sand. You will settle only for question and answer, printed in its entirety? As in, DK: "Why add a new appendix?" DE: "Because the bus was late, and I had some time on my hands." Can it run beside my story or only instead of my story? And do you consider the wording of these emails likewise confidential? One last point: I offered to show you the portions of the text including your responses for your approval. I think that matches the un-redacted Q and A format for accuracy and avoidance of misunderstanding. Plus, it is not as hard on the reader. I always find Q and A's annoying to read. DK - - - - 1-30
Well, I had no idea this was Vintage's idea. Given that neither you nor I conceived of the notion, maybe we should just skip it. I've got so much work to do right now anyway. My interest was in, yes, a simple Q&A, standing alone. And of course I expect our private email correspondence to remain private. So what do you say? Should we just let it sink? That's my vote. You can always say it was my fault; I will support you in that. D - - - - 1-30
No, I am doing the story because I think it is a worthwhile story, and I am already committed to it. I might be able to let them do a Q & A as a sidebar if you change your mind. If the editors surprise me and say they want an un-redacted Q& A I will let you know, but I doubt it. So, unless you change your mind on the sidebar, it looks like no quotes from you. If you want to offer my any guidance on background--- meaning, I let it inform what I write but don't attribute it to you--- that would be very welcome. Also, I will be glad to run by you everything that is going into the story on the same basis, so that you can correct anything wrong or misconstrued or comment in any way you like. I always do that as much as I can, just to prevent the aforementioned misunderstandings etc. Anyway, I better get cracking. Let's stay in touch while I finish this and maybe we'll see each other around. It is a small, small world. DK - - - -
- - - - 1-30
Also, if it wasn't clear, I certainly do understand where you are coming from---- in a way, it kind of makes sense that you a) distrust journalism and b) want to attach an appendix of fixes to your book. But you are pitching vegetarianism to the butcher, if you know what I mean. I have an occupational obligation to try to talk you into talking with me. I remain a big fan of your work, and I hope we do see each other around. More soon. David - - - - 1-30
- - - - 1-31
Thanks for your help, or at least for emailing with me. DK - - - - 1-31
David, Off-the-record note first: Answers are below. I would be hugely appreciative if you did send me the quotes you use, the context, etc, and also if you indicated that this correspondence was via email. Also, the most important points I would dearly hope you stressed and would name children after you if you included: - The picture of Toph and me is very old. I don't want anyone to think we posed for it for this book. I look stupid of course, with the facial hair, and wanted to show just how idiotic I was/we were. - The part about it not being some marketing ploy is important to me. Seems like any time anyone wants to do something different it's called a ploy -- as if to punish anyone who wants to deviate from custom. The multiple covers were my idea just because I like multiple options and always have. I don't stand to gain from it, just as McSwys didn't stand to gain from our multiple-cover issue. Okay... On the record: 1) why publish the paperback with Vintage, 2) why add the material the way that you did (i.e. as corrections, sort of), 3) why put it at the back with the upside down cover, and 4) why three different covers. 1) A while back, it was mutually agreed upon by me and Simon & Schuster to go outside S&S for the paperback. After that, S&S auctioned the rights, which of course removes any real control (from me at least) from the process. Because the rights were S&S's, they conducted the auction and sold the rights without me ever signing anything. (I'm responding here to weird intimations that I was the architect of the sale -- far from it, the rights being S&S's and not mine.) But I was very happy that Vintage landed the rights -- I was hoping the book would wind up there if auctioned. I knew and respected Jenny Minton, and Vintage always makes very handsome books. 2. Well, like it says in the appendix itself, that section was originally conceived as part of the first edition of the book. It was pretty late in the game that Geoff Kloske at S&S and I decided it might be best to leave it out. It was the right decision at the time, but I always figured I'd add the section at some point, so the paperback was as good a time as any. 3. The upside-down cover was a compromise. I had designed an S-shaped binding which would have accomplished the same thing, but would have looked a bit more striking. It was, though, impossible from a production standpoint. So we did the upside-down thing, as a way of separating the new material from the old, and allowing the two texts to meet back to back, a structural gesture that felt important to me. The new stuff wasn't just a continuation, I thought, so having it simply follow the rest of the book didn't feel right. 