HarperCollins announced that Judith Regan was fired. I don’t know if it was because of the OJ book or because of the perverse fictionalized reality memoir of Mickey Mantle that she planned to publish. The Mantle book was described as
Two media insiders who have read the galley, each of whom asked not to be identified by name, used words like “porn,” “debased,” “exploitative” and “vile” to describe the book’s contents. One of them said the book left him “speechless.”
The author acknowledges in the cover of the book that it is an imaginative memoir and recreates fictional details about possibly true events.
Sure to be among the most controversial scenes in the book is Mantle’s alleged affair with Marilyn Monroe behind husband Joe DiMaggio’s back. When asked if this was strictly fiction, Golenbock said, “It was based on one sentence that Billy said to me. One sentence. It was something like, ‘When Mickey and I were in San Francisco one day, Mickey and Marilyn got together.’ Something like that. That was the sentence. A very intriguing sentence.
With Ragan’s firing, I wonder if the book will be torpedoed. I hope so. Even though you can’t defame the dead, it would be nice that whatever memory people have of him isn’t tainted by a fictionialized tell all.
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