Drugs, lies and printer's ink

Oprah Winfrey's repudiation of a bogus "memoir" is having reverberations in the book publishing world, and that tiny niche of the greater U.S. media market that cares about books. The upshot, according to unusually informative articles today in The Chicago Tribune and The Philadelphia Inquirer, is publishers are on notice now to fact-check more carefully ... but given the state of the book trade these days, we maybe shouldn't expect a lot of change.

The Inquirer's article is the best thing I've seen on this whole sorry mess. Written by Carlin Romano, the paper's book critic, it came out today. Romano quotes publishers who said they expect to see more fact-checking to screen out things like James Frey's now-discredited tale of what he described as "addiction" and "recovery" A Million Little Pieces. Oprah had endorsed it, then back-peddled when a website called The Smoking Gun documented it was not a true account. Romano says:

Already yesterday, one could see signs of vindication over Winfrey's turnaround, and hints of enhanced responsible behavior among publishers.

"I read it with jubilation," William Zinsser, editor of Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir and author of Writing About Your Life, said of the about-face.

"I'm delighted that Oprah had the grace to change her mind," he said. "I feel that it's an important turning point in this controversy and the whole matter of truth in non-fiction writing."

Romano said Oprah is "the Queen of All Media," and she can clout a book onto the best-seller list book club simply by plugging it ... as she did with A Million Little Pieces.So her word carries weight.

But will it change the publishing world? Romano quotes Zinsser again:

Zinsser would love to see that happen, but color him skeptical, given corporate pressures on editors and profit margins, that anyone will be hiring a bunch of in-house fact-checkers soon.

"Publishing has become the land of the nonreturned phone call," he said. "Editors are either in a pre-sales conference, a sales conference, a post-sales conference, or at the Frankfurt Book Fair. They have no time for editing."

Romano suggests, "Greater pressure on book publishers may come, in fact, from literary journalists, if they decide to emulate the Smoking Gun instead of turning out puffy author profiles."

In the meantime, today's Chicago Tribune has a story by Patrick T. Reardon and Susan Chandler quoting Morgan Entrekin, president and publisher of Grove/Atlantic, who said "it would be a very slow-witted publisher who wouldn't ask The James Frey Question: `What exactly have you done with the truth in this memoir?' "

But Reardon and Chandler also said there may not be a lot of change in the industry:

A key reason for this is the nature of literature as an art. Great art comes from the unexpected, and you can't get the unexpected by putting down too many rules about what can and can't be said.

"A book, unlike a newspaper, is the universe of its creator," said Osnos. "You should be able to say what you want in a book, but you have to be clear about what is and isn't a fact. I would have no problem with someone writing a [non-fiction] book and saying, `OK, here's what I made up.'"

There are practical reasons as well. Even major publishers don't have the staff to check the facts of a manuscript unless the company lawyer raises questions or something just doesn't ring true.

But Osnos told the Trib authors and publishers alike should be on notice now not to lie.

"We, as a society, always make a big fuss over lies," Osnos said. "Richard Nixon learned that. Bill Clinton learned that. And the latest to learn that is Mr. Frey."

In the meantime, in a tongue-in-cheek squib in today's Washington Post, op-ed columnist E.J. Dionne put Oprah's name in nomination today for president in 2008. Without mentioning the names of any other presidents who have been accused of lying, Dionne says "it's tempting to consider a draft-Oprah movement after she demonstrated a talent so missing here in the capital city: the ability and willingness to admit error and apologize."