4. I really wanted to do six. And Vintage had agreed to do six, but then we only came up with three. It was supposed to be all McSwys-looking stuff, like the mostly-text one (including Toph's "Showtunes Jesus"), but then Jenny Minton felt a photo might be good, so we dug around and found some. Toph and I thought the photo-booth one was funny at first, but who knows. It was about ten years ago, we look dumb, and that was of course the point -- of the cover and the book in general: public embrassment as punishment for living on. But generally, the idea, as always, was to have fun with the covers; it wasn't any effort to sell two or three books to any given person. (After all, because Vintage pretty much put all their money up front, it doesn't matter much to me how many copies it sells; they care of course but I was just doing it for fun.) I just don't want anyone to feel obligated to buy more than one -- the point was just to do as many covers as we could, just because it doesn't cost anything extra. We did multiple covers for the last issue of McSweeney's, too, for the same reason -- because we could. This stuff, publishing books, should be fun, so I try to make it fun. Same reason Lawrence Krauser designed 10,000 covers of his book. It was something to do, and it relieves the monotony. - - - - 2-1
Dave- Thanks! Now I really do have my work cut out for me to get this story done, but I will definitely get back to you about the quotes and the context et al. I appreciate your help. I'll get back to you today. DK - - - - 2-1
Hello. OK, we are off the record here. I am tired and trying to write this difficult story. I leave town first thing in the morning, so I am going to get as much done as I can tonight. Ideally, I will send you stuff to look over via email tonight. Then I can make changes on the morning of the 12th, and the story won't run until the 13th. But I am having a bitch of a time getting it done. Are you around? And will I have a chance to run things by you on the morning of the 12th? Also, let me run this idea by you in terms of a general theme for my story. Your book has a lot of stuff in it about your own ambivalent feelings about the writing of the book (for instance, Toph's surreal bedtime talk with you). This new edition extends some of that. To you, it is just all fun and games, or fun and punishment, and so on. For Vintage, your ideas happen to double as brilliant marketing. I'm guessing this will piss you off, but, as is my usual practice, I would like to give you a chance to respond before I write it, while I can still change it. David - - - - 2-1
David:
I'm not sure what the question is. Does Vintage want to sell books? Of course. Do I care? Not in the least. If I can screw around with covers and have someone else pay for it, great. Again, without fibbing hugely, you can't claim that I give a whoop about sales or money or that shit. Enough people have already read the book for my tastes, and I don't need any more money. If I did, I would have a) not self-published my next book (I would have taken a nice hefty advance from someone like S&S or Knopf); b) Not have given away just about everything I've gotten so far; c) Chosen to publish others' books without making a dime. I know I sound defensive, but you know how people think. Vintage buys the rights for a lot of money and people think I had something to do with it, or asked for the money or something. People are just getting weird lately, making up things constantly. I mean, Michael Wolff implied that the paperback sale was somehow a bad thing, even though as an author himself he knows (and he admitted it later to me) that authors do not conduct paperback auctions. The rights were not, ever, mine. Anyway, I'm only say that we need, as journalists, to try to refrain from always looking through the darkest possible lens at things. David, I like books. Marty and Jenny like books. They would have gladly published the book without any new material or extra covers. Jenny is the sweetest, most openhearted lover of books I know. Have you spoken to her? She sounds like she's about 12. Completely without guile. Thus, calling this or any innovation a "marketing ploy" is not quite intellectually honest. (I point this out in the copyright page of the paperback.) By the same reasoning -- anything different is an effort to make everyone involved rich -- writing a 1,100 page book is a marketing ploy, too, because it's different and has a media hook. Or writing a book with sex in it -- also an effort to cash in, because people like sex. I mean, seen through cynical eyes, everything is a ploy or gimmick, except, I suppose, doing everything exactly as it's been done since the beginning of time. Now, one more wrinkle: Vintage was not originally into the multiple covers. Maybe they already told you that. They wanted the back cover simple, full of blurbs. But I wanted the thing to be different. So I pushed Marty to experiment a bit, and he finally gave in. So if you make anyone out to be brilliant greedy marketing geniuses, then I suppose you're free to, but you and I will know it's not the truth, because there is no evidence, in fact or motive, to support it. Remember, Vintage didn't want the multiple covers and I don't benefit from extra sales (it will take 10 years for them to clear the advance, so royalties are out of the question). So please, David, the truthful way to report this is that I had an idea, they resisted at first, then cautiously said okay. And we all did it just do try something new. I hope you will give everyone the benefit of the doubt here. We're all just trying to make new and good stuff. Yours,
