I've been meaning to write on this for a while now: a few weeks ago, I wrote a post called "The Mulroney Tapes rush job", which accused Peter C. Newman of, well, rushing his infamous book on Mulroney to press. (For those who haven't seen or read it, Newman's tome is a slapdash compilation of quotes from Mulroney and his associates with very little original prose from the author and no index at the back.) A few days after the post was published, a comment was posted here by Alvy Newman -- fourth wife of Peter C. -- refuting my claim that the book was written and published hastily.
According to Mrs. Newman, her husband started working on the book more than two years ago and his contract with Random House stipulated that the manuscript was due in May for a fall publication. She then says "if your publisher doesn't work to deadline and doesn't demand that you hand in a manuscript on a certain date, then I think you should name this publisher because there will be lineup of authors who would love to be signed to this one..."
Sure. The publisher's name is Wiley. And I can attest that our book was supposed to come out in January 2006, but because of the possibility of a fall election the publication date was bumped up to late November.
I have no reason to doubt that Peter C. started working on the book two years ago. It must have taken him hundreds of hours to plough through his interview transcripts to find the colourful quotes he used in the book.
But I still have to wonder if Mulroney's health situation did not play a role in the timing of this book. Mrs. Newman may well be right. But if she is, her husband and Random House could have easily shielded themselves from this sort of speculation. Like including an index!
# posted by Adam Daifallah : 12:01 AM
