STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
Book Fraud Happens to PC Publishers
By Staff News & Analysis - April 25, 2011

Much of the military's belief in tea culture can be traced back to Greg Mortenson and his memoir, "Three Cups of Tea," a book touted by top commanders and devoured by younger officers. But Mortenson has recently had to fend off allegations that big chunks of his memoir, which chronicles his work to build schools in some of the most remote and violent areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan, are lies. Both "60 Minutes" and writer Jon Krakauer have alleged that Mortenson has misused money donated to the charity he formed . . . The allegations are rippling through the publishing industry, which has seen this sort of scandal before, and through high schools and universities across the country that placed the bestseller on their required reading lists. – Washington Post

Dominant Social Theme: Isn't it shocking how the best and most beautiful narratives in the world turn out to be made up? They are so beautiful, even if they are false. Let us forgive them.

Free-Market Analysis: We long ago concluded that there was something funny going on in the book industry. How else to explain the millions lavished on Bill and Hillary Clinton for their big books (heavy anyway) that we have NEVER SEEN IN A SINGLE PLACE outside of perhaps a library and a couple of University offices. What happened to all those books? Who buys them? Are they simply pulped?

Books are a great way of rewarding people for a job well done. It’s an almost unimpeachable kickback. Bill and Hil did a lot of good work for the Anglo-American power elite. We were surprised that Bill Clinton wasn’t knighted for all the good things he did – not for average people but for the powers-that-be. And then the money begins to pour in. Tens and even hundreds of thousands for a single hour-long speech; seven figure book contracts; board sinecures by the handful. So many ways to reward the faithful.

Books are a great way of rewarding people for a job well done. It’s an almost unimpeachable kickback. Bill and Hil did a lot of good work for the Anglo-American power elite. We were surprised that Bill Clinton wasn’t knighted for all the good things he did – not for average people but for the powers-that-be. And then the money begins to pour in. Tens and even hundreds of thousands for a single hour-long speech; seven figure book contracts; board sinecures by the handful. So many ways to reward the faithful.

Even when American (and British) intel is not, apparently, directly dictating publishing choices, we detect a significant influence by the Western military-industrial complex on books – both fiction and non-fiction – and their ability to reach bestsellerdom. Not just adults are subject to these apparent interferences by the way. US public schools (and presumably British ones) are flooded with newly discovered classics, each one outdoing the next and most of them written by public school teachers that have their fingers not necessarily on the pulse of children but certainly of the public school libraries and librarians. The books are inevitability "shocking" and vie with each other to introduce adult (usually sexual) themes to children. They may not be well written but they fit the spirit of the day.

Major publishers are not immune. In America, successive scandals have rocked the publishing industry at a time when it desperately needs all the credibility it can acquire. The industry is rending its collective sackcloth over the latest scandal (see article excerpt above), which has to do with a book called, ‘Three Cups of Tea’. We’d never heard of the book but apparently it is a tremendous best seller in America and around the world. The story revolves around schools that the author is building in deepest Afghanistan and how he makes friends by drinking tea with wise elders. Here’s some more regarding the book from the Washington Post article:

"The U.S. military was just dying for his story to be true," said Celeste Ward Gventer, who was a senior civilian adviser to the U.S. military in Baghdad during some of the darkest days of the Iraq war. "They were dying to believe that this one guy learned the culture, earned the Afghans' respect and helped them build a better society."

Mortenson's military celebrity took off about the same time that the Afghanistan war started to founder. Officers who had done multiple tours in Iraq but had little experience in Afghanistan went searching for someone who could explain a deeply alien culture to them. "Three Cups of Tea" and the follow-up "Stones Into Schools" were much more fun to read than the military's counterinsurgency doctrine and carried a far more uplifting message.

Never mind that the government of Afghan President Hamid Karzai sometimes seemed like a poorly managed kleptocracy, his books seemed to say. Pay no attention to the fact that Afghanistan often could be a brutish and inhospitable place. Mortenson's narratives of wise, patient and kind Afghan and Pakistani elders made it seem as though progress in Afghanistan was achievable. All U.S. troops had to do was learn the Afghan culture, show some patience and deliver a little bit of progress, and the Afghans would see the U.S. military's good intentions and turn against the Taliban.

We're not surprised this book became a bestseller. It fits the mold of power-elite sub-dominant social themes perfectly. In fact, the book is representative in our view of a new kind of literary genre, which mostly consists of a narrative written to express the hope that Western culture will soon eradicate or at least Westernize Islam and its myriad depredations for the good of the world. It helps if the person writing the book is a former Muslim, has been a "victim" of Muslim fundamentalism or has been a resident of a country ending in "stan."

Another kind of popular narrative is the reformation and renewal of the drug addict. This theme caused scandal in 2006, when it became clear that author James Frey had made up large segments of his "nonfiction" book A Million Little Pieces about his recovery from drug addiction. He finally went on the Oprah Winfrey show and admitted to stretching the truth and Oprah who had made him the choice of her book club, was most severe with him.

We remember when author went to jail for fabricating a book about reclusive billionaire Howard Hughes. No such fate awaited James Frey. In 2008, he had another bestseller with a book called Bright Shiny Morning. Oprah didn’t have him back to celebrate that triumph, but Entertainment Weekly reports that Frey will be appearing on Oprah’s show in May. The magazine calls it “must see” TV.

We have theory about the scandals hitting the publishing industry these days. We figure it’s because it is becoming an even more obviously controlled industry than it already was. What is increasingly obvious to hungry, aspiring authors is that there are certain themes that will likely get the published and get them scads of publicity besides.

The penalties for making up these kinds of books are minimal. Parts of the Jerzy Kosinski memoir, The Painted Bird is apparently made up. But the debunking never achieved much play because the book is about a poor Jewish boy's travels through Poland and the savagery he sees aimed at Jews. There are doubts apparently about whether Anne Frank actually wrote her diaries, but it's not a story that is going to be splashed on the front pages of the New York Times. Arthur Hailey's literary voyage of self-discovery "Roots" transfixed a nation in the 1970s but revelations that he'd "borrowed" large amounts of the story from The African by Harold Courlander received scant attention later on. The themes and works are PC, and thus are almost immune to serious blowback.

It was recently revealed that cooking show host Julia Childs was a former CIA agent. Newscaster Anderson Cooper is supposed to have CIA training as a younger man. The founder of the popular democratic website Daily Koz is supposedly CIA. Facebook and Google are said to have considerable CIA involvement. The penetrations are increasingly obvious and, saddest of all, the efforts to cover up the involvement seems lackadaisical or perhaps, in this Internet era, simply unfeasible.

As for aspiring writers, one way obviously to become famous is to figure out the narratives that the Anglo-American power elite wants to emphasize. These are dominant social themes that American and European publishers will concentrate on and publicize. They fit in with the PE’s larger agenda of creating a Western-dominated global governance and thus attack cultures (Islam) that stand in the way of it and encourage those kinds of books that establish the increasing dissipation of discipline and morality in Western cultures as well. Weakening traditional morality and celebrating the drug culture (even while declaring war on it) allows the Anglosphere elite to attack the fibers that bind together the family and the larger culture.

After Thoughts

If you are a man or woman and can write lengthily about the oppression in a male-dominated world, your book will receive attention. If you are from Asia or the Middle East and can write a credible-sounding narrative about the horrors of growing up in such unWesternized environments you likely will be published lickety split. It does not matter anymore if the book is true or enough, so long as it supports the dominant fear-based promotions of the power elite. Western publishers may wring their hands at the “scandals” that are befalling the industry. But the real scandal is what they are publishing (and publicizing) and why.

Posted in STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS
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