P.S. If you want me to say any of this on the record, let me know. - - - - 2-1
Thanks for the response. We are on the same page; I got it and I am making that loud and clear. I'll try to get back to you soon. I might have to ask you for the enormous favor of checking your email early in the day on monday the 12th, in case I can't get to you from my vacation in [destination deleted]. David - - - - 2-1
I can check email on the 6th at the soonest -- I'll be on a 24-hour flight from Sunday to Tuesday. [Comment about his destination deleted.] David, I really think by sending me your proposed angle, and letting me respond, you've done a good thing. Now, whatever your conclusions, you've had them thoroughly tested and informed. It's rare in journalism that writers really want the whole truth, or allow their version of it to be challenged. It can only lead to a stronger, more whole truth. Thanks,
- - - - 2-1
I should warn you that I haven't abandoned that angle entirely-- I'm just going for the stronger, more whole truth. The point is not that these are gimmicks. Just that your book is partly about your own ambivalence about your writing your book, or your complicated relationship with writing your book. And the paperback adds another chapter to that---more self-scrutiny in the appendix, multiple points of entrance, multiple versions of the same book.--- if I can work out the story. Plus, for vintage, it will sell more books. I'm having a bitch of a time getting it done though, as I said, partly because I am worn out. The piece is supposed to run on the 13th. I just want to be sure I have email contact with your the morning of the 12th. - - - - 2-1
Oh. I misread -- the 12th. Fine. But bear in mind I'll be 18 hours ahead at that point. And the way you see it seems fine. Ambivalence is an understatement. The whole process has been torture. Just a week ago I was asking Jenny if they really had to publish the book at all. I endlessly see-saw between wanting to publish and tell stories because why the hell not, and then thinking maybe I should just go somewhere and dig ditches and have a quiet life. But sure, Vintage, like any company on this earth, would rather sell their books than have them go unsold. I don't think anyone would argue with that. All I beg is that you give a bunch of nice people the benefit of the doubt. We're just making books, after all. (Have you read my dialogue with J. Lethem by the way? It covers much of this -- it's on the McSwys site.) Anyway, if you've ever met Marty and Jenny, you know they're incredibly mild and kind people. Nice people making books. Making anything sinister out of that would be, well... I guess I'm repeating myself. Okay. That's all for me. Dave - - - - 2-12
Dave---
- - - - 2-12
Dave--- I sure hope that you get this. Now, my story gets edited more, partly by me and partly in conversations with editors, tomorrow early in the day. Here I am trying to run all this stuff by you, just as we discussed. I'll try to run stuff by you tomorrow as things change, and naturally I will bear in mind my understanding of your intentions in any event. But as far as your commenting on or correcting things, the sooner you could get back to me the better. And, although I know you are not into it, the immediacy of a telephone call can sometimes go a long way toward remedying an miscommunication in a timely fashion. Now, I am sure I don't have to tell you that, at the end of the day, this story should reflect something more than simply your views of yourself, so there will likely be some statements in my words that you would not have written yourself. I'm just going to start paraphrasing the story, and I will use the exact words where your quotes and the passages around them are concerned. Some of this may be a little funky because it is a medly of paraphrasing and cutting and pasting---- a facsimile of what i usually do orally over the phone--- and I don't have the time to read it over. I am just going to start paraphrasing in no particular order. I say that your experience of your book's wild success was something different that simply delight. I quote from your new addition to the paperback calling the experience ''brutal.'' (A one word quote only slightly out of context, but, I think, true to life.) I also quote the new material in this context: "He dreaded returning to it, he writes, ``like one dreads seeing a bad-smelling distant elderly relative lying prone in a rank and wrong smelling nursing home.'' I would like your permission to take the following statement from an off-the-record part of our correspondence: "In fact, he said later, just weeks before the paperback's publication, he asked his editors at Vintage Books if they could call the whole thing off." Then I say that despite your reservations about the publication and in fact largely at your behest, Vintage is publishing the paperback with an extraordinary barrage of unusual features. Here is where in my humble way I hope to interest people in finishing this story: why are you at once so ambivalent about the book's exposure and publishing