So this is the third and last installment of this series…
In Part 1 and Part 2 I’ve been asking, are Murder in the Synagogue and Squelched: The Suppression of Murder in the Synagogue irrelevant, ancient history? If not, why not?
So how common is what Prentice-Hall did to Murder? As I recount in Squelched, soon after the publication of Murder, I heard directly from two prominent literary agents on the subject. The very successful Julian Bach gestured at his office window overlooking 48th Street and told me, “Look, this 20-square-block area of Manhattan is the publishing establishment in this country, and they’ve all had their experiences like this.”
And the famed Scott Meredith advised me that this kind of thing happened with enough regularity that no one of importance would even care if another instance were publicly revealed and documented.
And then there is my fellow victim of criminal shenanigans at Prentice-Hall…
Gerard Colby is the author of another ill-fated book, entitled Du Pont: Behind the Nylon Curtain. Four years after it purposely “botched” Murder, Prentice-Hall did the same thing to the Du Pont book. That story was first told on January 21, 1975, in the New York Times.
It was told again more recently by the author Colby in “The Price of Liberty,” one of several essays about suppression in the media collected in a book called Into the Buzzsaw issued by Prometheus Books. Colby’s research found that the occurrence of this kind of thing was sufficiently common that insiders had a term for it: “privishing”…instead of “publishing.”
My own guess about the real frequency of this industry practice? Perhaps not all that often. But probably more than most of us would guess. But then, really, how can we know?
So isn’t this the Age of the Expose?
A time when nothing can remain hidden for long? When even the most secretive of institutions, like the Pentagon and the Vatican, are subject to massive leaks?
And yet how often will someone come forward as brave and morally driven as the young woman who told me about what she heard from Max Fisher? How rare is it that an editor and a corporate attorney will jeopardize their jobs and careers by going public with their inside knowledge, as happened with the Du Pont book? Answers are hard to come by.
Now, of course, I’m biased…
But there are other reasons why you might want to take a look at these books from four decades ago. For example, both can be read as coming-of-age stories, a rich, time-tested theme.
Murder is many things, including an account of something we remain afflicted with today, the use of terrible violence as perverse public statement. But Murder is also the haunting story of a gifted, high-minded, ambitious and privileged young man in a time of social upheaval and rapid change. It’s a carefully told tale that finally arrives at a tragic conclusion in which this young fellow not only forfeits his own life but takes with him a prominent, much-loved member of his community in an act of violent despair so shocking that it stains and changes many lives.
How about the uses of history?
The 1960s remain an important and fascinating period in the American 20th century. And you know what they say about those who ignore history. Murder offers an extraordinary view of the ‘60s in part because Richard Wishnetsky, the young man at its center, was so hyper-conscious of himself as a child of his time, as emblematic of both the great promise and the great failure of American society, and purposely cast himself in that role in order, he thought, to teach that society it was headed for doom.
Squelched in its way is also a coming-of-age tale…
In it a naïve young writer is blindsided when his book suffers a fate he has no idea was even possible. Then he gropes, blunders and finally learns a few things.
If some of the questions raised in these posts resonate, you might give Squelched a try. It’s a meticulous account of a young writer’s sudden plunge into the wiles of publishing and his unexpected, at times unpleasant lessons in how the world works. Its epilogue explains how the original manuscript, the last copy of which I gave away back in the early ‘70s, finally came back to me after more than three decades and brings the story up to date by recounting the passing of Max Fisher in 2005 at the age of 96.
Along the way you may note…
While the details are decades old, the lessons they contain about corporate manipulation and the power and influence of wealth and political connection remain deeply important in our world today.
If you’ve stayed with me this far, I’m grateful and hope you’ll leave a comment.