it in such an attention-getting way? The rest of the story more or less addresses this. I describe the new features: "a new appendix correcting and updating the original, an upside-down back cover creating books that start from either end, and three different paperback editions each with its own illustration on the cover." I note in my own words that this is the kind of marketing effort that most writers only dream of--- which is true, no doubt about it. Most writers would love this much attention and efforts from their publishers towards selling their books. Then this: " Mr. Eggers insisted that made no difference to him. ``Does Vintage want to sell books? Of course. Do I care? Not in the least,'' Mr. Eggers said added later by e-mail, the only form in which he would agree to an interview and the only way he communicates with his publisher. ``If I can screw around with covers and have someone else pay for it, great,'' he wrote, ``You can't claim that I give a whoop about sales or money,'' noting that he had ``given away just about everything I've gotten so far.'' Are you still 29 years old? Or older now? I write that, from the account of your book(s) you have always felt agonizingly ambivalent, if not downright schizophrenic, about publishing and selling your story. Your memoir recounts in detail the death of both your parents from cancer within the space of a month and describes your life thereafter as the twenty-something guardian of your eight-year-old brother, Christopher, or Toph. Throughout, you wrestles visibly with the potential unseemliness of profiting from your families' sad story and your little brother's precocious charm. Your repeatedly strive to pre-empt his critics, beginning with the sarcastic grandiosity of your title. An ``Acknowlegdements'' section suggests possible critiques of your book's quality, of your own outsized ego and penchant for self-indulgence, of your possible exploitation of your parents deaths and brother's childhood, and even of your efforts to alleviate that guilt by acknowledging it frequently. How am I doing? At one point in the book, you even projects your self-criticisms into the mouth of your younger brother. Tucked into bed one night, Christopher slips into a surreal dissection of the flaws in both his older brother's character and the writing of the book itself. ``You are completely paralyzed with guilt about relating all this in the first place,'' Christopher Eggers says. ``You feel somehow obligated to do it, but you also know that Mom and Dad would (italics) hate it, would crucify you---,'' To address in advance the notion that he was profiting from the project, you also included a breakdown of the costs that consumed most of his $100,000 advance from his hardcover publisher, Simon & Shcuster, and he promised to distribute some of the remaining $39,567.68 by sending $5 checks to the first 200 readers who mailed in a proof of purchase. (Almost no one sent in to ask for it, you report in the new editions.) Some critics called your repeated references to his own book an annoying distraction, but many found that, in your deadpan style, your obsessive hand-wringing added to its poignancy. See, this is how you have to write in newspapers sometimes--- just sum it all up and move on. Now, don't go nuts about this part, but I am also now planning to write that you can be thin skinned, especially when it comes to the black-humor you employ in discussing the subject of your parents deaths. I am, of course, referring to your irony diatribe. Almost every reviewer remarked, with admiration or disdain, on your reliance on irony--- your book became a kind of emblem for an ironic approach to writing. Your new addition to the paperback includes, in several paragraphs of extremely small print, an impassioned rebutle. ``You cannot know how much it pains me to even have that word, the one beginning with i(italics) and ending in y(italics), in this book,'' you write. ``Because humor is found in the context of pain does not make that humor ironic.'' The account of your parents deaths, in particular, are ``excruciatingly serious and straight-forward. Are there even a few funny moments in this section? Absolutely not.'' Nor, you says, is your``funny title'' ironic. Furthermore, you argues in the same small type, only those born in the late 19th century, early enough to witness the advent of modernism, can meaningfully apply the term ``postmodernism.'' The book won you something of a cult following, especially among readers around your own age. Over 200,000 copies are in print, as you report in the new edition. Your public appearances and readings frequently draw crowds of several hundreds of your fans. You have developed a reputation for elaborate surprises, such as arriving at an East Village Barnes & Noble for a reading with a chartered van to transport the whole crowd to a Trenton bar. (I need to double check all this stuff) At a reading in Toronto, women reportedly threw themselves at you as though you were a pop star. To promote the paperback, you insisted on selling tickets to stops on his book tour to raise money for charities including cancer research. In the aftermath of his sudden fame, you became a book publisher in your own right. You had founded a journal and web site called McSweeney's Quarterly Concern, which publishes experimental fiction and satire, and McSweeney's has also begun publishing a series of books in the same vein, beginning with one by your friend Neal Pollack. You plans to publish your own next book there as well--- ``It will involve a lot of water,'' you promised vaguely on McSweeny's web site. (I have to double check that to--- I am just going on memory.) OK, now another tricky part. I write that, despite your disavowals of serving your own financial interests, you have also sometimes taken a great interest in the proceeds from your work. For example, you refused to pay your former literary agent, Elyse Cheney, a cut of the $3 million you received for the film rights to your book, and recently settled a lawsuit she filed to collect it. ("I was being sued by a former agent for money generated from my family's story," you notes in the new material added to the paperback.) I don't need to get into the details of that dispute, not do I want to. And McSweeney's publishes all its books under a novel set of principles providing for the payment of all proceeds above costs to the author, with no advances on royalties but no profits for the publisher either. You said that the unusual paperback features of the paperback editions were his idea, only reluctantly accepted by his more sales-minded publishers at Vintage. (The publishers at Vintage, like publishers elsewhere, don't mind being called sales minded, which I don't take as an insulate either, if you care.) "Mr. Eggers also noted that Vintage paid him a $1.5 million advance on royalties, so under typical paperback royalty arrangements he will not earn an additional royalties until after 1.5 million copies are sold. ``Because Vintage pretty much put all their money up front, it doesn't matter much to me how many copies it sells,'' he said. (Vintage has so far shipped over 210,000 copies, and its publishers say they have a shot at selling well over a million eventually.)" I quote some folks from vintage talking about who the new format is true to the spirit of the book- its emotional range, with many points of entry, and the implication that the book is still alive, that the last word hasn't been written. I would like to say---- I am pulling from various quotes here, just to telegraph what comes later--- that, discussing the new editions by email, you described less rational motivations, ranging from ``fun'' to ``public embarrassment as punishment for living on.'' So this is again pulling things a little out of context, but in a way that seems true----- now is the time to complain if you want. Here is a quote from my draft: "In the new edition's appendix, entitled ``Mistakes We Knew We Were Making,'' Mr. Eggers explains that he initially intended to accompany the hardcover book. ``I was, I figured the first to think of adding a corrective appendix to a nonfiction work, one meant to illuminate the many factual and temporal fudgings necessary to keep this, or any work of nonfiction, from dragging around in arcana and endless explanations,'' he writes. But a friend tipped him off that Mary McCarthy had already done something similar in her book ``Memoirs of a Catholic Girlhood.'' He scraped the idea, '`not wanting to invest too much in a notion already used.'' Besides, his lengthy ``Acknowledgements'' already included several passages cut from the body of the text, calling attention to the contrivances and omissions and testing the patience of some readers." But Mr. Eggers' editor at Vintage, Jenny Minton, encouraged him to bring it back. ``I always figured I'd add the section at some point, so the paperback was as good a time as any,'' Mr. Eggers wrote in an email. It also guarantees the new addition media attention, and may even attract buyers who own the hardcover book." That is the end of the quote from my draft. Here is another quote: "Mr. Eggers at first harbored even more elaborate ambitions for the book's physical shape. ``The new stuff wasn't a continuation, I thought, so having it simply follow the rest of the book didn't feel right,'' he wrote in an email. He designed an ``S-shaped binding''--- picture two paperbacks joined at the spine, with pages opening on either side, each upside down from the other--- ``which would have looked a bit more striking.'' But producing it affordably proved ``impossible'' for Vintage, Mr. Eggers said. His publishers, for their part, pushed for a back cover illustrated with glowing blurbs. Eventually, they comprised, Mr. Eggers said, by agreeing to print the two texts back-to-back. Mr. Eggers said he initially talked Vintage's publishers into publishing six different covers, ``but we only came up with three.'' The only reason, Mr. Eggers said, was just to offer a choice. ``It wasn't any effort to sell two or three books to any given person,'' he wrote in an e-mail, ``I just dont want anyone to feel obligated to buy more than one -- the point was just to do as many covers as we could,'' adding ``it relieves the monotony.'' Mr. Eggers also said he envisioned illustrating the back covers with fanciful diagrams full of text--- a staple of his journal, McSweeney's. But his editor suggested that he use old family photographs for two of the editions instead. The results are three different illustrations that range in sentimentality from dry to mushy: a complicated diagram, a back-and-white picture of both brothers in photobooth, and a color picture of his brother as a child holding a flower in a field. ``Toph and I thought the photo-booth one was funny at first, but who knows,'' Mr. Eggers wrote in his e-mail. ``It was about ten years ago, we look dumb, and that was of course the point ---of the cover and the book in general: public embrasment as punishment for living on.'' Ok, boy it makes me nervous just sending you text from my draft like this. But it is for the best. That is all I got. You can email me here, or call me at 212 556 XXXX. I'm trying to be open and as accurate as possible, so please work with me here. I am showing this stuff to you in order to incorporate your responses----- I'm not married to anything, I'm trying to right what is balanced and true. I'm going to send this off and come back in the morning to finish up. David - - - - [NOTE: the above email was sent later than promised, and because I am currently 18 hours ahead of New York time, I was asleep during the hours that were allotted for my response. When I saw the above email, I immediately called Kirkpatrick and spoke to his answering machine, noting the factual errors, and reminding him that he was not permitted to use off-the-record words without my permission. The piece was published in the Times on February 14. [Free registration is required to access the article online.] The following emails were exchanged after publication.] - - - - 2-14
Dave---
- - - - 2-14
Your story was not very good, or honest, David, and you know it. It threw skepticism where none was warranted, and the facts were off in many places. You must now think about something: You have repeatedly said you liked my book, the paperback material, etc., but your piece has a derisive tone running through it that is frankly inexplicable. Why do journalists take on such a tone? Again, we're only talking about books here. You even managed to paint our charity goals as subversive, by making up the stuff about tickets being sold. David, where is your head? Further, you know nothing -- absolutely nothing -- about the lawsuit, but still felt free to paint it as if I were simply withholding money due to a worthy agent. That was editorializing and it made clear your conflict of interest (I know you know Elyse). David, I will be clarifying all of your mistakes in another forum, and I'll probably be using your emails to me to do so. Though I assumed them to be off the record, I will find some way to justify using them, just as you did. I hope you understand. Just as you have a right to report and interpret, I have a right to clarify and set the record straight. And because you broke very hard-and-fast journalistic rules -- using clearly off-the-record comments without permission absolutely ruins your credibility -- I will do so, too. - - - - 2-15
Dave--- I am sorry to hear that we have such different impressions of the piece, and that you are upset by it. I bear you no malice whatsoever. I heard from several people who thought the piece portayed you and your work positively. I was dissapointed that we failed to communicate on either the 12th or the 13th (New York time), as we planned, and I did the best I could under the circumstances. As I said, I sought the advice of your publicist and editor at Vintage because I genuinely thought you wanted that statement on the record. You had said as much on the record previously, and in your initial note you urged me to get that point across. And I accepted the judgement of Russell Perreault and Jenny Minton. I know I am repeating myself, but let me go over it all once again. My original plan, as you know, was to run all the contents of the story by you in advance, and I tried to do that. As I said before, we even pushed back the deadline of the story-- missing the peg to the day of the book's release--- partly in the hope that I might hear back from you in time. When you didn't respond, I relied on your editor and publicist to help me out with the factual matters and some judgement calls. The quote in question came from an email that started out off the record, but at the end you suggested that you might want some of it on the record. You had suggested as much elsewhere about those particular sentiments, and even articulated those ideas on the record in other places. Again, when I failed to hear from you, I asked your publicist to confirm my impression that you wanted it said on the record. He and your editor told me printing it was the right thing to do. I'm genuinely sorry to hear that you did not intend for me to use it. I take the confidence of my sources, you among them, very seriously. I would never knowingly publish something a communication that was private. If have unintentionally done that in this case, I am sorry to hear about it. As for the tickets, I got that idea from Russell Perreaux and checked it with him. But if anything in the story is factually incorrect, I will gladly ask the paper to print a correction. By the way, let me add that I do not think there is anything cynical about selling tickets to readings to raise money for charity. It seems like a fine idea. I do know Elyse. But I am not beholden to her in any way. I did not report on the suit from her perspective. I felt the suit was relevant, especially since you mentioned it in the book. I called your laywer to be sure I characterized it fairly and accurately, and I used his description of the situation. He assured me that it was fair to describe it as a dispute about money. He also said you felt that she had defaulted on her obligations. As for Elyse's characterizations of the suit, I treated them with skepticism. I included no discussion whatsoever of her worthiness as an agent. Nor for that matter did I say anything about the worthiness of her claims as a litigant. I quoted your statement on the subject from the paperback because I thought it clearly reflected your views. You certainly have every right to write about me and my work. But I do dread the thought of our confidential email correspondence being used publicly. I wrote a great deal of it in a chatty and glib way, late at night, and in a hurry. I wrote it because I was really knocking myself out in my earnest attempts to try to give you every opportunity to correct errors, offer me guidance, and respond to what I was contemplating writing. The same with the folks at Vintage, as they will attest. So I really did my best to write a fair and accurate story. Let me ask a couple of things of you. First, if there are any factual errors in my article, please offer me and the Times a chance to correct them. Second, please do not use our confidential correspondence in a public forum. Obviously, the point of fact-checking is to unearth errors, so there are many of them in my e-mails; that's why I sent them. Also, not everything we discussed in those emails pertained to the story. I made some lighthearted or philosophical comments that are not relevant to this matter. Some might embarrass me if reprinted. Finally, my travel plans are very personal to me, for my own reasons. If you want to discuss using some of our correspondence in whatever you write, I will try to be reasonable. I would be glad to answer other questions, too. Third, if you are going to write about me, I would appreciate it if you offered me opportunities to respond and correct errors, as I did and tried to do with you and the people at Vintage. You have my email address here. My phone number is 212 556 XXXX. Feel free to call collect if you like. My home number is XXX-XXX-XXXX. I will probably be out of the office over the weekend and part of next week, so I won't necessaily be getting my emails. But I will be checking my messages at work. I hope you are well, wherever you are. Sincerely, David - - - - 2-15
David, Yes there are errors in your piece. One of them is the tickets idea. No one ever told you tickets would be sold. That fact is baffling to everyone. Another is you *did* reflect only Elyse's side of the argument, implying that I am simply refusing to pay money to her that she clearly deserves. (Read your sentence; it clearly comes off that way.) But David, the main problem is one of tone. By reprinting your correspondence to me I hope to illuminate the journalist's mind: how a writer starts by telling me he is a fan of my work, supports my company's endeavors, etc, then writes a snippety little thing full of sneering and suspicion. David, you wrote that without heart. There is no heart in your piece. One friend of mine described it as "a gossipy thing written by a bitter little bastard." You actually know the person who characterized it that way. I don't want to throw insults around, but I wanted you to know how it's perceived. David, everyone at Vintage and Random House thinks you're a hatchet wielder. That's why we were so reluctant to talk in the first place -- I hear you've done a number on a lot of people over there, including Sonny Mehta. This is fine, I guess, for you, but soon your sources and leads will dry up, because no one trusts you to get the facts right, and worse, no one trusts you to write without malice. David, you need to bury your hostility toward your subjects. You have to question why you sneer at everyone, where your nasty tone comes from. To write fairly you have to let go of that stuff; it's a crutch. So. I think your emails to me are important to publish, so people can see how this all works. Writer begs for interview, writer butters up subject, writer notes mutual friends, writer promises fairness, writer is finally granted interview, writer breaks golden rule by using off-the-record quotes, writer writes with malice, making something painful and true (my book) look cynical and calculated. I think everyone would be interested in such a thing. You sound very worried about this appearing in public. Now you know how I feel. I will be doing you the greatest favor. You will be a better journalist for it. Dave - - - - 2-15
- - - - 2-16
As for publishing our correspondence, I see your argument about why it could be worthwhile to show the fall out between a reporter and source. But I hope you will let me respond in the context of whatever you do. David - - - - 2-21
David, The problem is, nothing you wrote can be remedied properly. You have a forum read by tens of millions, and you held the power to shape perception of your subject, and you abused that position. A few factual corrections from your last emails: - You say that you only used one quote labeled off the record. But in fact, almost half of the quotes you used were labeled off the record. This is clear in the exchange above. - You say that Russell Perreault and Jenny Minton advocated the use of my off-the-record quotes. But neither of them corroborates this story. In fact, you repeatedly state you spoke to my editor on the phone about this and that. But Jenny Minton never spoke to you -- ever. - For future reference, though, only the speaker or writer of a quote can authorize its use. It is ethically untenable to ask an acquaintance of a source for authorization. - The strangest thing about your characterization of the lawsuit is that you note that my readings are fundraisers, and that I've given away the film money, and that McSwys publishes books without making a profit. But then you claim that I do not like "sharing" the proceeds of my work. That simply makes no sense. - About your attempts to run the piece by me: For weeks you claimed you would send me the piece for review on February 12. I waited that day for your email. But it did not arrive that day, all day. You actually sent your email at 9:44 pm on February 12. That was about 6 pm, February 13, my time. At that point, I had been waiting for the email for quite some time -- when you told me it would be coming on the 12th I expected it during New York's business hours -- and when 6 pm Feb 13 came around I was not at home. I checked my email the next day, and only then, finally, found your email -- and it was already too late to respond. You had allowed only a tiny window -- most of which time you knew would find me asleep. If you truly cared about having the piece reviewed for accuracy, you would have allowed at least a day or two. But like certain pardons, I guess it's best to slip these things in just under the wire and hope they go undetected. - Finally, you say you tried to call me. This shows how prone you are to fibbing. You don't have my number here, David, because neither I nor Vintage ever gave it to you; there is no way you tried to call. Now, the journalist's usual defense in such cases of subject-complaint is to claim that such are the risks when a subject wants publicity. But David, I did not want to do an interview with you. I told you I wanted nothing written about the paperback. You asked me five times to speak with you, at one point saying, and I quote, "please please please." Finally, you hinted to me and to Russell Perreault that if I did not talk to you, your piece would go to press anyway, and with a decidedly unsavory spin. So I figured that it would be better to express my side of things, particularly given the many avowals of support and fairness you proffered. Now the readers of the Times have read your snide take on everything, and I can do very little to alter that. All I can do is try to educate you about what it's like to be written about, with malice and without integrity. David, read this paragraph. It's about you: David Kirkpatrick, a reporter for The New York Times, has worked in journalism for four years. He graduated from the University of Iowa with a degree in marketing and a minor in political science. He is divorced and has one young son, who lives with his former wife's parents in Reno, Nevada. Kirkpatrick, though, is "unhappy" at The Times, and plans to someday write for a more "fun" periodical. On weekends he can be seen wearing eyeliner and smoking clove cigarettes with the goth segment of Bed-Stuy High. Now, David. You and I know whether there is any truth to that paragraph, but no one else does. Maybe there is some truth. Maybe none of it is true. And yet, only you and I really know for sure. But now the words have been written, published and read by tens of thousands of strangers. They are permanent. Just like that, these things are considered true, about you. If, a week from now, you write a letter to our letters section and we print it, it will do very little to alleviate the fact that most people now think you are a professionally dissatisfied Hawkeye divorcee who wears eyeliner. Similarly, we can print a correction, in small type in an obscure section of our website, and no one will see it. That is the power I've wielded, and abused. And so, I think it's important that our exchange be published. It's the only remedy commensurate with the impact you enjoyed with your original piece. I want your friends and family to see it, and to say 'David, ew.' You have done this kind of thing to too many people, and I'm really hoping this makes you and others in your position a bit more careful, and willing to keep your word and tell the whole truth, as difficult as that can be. In your correspondence, you sound like a normal, even warm, person, who cares about truth, who enjoys books, etc. But in your journalism your persona is very different. Where does that tone come from? How can any reasonable person speak so snidely about books? Books! So. You used my words out of context, and used words that were never meant for public consumption, and now it has happened to you. You cast doubt on my motives, and now people can wonder about yours. It must feel strange. You probably don't think it's fair. My guess is you don't think you come off too well, and you wish you could take each person reading this aside and try to explain. Welcome to the club. Best,
- - - - Read the article in question (free registration required)
|
Black dot denotes
newish content.